Fuck that Noise

On a note to end 2011 and to bring in 2012, I believe in understanding FIRE. Fire is a finicky element, one that needs substance to live. Give it not enough and it dies, give it to much and you lose control of it. Fire is our love, anger, and all the emotions that fall in between it.

Trying to come up with ideas for my next workshop with kids on the topic of inner strength and perseverance, while being adrift in Europe and North Africa, I came up with the conclusion I would teach it with the concept of fire and maintaining its existence for the longest amount of time, given only a certain amount of wood. In conceptualizing this activity, I started to reflect about the previous year and how sustaining my fire has been a very bumpy yet rewarding road.

We are only given a certain amount of capacity to hold our wood. Some have a greater capacity than others but we all have our limit. We take from this pile when we are cold and need warmth and when we are in the dark and need light. This fire was started the day we were born, has been nurtured by our parents, and through our lives been slowly given to us to maintain.

The Teens are a very important age because its the transitional phase when we learn to maintain our own fires. We are learning how much it takes for it to not extinguish but also not to get burned. We are also learning how to refill our piles when they get low, where we go to find the necessary wood to keep it going.

I look at the teenagers I work with and see how much drive they posses and I am in awe. They are in love with the idea that they have the power to change something and are angry enough to do something about it. I look back now at some of these kids and they have lost the love to be angry and the anger that only comes from loving something so much. It saddens me that I might have contributed to this, that I did not prepare them as much as I could have. It also brings up some facts of life.

Create to much fire and you get burned, create to much light and you get blindness. leave a fire for to long and it goes out. I have almost let my fire go out and been burnt really bad this past year but have found the stash of wood in my closet of friends that has given me the ability to keep going.

So with this new year.... I say fuck the noise. LOVE and be ANGRY

Find your stash of wood, let the fire rage and never let it go out

-Fong