anchor point school of the arts
I'll start writing a check to myself now to ensure it is cashed by others later
ONE OF MY FAVORITE SUCCESS stories that I’ve heard about someone making a promise to themselves before they became famous or successful at what they do (besides the physicist who kept a bottle of champagne behind his lecture desk for 20 years ) comes from actor, comedian, and mixed-media artist Jim Carrey.
What Oprah Learned From Jim Carrey.
(I’ll pause and wait while you watch it).
Link: https://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/what-oprah-learned-from-jim-carrey-video
The story is famous enough that it’s cited in his Wikipedia entry:
”[Jim Carrey] revealed that as a struggling actor he would use visualization techniques to get work. He also stated that he visualized a $10,000,000 check given to him for "acting services rendered", placed the check in his pocket, and seven years later received a $10,000,000 check for his role in Dumb and Dumber”
This weekend, while on my much abridged quarantine version of my regular spring trip to Canada (where I got as far as being able to see the Naval border between Washington State and the San Juan Islands), I saw into a future. But I don’t know what future or whose future, I have sadly seen many futures that I have envisioned and then described become the lifeblood and claim of others to whom I wouldn’t have expected their arrival. I am hoping that with enough work it will be my own, with me included in it, and with enough support there will be future enough to share.
I want to start a community centered continuing education arts school that pays its instructors what they deserve while charging its students only for what they need.
I want to teach movement.
I want to teach writing.
I want to teach dance.
I want to teach production.
I want to teach art.
More correctly, I want to open a space where I can work with the best of the people who want the community to know these things. I want to pay them what they consider a fair rate in an environment where they will consistently be respected for their talent while also passing on this talent to the next generation who will, in turn, hopefully become part of the institution and continue this knowledge.
I see teachers as anchors of any community, I see students as anyone willing and capable to learn, and it is almost a sin that nobody really knows that I have already done this before.
I failed.
In 2018, after the death of my father Calvin Hecocta who won the Environmental Land-Air-Water award for Environmental Activism from the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in his final year, I was appointed the President of my father’s Education non-profit the Touch The Earth Environmental School. Because of some inflection points in both the Hecocta family and the activist community that surrounded my father, while strong before in previous incarnations of the non-profit, it was clear that my glory in this instance was not to lead us out but to let the lord in. In a final vote by the non-profit board a month before quarantine, and an official word from the matriarchal council of the Hecocta family, my first and last major act as President was to bring the dissolution of Touch The Earth to a vote.
John Henry, the old hand who had been my father’s friend since the dawn of time, told me that ‘if you don’t respect the wishes of the women, then even without them there is no moving on.’
We let the vote be unanimous, we agreed to forward funds from our donors to BARK and their outdoor school, and we said the last words in memory of Calvin Hecocta, his dream of an integrated community of life-long learning, and the Touch The Earth Environmental School.
So, in the spirit of a comedian, I would like to be a fool and try that song again. I would like to fulfill my father’s mission of building a continuous education school where students are paired with masters and, once students accumulate elder knowledge, graduate into being masters who themselves teach incoming students. I want to create an anchor point, I want to name the thing anchor point, I will likely make a t-shirt and ask some poor beautiful teacher wear it after we put the name on the door of the thing I would like for them to do. I will likely say the words anchor point in conversation if you wake me up while I’m dreaming about being the President of a Non-Profit Educational Institution. Again.
You will say, mid-sleep, what are you dreaming.
I will say,
to make an anchor point for creative people of all ages from a school of the arts.
A place where they can teach, create, learn, and return to. Not just once, but time and again. The way my father intended.
So hopefully, this time, I can start writing a check to myself now to ensure it is cashed by others later.