Kindling Arts Festival: your introduction to Nashville’s experimental art community

When it comes to Nashville, I hear a specific lament A LOT: “Nashville’s only claim to fame is country music, and they’ve even sold that out to tourists.” A valid criticism of the downtown tourism machine, but also one that erases a huge part of what this city actually is. Let me explain.

Move away from Broadway and you’ll discover that Nashville is an art city through and through – galleries, small music venues, and community art events abound, and nothing is more emblematic of this creative undercurrent than the Kindling Arts Festival. Full disclosure: I’ve participated in Kindling since its inception five years ago, so this piece isn’t exactly impartial. I love this festival and I want you to love it too. Read on.

Photos by Tiffany Bessire / Courtesy of Kindling Arts Festival

Kindling describes itself as a “radically unique independent arts incubator” focused on supporting largely local artists in their creative endeavors. Anyone in the arts community knows that one of the hardest parts of creating a cool thing is getting folks to believe it in and help you bring it to life – the arts take financial support, staging assistance, marketing and more. Thanks to the tireless work of its founders Daniel Jones and Jessika Malone, Kindling IS that fairy godmother. 

The festival creates a platform for small artists to convert their dreams into big realities, and its work adds another stone to the foundation of an inclusive, diverse arts community in Nashville. Throughout the year it stages one-off performances – sometimes theater pieces, sometimes films, sometimes poetry – and its season culminates in its late-summer festival, four days of artistic extravagance that remind audience members just how cool humans are. Don’t believe me? Check out this list of 2022’s festival highlights:

ALCHEMY: My show! Suspended Gravity Circus’ exploration of the importance of shared spaces and experiences. We had death-defying aerial acts, we had ground acrobatics, we had puppets – it was a blast.

NAUGHTY TREE: A queer retelling of the story of the Garden of Eden that focused on JOY and POSSIBILITY. I saw this production twice and fell in love with every word.

BARFIGHT!: An underground, queer karaoke fight club “where songs are slayed and rivalries are laid to rest.” 

CURRENTS: A collection of dance pieces exploring the impact of historic events including segregation in Nashville, the experiences of Jewish immigrant women in the 1900s, the collective grief in the wake of COVID-19, and more. 

Photos by Tiffany Bessire / Courtesy of Kindling Arts Festival

And that’s only four of the 19 shows that happened over the entire weekend. 

Is my timing a bit off by publishing this post a month after the festival has concluded for the year? Probably. But I’ve got so many warm fuzzies about it, I just wanted to write something. Plus, Kindling does stuff year-round, so you should start following them (and all their associated artists) now. As an artist who has been a part of Kindling for so many years now, I can say that our work has grown in volume and quality exponentially thanks to their guidance and support. 

So yea, Nashville is more than fake country. It’s got a hell of a lot of heart and its local art community is rad –don’t write us off just yet :)

I'm over having a niche.

You hear it everywhere: in order to be successful, you need to have a clear industry niche. Your clients need to look at you and immediately understand the problem you can solve for them. And while this is true to an extent – you need to be clear about your products and find a captive audience – I think this strategy may be a bit more flexible than we’ve been taught to believe. At least when it comes to your career.

You see, my life is split in two – I am an adventure and culture writer who loves hitting the trail and seeing the world, but I’m also a working circus artist who pours hour after hour into her craft and fills her evenings with gigs, shows and classes. For a long time, I viewed these as diametrically opposed pursuits and split my digital (and professional) life up accordingly.

When I do that, though, people don’t get a whole picture of me. It may look like I’m not churning out articles, but that’s because I’ve been managing a dozen dancers for an original show I’m helping produce. I may not be hitting the circus tour circuit, but it’s because I’m spending weeks at a time on the road writing about our marvelous planet and the people on it. I’m busy growing in lots of different ways that you won’t see if you only follow one side of my life.

After some encouragement from other freelance colleagues, I realized that my “two lives” are complimentary. Maybe that adventure or fitness writing client will see my circus experience and commission me for a related piece. An art or crafting magazine might see that I make my own clothes and aerial costumes and realize that I have expertise to share. On the flip side, a circus client may see that I travel regularly and can bring that element of myself to the stage. Or that I’m adaptable and equipped to handle fast-paced environments and strenuous activity. I frequently project manage, run social media strategy, and determine logistical operations for both realms, too.

And so, this is the official launch of my little rebrand. I present to you a more whole vision of myself and what I offer in the professional sphere. So much about both my industries has changed in the past two years, and what we thought worked maybe just…doesn’t? At least for me. Instead of trying to fit myself into defined boxes, I’m going to build a box of my own. <3

Storm country 2020

Every year, the cool air from the north and warm air from the ocean dance together violently across the southern United States. The winds spin recklessly across the flat farmland, the mountain foothills and the gleaming beaches, tossing lightning, hail and rain in every direction. Sometimes they spin so fast they lift the life below straight off the ground. 

