Ode to the Reef

Hello Beloved Reader,

I feel turned upside down and inside out in so many wonderful ways about my work here at NET as a member of the Bridge Ensemble for the last year and a half.  In the months since January when we stepped into the role of interim leadership, we, the Bridge Ensemble in responsive collaboration with the NET board, have built out numerous scenarios, budgets and plans for the future of the NET as an organization. We are in the midst of building structures and systems: a new membership portal to give to a membership that has let us know without a doubt that NET is needed. We have gained a clear perspective on the needs of the organization and created a draft of a two year plan. It's time for radical (rooted) change. We will be presenting our proposals and recommendations to the board, the Mellon Foundation the generous funders of the NETneXt Initiative, and the members of the ensemble field shortly. We thank you for your patience in this process of benevolent succession. As I look around me from my position in the arts I see doors closing, companies, nonprofits, organizations unable to support the staff or see a road ahead.  What I see here at NET is an opportunity to grieve what is falling away and to celebrate, all that is emerging from the soil. We must do that with clarity. We must embrace a new vision not to be at the forefront of society but to move in solidarity.  Which reminds me of a time, last October when we gathered in Bulbancha for NET neXt : Co Creating the Future. On day two we met in the Andre Cailloux Center and engaged in an exercise of radical worldbuilding, an exercise from Applied Mechanics, the ensemble theater collective I call home. In the exercise participants wrote personal values, abstracted them, broke out into groups and made worlds by choosing a set of values and pairing it with a principle of solidarity economy. There were many worlds made but the one that sticks within me most is a world called the Reef where the creatures embraced conflict as generative and clarifying.  As I observed the coral reef, a mass of bodies intertwined devours a curious outsider. This outsider does now allow themself to be absorbed easily but rather struggles until the reef breaks apart to reveal a chorus of bodies now free from a stuck place and they choose to move together in unison. What follows is a personal poetic reflection of what I can see from where I am right now.

In abundance,

Severin Blake

Ode to the Reef

desire for change

facilitate, follow, lead

the pathway opens

meet at a distance

ensemble building begins

something nothing here

the water is deep

cool familiar and strange

venture further in

call for help answered

circles interconnected

arms outstretched, a breath

together at last

truth speaking as waters flow

emotions rising

attrition and leave

questioning empowerment

always building new

everywhere i look

i see the need for repair 

nothing something there

having now observed

systems, mission, paradigms

let go and renew 

a blueprint made of

seedlings from the membership

grow together, sing