Jonah DiGirolamo’s Recent Observation

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July 14, 2014 by synapticwolf

Jonah DiGirolamo, fire walk facilitator, VTG enthusiast and champion of exceptionally goofy flow, is one half of Team Struggle. During his flow class, he gives this very awesome and important reminder about this craft into which we pour so much of time and energy:

“When you start to take it too seriously, when you get angry or frustrated, remember: you’re just playing with sticks.”

It’s one of those bits of universal flow wisdom that sort of applies to all of life. Don’t take any of it too seriously. Our best option, when presented with the universe, is to play with it.

Jonah writes:

This weekend I went to my first music festival in a while. This summer I’ve gone to almost nothing but flow retreats. 

At a 4-500 person event in the hills of Kentucky I found something amazing. 
There were people spinning everywhere. At least 20% of the event would be my guess. Largely hoops and poi but I spotted some new double staff spinners, some rope dart and staff. 

Here’s the thing.

Out of those people, many of them had no idea about the flow culture and community. They didn’t know tech. They didn’t know the “big names” in the community. To me, that was beautiful.

It’s not us failing as a community, it’s our art growing bigger than the core community. Someone who has never watched a youtube video or heard of a tech blog, is spinning poi. They learned it from a kid who learned from a kid who watched a dude performing at another festival.

The best part, for me personally, was out of that many people we only had a small percentage spinning fire. We had time and space for general admission to perform in, and it got used. These were also some of my favorite experiences from Paradise but not the point of this post. The best part, was that they weren’t doing it to spin fire. They were doing it because they enjoyed it!

I can’t properly put into words how inspired and happy I am right now. Introducing those individuals to the flow community is something I feel lucky to have the chance to help facilitate.