I grew up with tornadoes. When my brother and I were very young, my mother would make storm sheltering a game -- she would turn our little closet under the stairs into a wonderland of pillows and blankets, treating us with ginger snap cookies to distract us from the scary red gashes making their way across the television screen. Once, our middle school morning bus broke down as the sirens went off. My mom raced to the bus and piled as many kids into the car as she could fit, taking us to school because we’d be safer in the cinderblock building than at home. When we entered the building, the pressure difference sucked the Lost and Found box straight out the door. Thanks to the storms, I spent more hours in school hallways than I can count, all of us lined up like little soldiers during a bomb drill, hunched over with our backs towards the ceiling and our arms covering our heads.

Over time, one gets used to the haunting yowl of sirens and the sickly green clouds. I became curious, fixated on the phenomena that so frequently warped my normal routine. I was obsessed with the movie Twister. One time I watched it twice in a row in one day, and that night we had a tornado warning. As I hunkered down in our tub, I wondered if I had tempted the fates with my brashness. But the destruction never came. 

My life with storms was a series of close calls – the catastrophes they caused seemed far away, dwarfed by the distance created by the television screen. Until a tornado hit my city, Nashville, earlier this year while I was away on a business trip. I spent the night panic texting friends (who all were safe, thank God) and anxiously refreshing the news on my phone, each headline and accompanying photo worse than the last. Tornadoes are fickle things -- they hop and skip and zigzag all over, leaving some places in total destruction and others pristine. My husband slept through the whole event, only waking up to the sound of my strangled voice after the third call. He and our apartment were fine.

But so many other places weren’t. Favorite haunts were leveled and neighborhoods ravaged by the winds that screamed under the cover of darkness. People died. I came home to a city rallying behind massive relief efforts that would soon be stalled by a global health crisis. Several months later, wrecked houses and businesses still sit broken and morose, like forgotten skeletons in a tomb. 

Throughout the year, more storms came. We brought in the plants and charged our phones, just in case. We located our shoes and grabbed essentials, placing them in an easy-to-find pile, just in case. We gazed out the window as the air became still and electric. I watched the storms move across the radar looking more and more like wounds.  

The storms are a build up and release, sometimes resulting in destruction, sometimes delivering the wind and rain needed for growth. And that’s what 2020 has been, hasn’t it? A series of storms with varying outcomes, some good, some bad. As I sit in the days before a monumental election, I feel that familiar stillness, that electricity. Which will it be? Destruction or growth? And what storms will follow this one?

Colorado’s guardians

I sat in my tent, spread eagled, with my arms and legs buttressing its sides against the incessant onslaught of hail stones and heavy winds that had flipped my tent end-over-end across my campsite just moments before. 

Man, I thought, as I nervously peeped through the mesh at the accumulating pile of hail. Those energy vortex beings do not screw around.

The backstory:

It’s a strange thing, having a writer’s brain. Especially in this digital age, when so many of us can’t just be writers. We have to be photographers, content producers, social media experts. You pan the scenes of your life wondering what little nugget of weirdness or beauty just might be your next story, photographing and videoing it to death so you make sure you have all the content all the time. So when I saw the sign for the UFO watchtower in Hooper, CO, I knew I had to drop in. 

The UFO Watchtower is an icon when it comes to roadside kitsch. It’s been covered in every travel blog and “Weird USA” article you can think of. A somewhat stern-looking alien points you in the direction of the small domed outpost sitting alone in the dust, and only the most single-minded folks can resist taking the turn down the gravel road to investigate.

I walked in the door to find owner Judy Messoline manning the register. I asked her about her watchtower and her most memorable sightings – she motioned me outside.

She stationed herself in a metal chair and lit up a cigarette. “I honestly started it as a bit of a joke,” she admitted. She had moved to the San Luis Valley to run a cattle ranch, a venture that ended up being unsuccessful. When the ranch failed, her fellow ranchers teased her about the prevalence of UFOs in the valley skies, egging on the idea of a watchtower. 

She invested tens of thousands of dollars into her roadside venture, which quickly caught the attention of the media – she did interview after interview and expected all the publicity to turn her watchtower into the profitable investment that she hoped for. But it didn’t. 

Agonizing over her potential financial ruin, she went into her front garden and pleaded with the powers above – alien or otherwise – to send her visitors, a minimum of 100 a day, to keep the lights on. The next day, people showed up in droves and they never stopped coming. Today, Judy is a believer.

Since then, over twenty psychics have visited the watchtower and all agree that two energy vortices and their protective supernatural guardians sit in the property’s front garden; these vortices apparently often appear in and around sites with high UFO activity. Judy now encourages visitors to leave something of themselves in the garden as a dedication to these entities. “If you need something, walk out into the garden with a genuine heart and ask,” she said. 

It’s been a rough year for me – like it has been for so many – so I thought this might be a good chance to try and turn things around. I chose my objects: a pen and a handwritten note. I picked the perfect place in the garden, right next to an old guitar. I filmed myself placing the offering into the garden bed. The call of good content proved too good to resist. I mean, after all, I was still placing my offering with a pure heart, right? Content is how I make my living, and a story about communing with Colorado’s supernatural beings is pretty high up there in the category of cool road trip stories. What harm could it do?

