It's June 15, 2024
June 15, 2024
As I start writing out this date, I notice the date itself.
June 15, 2024
It’s approaching summer solstice. Again. In the year 2024. A powerful time is coming. But powerful only if you give it enough time and space to be.
Or else it passes just like any other day. It’s your choice.
Just like any experience. It’s up to you to take advantage of it. To come at it with open heart, to ask for what you need. To pay attention when you find something that hits you the right way. I talk about this to anyone looking to learn within the world of art making.
Guess what?
I’m in my fav place to be writing >.< Guess where? In the same place I wrote my first blog on this site. The VIA Rail train between Ottawa and Toronto. Only this time I’m leaving Ottawa. Coming back to that place that sucks you in. That place that brings you to work, work, work, with no end.
I’m coming back after a week of intense, or… as I’ve been hearing the past few days: rigorous dedication to the craft of art making in the world of live performance.
Right before that, I had just gone through a really transformative few weeks, all leading up to Indigenous Fashion Arts Festival, in which I was curator of the Marketplace Spotlight, and working with international Indigenous artists from all across Abiayala. Bringing their art, working with my family for the runway, being part of the IFA team, all of it shifted my entire being.
And then I jumped into… rigor. This word feels like it’s become synonymous with love, transformation, deep digging, and care needed to truly create impactful live experiences. I thank Lisa Karen Cox for bringing that word into my practice. It describes the level of intention I want to have. The kind of intense relationship I want to create in bringing art and audiences together.
What am I talking about? Urgh fine, I’ll be specific. I was in a group residency at the National Arts Center as a fellow in the WhyNot ThisGen Fellowship in the Design Stream.
That meant that many cultural workers and artists built a space for me and a whole bunch of other incredible people to talk about things we never get to talk about. To take time to go deep, to move with honesty, to check our egos and remember what humilty can teach us. To dream big and be more firm with what we want, to compromise less, to always come with our fullest selves.
Sometimes I think: how did I get here?
To gaze at parliament across 20ft glass windows, lying comfortably on the floor, almost half asleep, listening to conversations that shows how badly we want to find the answers to have our work be told and shown to hundreds of people. Because we believe in our work.
Honestly, in many ways it feels like I already made it. Samay in her “youth” years would have looked at someone like me with a twinge of jealousy. She’s getting her lunch taken care of, she’s meeting with all these ‘top of the ladder’ people, she can talk in arts-speak, or “like-me-so-you-hire-me” speak. She’s freaking lying on the floor looking through 20ft glass windows at the parliament goddammit. All warm, and unafraid to be there.
As if she belonged.
Whether or not she does, I don’t know. But I do know everything happens for a reason. There’s a reason I was there, and that all of us where. I’ll probably find out later. I know some of it now. I know I met incredible people. People who may be some day be part of my art family. I miss having an art family. Someone you don’t need to use words with with, just images… and movement, and sound, and energy.
I’m posting this like a month late. But that’s okay.
More to come :)