Howl

I was still out in L.A. a year ago after having driven across the country by myself (here, here, and partly here, learning about myself and others and how I can live in relationships. I miss it so much, especially as I read blog posts from one of my dear friends and a friend of hers as they travel down the West Coast, meeting people and learning more about hospitality. Please go check out their travel blog here.

Hospitality is one of the things I’ve been trying to better understand since last fall with Theaster’s Plate Convergence, and as I’m learning more about it the more I realize it’s one of the most important things a person can do. It doesn’t always have to be meals, of course, but any intentional act of letting someone into your life, even for a moment, is such a life-giving thing. It’s a literal self-sacrifice as you give yourself up to the desires and needs of another. It’s so cliché to say this, probably, but please just be friends with people. Be kind, be open, be honest, be willing to let people into your life and be vulnerable towards them.

I went to church with my parents yesterday rather than going to the Episcopal church I normally go to, and we got into a discussion about power structures and how we’re taught to undermine them where we can. As a straight white middle-class American male I realize I’m kind of implicit in those power structures, but I think there are ways I can work towards breaking them down and, in turn, help further what I see as my life’s work in architecture and communication.

As I’ve been telling people, if this thesis thing is finished this summer I’m moving back to Nashville to either work there or, if there’s no work to be had, live there while I look for work elsewhere. I’ve already written about my desire to start a community design/build program at Trevecca, to work towards giving poor communities good architecture in the form of picnic shelters, bus stops, community gathering spaces, etc. In other words, undermining those power structures both by giving impoverished people good spaces to live in community with each other, and also by calling into question the entire power structure of architecture by showing that people don’t have to have an architecture degree to make good things.

Another thing I want to do is along the same lines of enabling people to better live in community with each other, but it takes a different form. When Chicago-based artist and activist Theaster Gates visited UNCC last fall I was able to work with him and learn from him, and the first thing he did in his week-long visit was hold what he calls a Plate Convergence. These are events he holds, usually in Chicago, where he invites people from different backgrounds and careers to come and eat dinner together.

I think this is a really valuable and powerful thing, and the act of eating together is an intimate one that can do a great deal towards building and strengthening a community. So I want to start holding these in Nashville. If I’m able to have a job at Trevecca, I’d hold it there, but if not I’d find somewhere else. I’d figure out a way to get local, healthy food and create menus for each time we eat together, and then I’d just invite people. University presidents, politicians, artists, musicians, East Nashville hipsters, West Nashville old money, people from the projects, homeless people from downtown, illegal immigrants, priests, atheists, rabbis, writers, scientists, students, then I’d mix them all up at different tables so there’s a good mix, and I’d just have them talk to each other while they eat a good meal. And I’d invite mostly new people each time.

By doing so, power structures and prejudices get broken down and community gets built and strengthened, just by sitting down and having dinner with people once a month. So that’s something else I want to do in Nashville if I can ever get this thesis finished.

At this time last year I was neck deep in the Great West Coast, living a new life in a shed near the sea, my days filled with movies, reading, the beach, energy, and contentment. My nights were the kind any 26-year-old might want to have.

Now I have graduated but am stuck here until I can complete my thesis, and my life has turned into one of long periods of waiting, lethargy, and boredom split by much-needed moments of something to do. The World Cup is going on now, and that gives me something to put time into, but otherwise I am held still by circumstances outside my control. My thesis committee is nearly all out of the country, and while I’ve sent them my new discourse and am working here and there on new things to show them, I’ve been told to wait until everyone gets back from their travels. You can imagine the concern I have over this when I have to complete my thesis by early August or else I am stuck here another year, unable to move to Nashville or anywhere else and unable to start my life.

So I am having to learn patience as the days roll by without a call from the temp agency, an email from anyone on my committee, or much of anything to just get me out of the house once in a while.