it’s always hard for me to come up with names or descriptions for workshops. workshops are where we come to figure “it” out together. and by “it” i mean our heartbreak, our daddy issues, our dysphoria, our craft. i learned long ago that school often doesn’t work because we are told that the “teachers” are the “experts,” and we are told that the “personal” is irrelevant. but shouldn’t learning warrant a scream or a dance or a poem? shouldn’t learning mean we are all experts & teachers & students at the same time? workshops is where we go to talk about the things we are not supposed to talk about — to figure out how to have a body, how to love a body, how to treat a body. truth be told i am terrible at doing things alone. i couldn’t tie my shoe until thirteen, i burn pasta, i don’t take breaks & i have been procrastinating on taking care of myself for 27 years. which is another way of saying workshops are where we bring all of that to each other say, “here is where i am at. can you help me?” workshops are where we remember intimacy & make friends in a world that have digitized them both. in other words: workshops are where we resist loneliness, practice need, remember how to trust. i don’t know who i would be or hell even if i would be if it wasn’t for strangers i met at workshops who said “i do not know you but i love you, let’s try, fail, and try again.” workshops are for trying. and here i am at another airport trying to communicate how i fell in love with a group of strangers like they were my best friends for three hours on an afternoon in Cape Town where we laughed and cried and probably farted and sneezed, too. and in those three hours i didn’t feel lonely. i didn’t feel lonely.
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