I commented today in facebook in response to a question about writing and community, Mark Wallace asking “Writing in community. Writing outside of community. Writing inside and outside of community. Writing neither inside nor outside community. And? Or? Plus, the issue of living, which is related to writing though not at all the same thing.”
Community is full of first impressions and saturated in projections that occur before during and after acquaintance with any given community. I feel and it seems to me behave/perform quite differently in different experiential communities. My long-distance community is nurturing in ways my locally lived community is not, and vice versa. My personal community-of-one (resonating and reflecting, surprising and goading myself through my presentations and productions) is for me essential to any creative endeavors, regardless of access to or interactions with any interpersonal community. And despite its ambitions to omnipresence and omniscience, it’s the most mercurial and elusive of them.
Community might be recognized as those who are interested enough to be affected by one another, hopefully to mutual benefit. To write something down presents the inner track of one’s mind to be available to others, whether by accident or intention. I have thought usually of my productions’ introduction into a shared culture as instances within a conversation and/or interventions in a continuing discursive experiment.