Establishing a more Equitable Framework in Storytelling: The Beginning of an Idea.
My education took me to seek out the past, looking for clues in how to find answers in creating this new form of storytelling. Soon I discovered the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes, the Beat Generation and Allen Ginsberg, and the Transcendentalists at Concord and Henry David Thoreau.
Not all life plans go how we like them. Sometimes events play out parallel to one another. While I was discovering this idea, my home life was a wreck where alcohol abuse and extreme toxic environment derailed much of my progress. Society rejected my pleads. My response was to hide away into poetry and The Wheel of Time series.
PROJECT: To establish a new school of creators, artists, poets and thinkers who seek to change the way of modern-day storytelling is structured. Where the works celebrate the equity of the way society has and will change due to COVID-19.
Every project has a start. For me, it started in two points. Point 1: It began with the desire to read five comics. Then the fire of seeking knowledge and different ideas in sixth grade with The Giver.
I often incorporate music into my life as part inspiration and part companion during those times of solitude. Finding inspiration was important, but finding connection sustained me.
A lot of my life has been spent by myself. Alone and thinking. Most of the thoughts centered around people, ideas and stories. I was seeking a community.
A voice that can be celebrated together as a community.
With a community built and ideas refined, then can come visibility. Groups can grow and the ideas will travel. Opportunities will be created for many, and potential to either collaborate with other organizations or create a new voice in the field.
One aspect I learned: a community can be rewarding. The project would focus on ways to keep a community of thinkers connected and up-to-date on the topic of the moment. With social media platforms like Discord (pictured), Facebook and writing blogs will create the space for those individuals who seek to challenge the idea of thought and storytelling.
A community of storytellers.
The project will start small, but eventually, there is growth for more engagement. By expanding to other communities, there is a chance for writing seminars, lectures and group projects that can be for storytellers of all ages.
But this is just a start. The beginning of tracks that lead into a wonderfully unknown wilderness, ready to be explored.
In high school, I discovered the works of James Baldwin, particularly the Fire Next Time, while spending time alone, hiding away either in at the top of stairs near the gym, or somewhere in the back corner near the large windows. This inspired me to improve my writing in college, and led me to becoming a journalist.
Then came Point 2: discovering I began this quest for a new idea far earlier than those moments in reading. It began in Point Lookout, Florida, staring off into the Atlantic Ocean watching the sunrise one last time on that beach. I was six years old.
When the table is full of ideas, the possibilities are obtainable, and the connections we can make with one another become integral to the community created. There is more of a chance to learn from one another.
:
It is to fill the table with ideas.