a collective rumbling

i think there's a collective rumbling in the streets of memphis.
i think there's some folks getting excited.
we're going crazy. we're dancing. we're wildly giggling. because we know our potential. and we know yours too. we can feel it. we know what can happen and we know it's starting soon.

i wanted to write something with sanssouci** in mind, and all the former, striving, and currently running collective and cooperative spaces in memphis (yes, all of you, you great people). why am i excited about these things? why are you? why do we all arrive at this conclusion of
collectives? or maybe just this means of collectives to another conclusion (one of our own)?

(** for anyone who doesn't know, sanssouci was a collective house in memphis from august 2007 to october 2008 and still is a collective community - see myspace.com/sanssoucicollective for all the details)

i think it's pretty full of madness out here. i think it's pretty
difficult for anyone of us to just do what we want and do what we're happy doing. for a lot of really messed up reasons, the part about what we want and us being truly happy just doesn't fit in to the society we live in. maybe this is why we want to live collectively? we want to create our own society because we disagree with the one we were given.

at sanssouci, we hoped (hoped as in i don't think it was always
accomplished but definitely strived for) to create a space where everyone felt comfortable, included, and welcome. maybe this is why? we want to be around like-minded people (and even not so like-minded people) and feel accepted. maybe we want a place where we don't feel like the only one out there who cares about anything?

maybe it's about energy? and potential? and action? we we get a whole lot of us together, we've got a whole lot of people power, a whole lot of possibility to push each other and inspire each other, and a whole lot of opportunities to work and create things together.

for me, i see collective spaces as an opportunity to build community and an opportunity to help people (and myself) feel more comfortable and capable of exploring ideas, questioning assumptions, and expanding our perceptions. and with this, leads to a lot of action, a lot of shit getting done, and a lot of potential for change. by building community, i mean creating a tight knit group of individuals who strive for close, genuine, honest relationships. this closeness helps people feel more comfortable being vulnerable. and vulnerability is great, because then you've got lots of opportunity to grow as a person. the more we trust other people, the more likely we are going to be open to thinking about and questioning different ideas and concepts that are presented to us. so, i think in this way community is a springboard for expanding our own consciousness. and expanding our consciousness leads to more radical thinking and more ideas about actions to take to create a space, place, society, whatever we want that we are excited and happy to live in and be a part of.

and well, that's something that's super important to me. (...being happy. growing. being ridiculous too. action. revolution...) and i think collective spaces can offer me (and you too maybe) the space to easily do these things (or whatever you want to do).

so that was a lot of what i think about things and collectives and what i care about, and i'd definitely like to know what you think too. so feel free to tell me, i'll be excitedly waiting.

whatever the reason why we all think about collectives, there's lots of us out there talking about it. i know memphis has so much potetial. i know you do. i know i do. and goddamn, if we are all together, we'll be fucking amazing!

there's a group of us already brainstorming and throwing around ideas (soon to be put into action) about creating more collective houses and spaces in memphis. right now, there's an idea to start a non-profit that would help buy collective and cooperative spaces. it would serve as an umbrella network for all of these potential collectives. this non-profit would *only* serve as a means to easily aquire space and help with long term sustainbility for the collective community in memphis. each collective would be completely autonomous from the non-profit allowing for it's members to decide on it's purpose and actions. although, we'd probably have some broad values that all of these collectives would encompass. potential spaces could be collective houses, artist spaces, restaurants, infoshops, food co-ops, etc.. bascialy, if someone has an idea about a collectively run space, this non-profit would help assist in making it happen. i think this idea can happen, easy as pie.

so that's the idea right now, but we want feedback and more input and more ideas if you'd like to give any. we also want your help! if talking about and/or helping out with more collective spaces in memphis sounds exciting, interesting, intriguing to you, let me know and i'll connect you with everyone who's talking about it.

(i also think there's a lot of us out there working on these things separately and i think we could all do this together awesomely. i'm not talking about cam (the co-op association of memphis) revisited- i'm talking about super support and positivity and you do your thing awesomely, you do yours awesomely, i'll do mine... you know? let's talk about it. we could be great.)

i love you all and i'm excited about you. tell me your thoughts.