ZRT

The ZRT. The Zendik Reunion Tour. Another bid to turn stinky guck into black gold.

Back in 1999, when I first read the Zendik Farm Arts Foundation’s entry in The Communities Directory, I hearkened to the promise of combining art with farming—both words were right there in the name. However, as a Zendik, I largely subordinated my creative energies to the group’s relentless demands; I received little room to grow as an artist. It was only after leaving that I was able to build the writing practice that yielded my Zendik memoir, Mating in Captivity.

Now, in 2018, as I embrace the role of author, I am delighted to be collaborating with other former Zendiks (including dancer Avi Waring and musicians Kyra Gordon and Gabriel Zacchai) on the first ever Zendik Reunion Tour—an effort to reclaim that original pull toward art as a shared adventure twining through everyday life. It’s also a bid to reclaim the word “Zendik”—which, in the wake of the Farm’s dissolution, circa 2013, no one’s really using anymore.

An ancient Zendik tag line I remember hearing, possibly when I lived there, was “creative survival through the arts.” As some of us who once lived at Zendik band together to generate income while sharing our gifts, we weave a spell for creative thrival, through art, that holds immense potential for healing, and bringing joy to, ourselves and our webs.

A few months before my book came out, I received an image of Zendik as a loom whose true purpose was to weave a tapestry of relationship joining hundreds, if not thousands, of humans who would not otherwise have met. Once the fabric was complete, the loom fell away.

If this is true—if the essence of Zendik is the weave it formed—then I don’t need the prefix “ex.” If this is true, then I’m proud to be a Zendik.

(For more info, go here. For ZRT dates, please see my events page. To host a house-concert-style stop on the tour, please get in touch! To join the tour as a performer, artist, or sharer of some other kind of gift, please drop me a line expressing your interest and, if I don’t know you, explaining your connection to Zendik.)