vidya finally posts photos

Forgot to post on Sunday. I also am writing this as I finally put some pictures up on flickr. Today, I had my critique on the mutual observation project. It was really good to hear feedback from fresh eyes, because when you work on something for long enough, it becomes completely pointless and mundane to you. Seeing everyone else appreciate and be excited about what, in effect, became a quasi-daily ritual to me, reminded me of the reason for this undertaking.

Which is?

I set out to change the world, but I ended up, not surprisingly, learning so much..about how change happens one person--one conversation at a time. I reached out to people and realized that I wasn't necessarily breaking down barriers of racism and anonymity for all of the world, or even all of Florence, but engaging people in a discourse. I was showing them generosity, and those who participated found at least a part of themselves with which they could be generous.

I think Regan put her finger right on why this project was so fitting for me - I was using the medium that comes naturally to me: conversation. I do like to talk. I do relate well to complete strangers. And I value face-to-face interaction and conversation. I'm definitely glad now that I never took pictures of the drawings I made. (They were so good, believe me.) This way, I have no ownership over them. Neat to think that they're out there floating around somewhere...and not necessarily in Florence, because I convinced some of the participants to mail them to their friends/family. For me, this was a work of persistence, also. EVERYONE was curious, but man are people too afraid/busy to care and ask. Last Thursday, I went to three piazzas for 1.5 hours each and got ZERO participants.

We'll see how the show goes..I will be doing my "performance" (I don't think it's a performance) on the evening of the opening as well as, if I can, for about an hour at the bar every evening until we take the show down. I am terribly excited to just bask in the glory of a semester's worth of hard work, now that we have come out alive. I feel really privileged to have an environment of such genius creative minds.