Utopian Storytelling

The Universal Language is a lovely profile of Esperanto, tinged with hope and sadness, humor and humanity. Watch for it when it comes out. I haven’t seen Utopia in Four Movements yet but I hope to someday as it sounds like a compelling answer to a question I often wonder about: What sticks in a media saturated world?

I had a very stimulating lunch with Sam yesterday and we covered a lot of territory in our conversation, including themes that often crop up in this blog: the importance of storytelling, of language, and of attending to how we engage with each other to imagine and create a better world.

Here’s a quote from an interview Sam did that particularly resonates with me:

“I’m not so interested in “a utopia” — some kind of place or society that would be utopia. I’m much more interested in the Utopian — a moment or gesture or act that evokes a radically better world. Art, I think, can certainly do this. In fact, art is very well-suited for the task. My own personal feeling is that art that is proscriptive, that flattens things out to bullet points and clear-cut answers is often dull. What I like is art that embraces complexity and contradiction and the messiness of human experience and who we are. I like art that opens up possibilities.”

Besides agreeing with what he says here, I’m struck at how I could replace “art” with “dialogue” and it have it still ring true for me.

Anyway, as I look out my window on a sunny San Francisco day (it’s been cold and gray a lot lately) I’m thinking of how dreaming big links with being in the moment, and of how TWI’s vision is grounded in — dare I say — a Utopian belief that we can transform our world one conversation, one connection, one relationship at a time.