Witnessing the fires, destruction and decay that is being reflected more and more in the world around us, I cannot help but be reminded of the profound healing power of water and embodied and creative community - the very core of what Water in the Desert stands for as an organization and collective dream-space.
10 years ago, I sat alone one night inside a brutally drafty, grey, 2000’ concrete basement warehouse on the absolute edge of a forgotten industrial area on the tracks of North Portland and bawled my eyes out. I had just signed a year’s lease on a dump of a space with a dream to turn it into the collective launching pad black box theatre that The Headwaters would become...and I cried that night because, for a moment, I failed to believe in our vision…and our capacity to bring it to fruition. 3 months, 1000+ hours of volunteer labor & a maxed out visa card later, we opened the doors of an incredibly magical space and WITD hosted its very first performance workshop with one of my absolute butoh femme sheroes-- Yumiko Yoshioka (Japan/Berlin).
Also 10 years ago, on January 27, 2010, WITD received in the mail its official 501c3 non-profit status from the IRS in a momentous occasion that symbolically threaded my life work as an artist, director, activist and educator with a collective organizational mission “to carve out accessible space for embodied, cross-cultural exchange at the intersection of ecological, social, and artistic perspectives.” Under a year-long mentorship with George Thorn, supported by The Regional Arts and Culture Council, I crafted a board of my most trusted allies and the fiercest artists and disability activists I know still to this day--Erik Ferguson & Yulia Arakelyan of Wobbly Dance.
10 years ago, just after the week that Yumiko first taught at The Headwaters, I moved alone one night into a 100 year-old farmhouse where I bawled my eyes out again to a deeply swollen state--because the signs were already painfully clear that the partnership that had been so essential to all of this possibility and platform building would also be its demise if I could not figure out how to run this ship on my own. That same home, which I gratefully acquired in a moment that the market, and my proximity to certain privileges, made possible--has since developed and seeded itself into an urban artist farm residency and shared community of creative, sustainable and embodied research where our Wobbly board lives just across a field of tomatoes, alpacas and queer avant-garden dancers.
2 days ago, I sat inside that same space we call The Headwaters, now warm and rich through a vital history of some of the most beautiful international exchanges in the arts that I believe have ever happened on this planet and I cried again. In fact, I have been crying for days...as I deeply reflect upon where we have come from, where we are now and where we have the potential to be. I cried because I have raised an amazing child. A child I believe in and I believe the world needs. I cried because that child has outgrown me, but like an obsessive mother, I have not yet been able to set them free...to believe that they have a life beyond me...and hopefully someday, without me.
Don’t get me wrong, as long as I am living, I will be fulfilling the mission I have been given, to bring Water in the Desert. And at the same time, I feel as though the decade we are now peering into requires a heroic shedding of skin and responsibility (that I am in the process of undoing) to allow space for an entirely new era of emerging strategies--grounded in building ever clearer structures of collaboration, equity, and capacity building for the work that we are all already doing here together-- now beyond our most eccentrically wild dreams.
And like those intimately vulnerable times of hitting rock bottom (that I share above), the illumination of a path through these particularly unknown times, is butoh-slowly beginning to reveal itself in who is showing up and how they are doing it... the conversations we are having...the planning...and the living, breathing practice of it all. This is just a glimpse into a series of reflections, events & CELEBRATIONS to come, all centered around our decade in review and the dawning of a new one -- that I know will bring together again and again the many artists, patrons, partners, communities, funders and dear ones who have been with us and who are still to join us. We would not be here without each and every one of you!
Wishing you all a truly and auspiciously fortuitous new year and decade.
With all of my love and gratitude,