Momentous Beauty: The Secret Sauce of Creative Community
The Flowlicious Xperience (TFX) returns to Inglewood as part of The Inglewood Open Studios (IOS) 15th Anniversary Artwalk and Tour. As an IOS advisory board member, I get to help create communities on the spot, in the moment, in The Flow.
I grew up in Inglewood aka The Wood in the 70s when creativity was woven into the fabric of the community. We built go-carts with shopping-cart wheels and carpeted plywood chassis. Rode souped up stingray bicycles past garage bands jammin' on summer days and tumbled down oil field hills behind Darby Park playing Evel Knievel. Small town vibes in big-town LA.
Coming home to The Wood is sweet and bitter. The friends, the bands, the dirt bike oil fields are gone. The Wood has grown into a sports and entertainment metro altering the city's fabric from community conglomerate.
I may be waxing the nostalgia, but at the heart of this piece is community. Oxford Language online has several definitions for community. This is the one I flow with:
a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals
I'm writing in a coffee shop, sippin' an Americano feeling that fellowship. Baristas are brewing, customers are flowing in and out, drinks in hand. Some sit alone, others chat over lattes. We're bound by simple, unspoken agreements that keep this flow going.
Community is a virtual residence, existing only as people come together, built on shared moments. Like all things, it’s temporary, lasting only as long as the moment holds. When it flows, community is a moment of beauty.
Momentous Beauty
Beautiful Moments are like fast dissolving candies on the tongue. Delicious but never long enough. You can even hear the word 'mint' in Momentous ;-). If Moments had a flavor, it would be 'flowlicious'. Bite-size nuggets of nowness playing and dissolving on the palate of awareness.
The Flowlicious Xperience
The Flowlicious Xperience aims to create these fleeting moments of community through Creativity and Play. Drumming, art, and music bring all ages together, generating a space for fun and flow where children and inner children meet on the same playground, losing themselves in the moment, making and rediscovering meaning. That's the secret sauce of TFX. Cultivating community with Creativity and Play while making Momentous Beauty along the way.
If you're in The Wood Saturday, November 9, 2024, check out The Flowlicious Xperience as part of Inglewood Open Studios Artwalk Tour. And remember the main ingredient of the TFX secret sauce for a beautifully momentous community is You.