AOA Season 5 Ep 7
Molly: Hello and welcome to a podcast about creating experimental art in trauma-informed and sustainable ways that support artists, our communities and the organization as a whole. I'm your host, Molly, and you're listening to Any Other Anythings.
In this season, we are focused on the latest project being produced by Grey Box Collective. It is titled Positive Ruminations. So this is an event that will feature four new works and each episode of this season of Any Other Anythings will feature conversations from the creative teams developing the new work, and we are really focusing on capturing the process and sharing out the things we find interesting along the way. Hope that you enjoy the season of Any Other Anythings.
Alright. Thank you all for listening. I hope that you enjoy kind of those little glimpses and insights into the pieces being developed right now. And I wanted to just share kind of two recent epiphanies I've had one about Grey Box Collective as a whole and what we do, and one specifically about Positive Ruminations.
And sometimes I feel silly like sharing these things like, especially when I'm going to talk about Grey Box. And it's like, oh, I never thought about the color grey in that way. And it's like, I named Grey Box nearly a decade ago, and I'm still discovering like, how we are engaging in work and producing work in ways that like connect to the name that had zero intention to how the name was developed.
So there's that and same with Positive Ruminations like it feels like kind of a dumb moment. If you've done a workshop with me or taken a class with me You're familiar with how I share ones at the end and one is a duh moment and I feel like I'm sharing a duh moment with you. So Positive Ruminations, right?
It's being able to sit with these ideas and whatever kind of anger might be coming up or rage or whatever those emotions are and changing that, transforming that energy that we have around these topics into transformative action, right? So it's really the shape shifting and how we move that energy through.
Because typically when we think about positive, no, typically when we think about ruminations, I don't associate that as like a happy experience by any means. When I am stuck in a ruminating space, it's like it is an intense downward spiral that feels like it's never going to end. So that Positive Ruminations, right?
How can we sit with something that's difficult, that's like really taking up a lot of time and energy in our, in our lives, in our headspace, whatever, and how can we start to shape it into something that has this really powerful impact to, to create positive change in the world. And. Where did I talk about?
I talked about, I think on social media about kind of where Positive Ruminations came from. And I can talk more about that maybe in the next episode, cause this one feels like it's getting long. But yes, so with that, one of the challenges that I, I've brought with to each of these creative teams is like, we can't just wallow in the like the weight of, of these topics, right?
Like, how can we engage in that positive rumination practice with the topics that we have for each of these pieces? And that's something that I have been thinking about as like a piece of the show, a piece of each of these new works. But then I also realized like it's a very inception-y moment because that's exactly what we're doing, is we are taking these topics that are rather difficult taking these topics that feel very heavy, that feel very urgent.
And we're taking time to, to do that. Spend time with them, right? Like we are attending to these topics in a way that we can start to unpack and understand and communicate. How can we start to navigate these, these challenges and how can we transform our own perhaps eco grief, transform our own overwhelming sense of compassion fatigue?
How can we deal with like the, the systems within us that are perpetuating that busy culture? How can we like deal with that grief and loss? And how can we start to transform it into something else? And I think about these performances as artistic vehicles for social change. More specifically, social transformation and embodied activism.
And part of that is in how they spark conversations. So even if you aren't able to make the show, maybe you're listening from another state or another country, I hope that even just hearing about the process is something that also sparks that dialogue within yourself or beyond. And I think perhaps that is part of the whole like positive rumination thing.
That we are sparking those things sparking that dialogue, sparking those new thoughts. So yeah, I hadn't really thought about it like that. I was actually kind of panicking and being like, are we going to be able to positively ruminate on this stuff? And like, no, that's literally what we are embodying.
So that was one of my epiphanies and I'll share one more. Part of the reason it is a Grey Box is because I don't believe that we live in a black and white world. We live in a very grey, messy world. And I think the best parts of life are those grey, messy areas. Even though we are taught and conditioned to see the world in black and white.
And I think about Sir Ken Robinson talks about like, you know, we learned that there is right and wrong. There's only one answer. It's in the back of the book. Right. And, somewhere recently on social media, I saw someone talk about the importance of being able to exist in the grey areas so that we can take these things that are extreme and understand their relationship to each other.
And I think that's part of what we're doing. Not intentionally so in terms of like, how are we understanding opposing forces or these things that we perceive and are told that are very opposite of each other. How are we understanding the relationship to each other? And that exists in the grey area.
So that was not, again, the intention of Grey Box Collective as a title, but here we are. I think it kind of works out. So yeah, thank you all so much for listening to our creative process in real time, greatly appreciate your time and energy.
Thank you all very much and stay tuned for the next episode. All right. Take care of yourselves all until next time.
Hey, listener. Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to check out another episode of any other anything's greatly appreciate your presence. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to find out more about this podcast, the speakers and Grey Box Collective. You can also go to greyboxcollective.com/podcasts for a full transcript of this episode. Thank you again for listening. Thank you again for being here. Greatly appreciate it. Take care of yourselves and each other.
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