Thought Residencies

Good morning this is Mariah Horner and this is Thought #....9!   And this morning I'm thinking about...well I've been thinking about it all weekend actually...um...I love this book by Sarah Ruhl. It's called "A Hundred Essays I Don't Have Time to Write" and it's like a hundred little paragraphs unpacking little things very briefly um...and I generally like this kind of writing it keeps me squirrel...

Hello this is Mariah and this is thought #8. And uh...today I had somebody ask me what my favourite lyric was. And I was thinking about the fact that I've never really been good at having like favourite movies, or favourite plays, or favourite albums and I was thinking about the reasons and you know... I think it's because...I don't hoard things I love. I think it's because I love to rediscover th...

Hello this is Mariah Horner and this is Thought #7.  And this morning my favourite painter died, Mary Pratt. She...uh...was a painter from Newfoundland and I still remember the first time I ever saw one of her exhibits. I was at The Rooms, an awesome museum in St. John's, Newfoundland and I was struck by her ability to make everyday objects look exceptionally and unimaginably beautiful. And I know...

Good morning this is Mariah Horner and this is Thought #6.  And I went to bed thinking about it and I woke up thinking about it - Darrah Teitel's brilliant article on what's going on at ATP. I think she totally hit the nail on the head when she talks about the fact that communities own arts organizations. That there is a certain responsibility to look to the world you're producing in to understand...

Hello this is Mariah and this is my fifth thought.  And today I'm home actually in the suburbs visiting my parents and I drove around a bunch today and I was struck by how little everything has changed. I think because the burbs don't change, I noticed how much my parents change. And you know...it's an age old thing that everybody knows they should go home to visit their parents but...I should rea...

Hello. This is Mariah and this is Thought #4.  And this morning I am thinking about mentorship...I know I've had a yearlong under the Metcalf with two organizations and although this mentorship afforded me SO MUCH professional growth in arts administration I kind of think that it's um...also affected my abilitiy to trust my own instincts when it comes to making decisions.  You know, I value mentor...

Hello this is Mariah and this is thought number three and this morning I'm thinking about Brian's Record Option.  If you're from Kingston, you definitely know that this happened and if you're not I'm here to tell you about Brian's Record Option. It's the coolest place in Kingston. It's a record store that has 80,000 records and 20,000 cassettes and even more CDs and books and posters and the coole...

Hello, this is Mariah Horner and this is my second thought.  This morning I'm thinking a lot about the difference between a company and an enterprise and the people that work...within it. So I'm involved right now in a transition with um...a company I work for and today I am tasked with transferring all of the contacts for the relationships and the stories that were told this year.  And I'm feelin...

Hello, this is Mariah Horner and this is my second thought.  This morning I'm thinking a lot about the difference between a company and an enterprise and the people that work...within it. So I'm involved right now in a transition with um...a company I work for and today I am tasked with transferring all of the contacts for the relationships and the stories that were told this year.  And I'm feelin...

Hello. My name is Mariah Horner and this is my first thought of the August Thought Residency in 2018 with SpiderWebShow.  And today I'm thinking about...something that I think that I should be worried about but I'm not. And I always wonder if other people do this...and if your brain is tricking you into be worry - into worrying about that something you shouldn't be worried about because you're not...

So this is a prayer to the Creator and to the Gods and to the Goddesses and to the Ancestors and to my Mother who has passed.  I ask that you continue to look after us and our friends and our families and those who have um the least or who are the most marginalized and I ask that you continue to guide us to peace and prosperity.

My thoughts for today is that I'm really thankful and I feel so blessed that I've been able to pursue being a full time artist and musician. I grew up in the Bangladeshi community in Toronto where art and politics went hand in hand that we weren't...necessarily encouraged to become full time artists. But with...growing up with that community empowered me with such amazing people and arts practices...

Out the Window 2018. A question came up in my thoughts today have been around how do we create collective memory. 

We voted today in Ontario and Doug Ford still won. This is absolutely horrible and we gotta figure out how to get out of this provide. God. 

Working on a theatre production with diverse artists and theatre practitioners around issues around police violence and civilian casualties and the loss of lives of those who are deemed marginalized in our society has been really...has really been thought provoking and brings me some hope and some...some sort of...I don't know how to explain this but...makes me feel a little bit better considering...

Endings are the hardest to write...or at least that is what I was taught once...it was a teaching passed on to me. And this is it everyone, this it it...the end of my ah thought residency so if you've listened in from the beginning how generous of you umm.. if you're just tuning in - til next time. Thank you umm, to Sarah Garton Stanley the SpiderWebShow team and umm...really thinking about writer...

I'm thinking about the life of a play...and it's stages and really trying to...relook at..what it means...to go on the journey of writing...and..producing and then the latter of how the play lives after that. Umm you know you have some playwrights who go on to their ya know draft 70 something and it's always alive...and I'm just wondering and I think its probably different with each work, how long...

How do we help...our fellow...practitioners, when they feel like their voices haven't been heard? Or they feel like...kindness or generosity hasn't been extended to them. I know it's happened to me but I feel like I'm creating a career and positioning myself to have agency over the way I feel that I'm being treated. Especially when they are Elders, your Elders. How do we support them?

I'm thinking about the responsibility we have to serve, the public or the broader community umm as artists who are sometimes and or primarily and or um entirely funded by public dollars. How do we hold ourselves accountable to the public and what does that mean and what does that look like? As Indigenous artist I feel like knowledge sharing is embedded in my practice. I'm thinking about..I'm curio...

The growth after a fire is really is really interesting me...ummm last summer in the Tsilhqot'in...there were really umm forceful and giant fires happening and a lot of my family helped and the community fought off the fires themselves and this is the first time that I've been back and I'm seeing the fires guards and the effects of what happened and I'm also seeing new growth and that's really int...

Origin stories...how does it happen?!....I have sooo many questions...howwww....hooowwww.. when we look up at the sky...and I'm looking at the clearest sky, how did we get here? Probably just a really bad scifi movie...but  that's where I'm at right now...I'm asking my friends...I'm asking my family...on this long weekend...we had to like my families grave. Oooooof everyone out there is questionin...

Ottawa..is derived originally uhh from an Anishinaabe word which means to trade...because of the many and beautiful rivers they have in this territory...they established very sophisticated uhh trade routes, between Nations and for themselves and when I look at these rivers...I am reminded of the journeys, the water holds those memories, I ah- it's really making me remember. Someone once told me th...

Decolonial love......what is it? ...A friend of mine's been..giving me some of Leanne Simpson's...passages and letting me read her books and I'm...falling..decolonial and colonially in love with Leanne Simpson.....what does it mean? Is it possible how do we do it? What did love look like..before the settlers came here?...............I really don't know..but I'm so fascinated by it all....

When I was in my early twenties ummm bees use to follow me...or find me, I dunno one or the other. One time a bee uhhhh sat on my shoulder, for like two or three blocks and we just walked. And I've been in Odawa for about a week now and the bees have found me...and this one beautiful bumble bee in particular keeps saying hello and I want to say sechanalyagh to the bees, for reminding me about um t...

Having power is a privilege...and I'm interested in...when we all take an inventory of the power that we have...1. I think we always underestimate how much power we have, there's a lot of points in various parts of our lives we can assert ourselves and then 2. How do we leverage it? How do we hold people who have power...to account to ensure they are disseminating it equitably. How do we do that?...