June 23, 2022

I'm sitting in an Alice Salon right now. On camera but just listening. The people on the call are all folks I recognize, which is nice. Alice just called on me, ha. I didn't get to bring this up, because it didn't fit with the flow, but what I wanted to say I'm struggling with is community. An artists community maybe. 

I've been hanging around with a guy who's very social. He's a clown and there's a strong clown community in LA (apparently). He also juggles, and the jugglers hang out every Wednesday night on the beach. And tons of people have shows to go to, and it's a whole thing. It sounds like a cool stable way to see people, a good way to see lots of art, exchange lots of ideas. 

Okay, I was able to bring up the thing I'm struggling with -- side note, in these salons it's so often something to do with global politics. I like the Bugle and other satirical topical news comedy stuff, but like my personal problems have always way outweighed worrying about something happening on a political level. -- and people were really nice about it. Everybody's been really nice about everything. My question was like, keeping up a bunch of individual relationships, meeting with people one at a time is wonderful but really inefficient. I want a community, what do I do? And everybody's answer was like, Let's meet more often! They're like, That's what you have here! Let's do it more! I'm like, well guys I meant in person. But I guess that wouldn't have to be the case? I do like the people who go to Alice's salons. They're interesting and from all over the world. It would raise my quota of male friends in their 40s-50s for sure. 

I asked two Lyra people about doing more stuff together as a group, and they were extremely on it too. So maybe this is just what it takes. Putting it out there. Getting it started. I feel emotionally raw and on edge. So it all seems hard but so beautiful, you know? 

I watched a live stream (below) with Christina Catherine Martinez, my icon. I asked her about the differences in communities of artists of different disciplines. Her answer was that in her experience it's the same. Everybody's just worried about belonging. I got that feeling for sure in the skating community. There were whole IG blowups over it, people being cliquish, not giving credit, not sharing hangout locations, etc. I've been thinking about it a lot. I had expected her to be like, Well, writers are less fun because they have to do their work alone in their heads, while performers are great fun and always hang out together. Lol. (I'm really liking lol lately.)