Faraway is Close

Why faraway, why close?

It began in Mongolia in 2007.

Or rather many years after it when I was trying to write about it.

I wrote an essay about forgetting the language even as the experience of being there grew so vivid.

“in telling stories, I feel I’m continuing a process in which our connections expand, the world contracts, and far away becomes close.”

It felt like a metaphor for so much.

that place that you feel is so faraway, that person you think is so unknowable

that creativity that you feel is so far out of your reach.

it's closer than you think.

And that phrase is really the core of what I do, have done, will do, love to do, can't imagine not doing.

Faraway is Close: dissolving the borders that keep us from our connection to land, story, community.

The curious thing was - along the way, I discovered that own border in myself.

Fear.

I wrote a poem about inviting it in for tea. The way we used to have tea in Bombay around 4 or 5pm. It led curiously to investigating the ripple effects of British and Portuguese colonization of India - in a felt body sense.

And it led even more curiously to a journey into performance, a play called The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects.

The girl so afraid of the stage she cried to go up on the dais at Indian weddings, that girl who suddenly discovered she loved being on stage.

All this by way of introduction to this space.

Stories, songs, and conversations about awakening to a life of creativity, excavating colonization, place, purpose, and exploring the mystery of journey.

Aage´chalo, let us go.

explore: shebanacoelho.com