California Dreamin’

Hi Indyish! It’s been a while. I’ve been in California for the past few weeks, working in the Redwood forest, with blissfully limited access to the interwebs. Sigh. I’ve skipped out on tonight’s Mess to recover from a sinus infection, have some Shabbat dinner with my mom, and to reacquaint myself with this bittersweet interconnected medium.

So what was I doing in the forests of Northern California? I’ve been here. A simple place called Summer Drama Camp. A wonderful place where young artists go to be nourished, loved and set free. This camp offers dancing, writing, acting, film, singing and movement workshops, and is exactly the kind of nurturing environment I would have killed for back when I was a high-schooler.

As a counselor at this camp, there was no shortage of inspiring and rewarding work to be done. Basically I was surrounded by brilliant artistic teenagers for two weeks, all of whom have a story to tell, most of whom need a little nudge from someone older or more experienced to set that story free. I learned so much from them, and from my co-workers. There are few things as artistiscally liberating as teaching other artists to spread their wings.

So yeah…that’s my take on art right now. Give others the space to be artists, and then you find the space in yourself. A lot of really cool art came out of the two-week camp, and I hope to blog on a lot of it in the days to come.

Back in Montreal - summer is fading…le sigh.