After I finished my visit, I headed back to my campsite for a little afternoon R&R. My phone battery was low, so I plugged it into my car to charge and started sifting through the photos I took earlier that morning. And then the wind started, a crazy howl that streamed through the campsite so hard it practically whistled through my car doors. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my tent cartwheel across the site with a weightlessness that betrayed the fact that it was previously anchored and currently full of my things. I leapt out of the vehicle and snagged the tent moments before it made its chaotic escape to the neighboring field, but I wasn’t strong enough to contain it – it twisted in my grip like a desperate animal. Then the hail began, small, stinging pellets that burned my legs and arms and lashed at my face.

I dove headfirst into the tent in a dual effort to keep it on the ground and protect myself from any potential bruising. As I sat there, several thoughts popped into my head. So THIS is how I go. Are there normally hail storms in the desert?! At least I got to hear about aliens on my last day on earth.

And then it dawned on me. The moment that started it all. A moment when I had offended something much bigger than myself. I had dabbled in something I didn’t fully understand, and I had misstepped. I filmed my offering in a stereotypical display of journalistic self-centeredness. I had disrespected their power in the name of brand building. Turns out that these beings are emphatically anti-Instagram.

I began silent apologies, hoping to curry favor before my tent completely gave up the ghost. After what seemed like an eternity, the hail slowed and the wind quieted. I emerged from my shelter, which was now several yards from its original anchor point and a wilted version of its former self. Hail covered the ground but began melting within seconds, almost like it was never even there at all.

Some may say that I simply got caught up in a regular ol’ hailstorm and that it was just bad luck. But I know the truth: those beings were giving me a little lesson in humility. Next time I make an offering to a supernatural entity, that phone will stay in my pocket.

Racism in public spaces

There have been so many acts of violence against Black people in the United States over the past few months, and this week brought news of more. These stories – tragedies – continue to drive home the fact that public spaces are not safe for everyone. This violence is not new; it’s been going on for centuries.

Whether it’s a neighborhood or city street, a park, a hiking trail – benign, open places that we frequently tout as good spots to escape life’s stresses, especially during pandemics – these spaces are not safe for people of color. Ahmaud Arbery couldn’t go for a run without being chased and killed. Christian Cooper can’t go birdwatching without being threatened with the possibility of a deadly encounter with the police. George Floyd. Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. So many names. And there are so many more that didn’t make the news.

And we, white people, are the reason why. Every time news of a racially motivated tragedy hits we (white people) say “We have to do better. We can’t let this be the reality,” but these horrible things just keep happening, over and over. We (white people) are not fixing this. We are not doing enough to dismantle the racism that continues to cause pain every single day. It’s easy to say that the individuals behind these murders (and attempted murders) are outliers and racists, not indicative of the rest of us. We may not be the person calling the cops or pulling the trigger, but we are being still being violent through our inaction.

The gatekeeping of public spaces is a product of an institutionalized racism that goes back centuries. Beaches were segregated (read more about that in this excellent piece by Nikesha Elise Williams). Local indigenous populations have been excluded from their own heritage sites because of colonial travel practices. Access to public green space continues to be largely limited for communities of color, who have been neglected and abused again and again by city planning. Even our beloved national parks are made of lands stolen from indigenous people. When it comes to outdoor spaces, our constant media stream keeps churning out the “acceptable” image of an outdoorsy person – white, thin, cis, straight, able bodied. You see it in ads, article images and movies. All of it perpetuates the oppression and inequality that started the minute the land was stolen away by white colonizers.

We have routinely excluded people of color from public spaces, and now every space has the potential to become a place of violence. Breonna Taylor was killed in her bed, Philando Castile in his car.

As a traveler, I think about my white privilege a lot. I float between countries without worrying that the color of my skin will make me a target. I cruise between states without worrying that something as mundane as a broken tail light could lead to an encounter with the police that might end in my death. I walk trails by myself without worrying that people will accuse me of wrongdoing without any witnesses to absolve me. And, personally, I know I’m not doing enough to make sure other people can have that same carefree attitude.

I’m not saying these things in an attempt to be a white savior – communities of color have been doing the most important work when it comes to fighting for racial equality and have been doing it for decades. Brilliant, brave activists who have put their own lives on the line again and again to affect change. I’ve been addressing white people here because I know we can do better. We need to be real with ourselves, look into our hearts and examine our own actions with the purposes of expanding our capacity for understanding and moving our communities forward together.

Listen to people of color. Educate yourself without asking other people to do the labor for you. Read, learn, act, vote. Be a better steward of your community. 

Here are the links to some resources I have utilized and plan on utilizing, as well as some social accounts that have educated me on racism, whitewashed history and environmental equality. If you’d like to add to the list, please comment and I’ll amend. 

Anti-Racism Resources

Know Your Caribbean

Unlikely Hikers

Uncolonial History

How Not to Travel Like a Basic Bitch

Native Women’s Wilderness

Pattiegonia

If you have thoughts or feedback, please comment. I want to hear it all. I want to learn. I want to be better.

Welcome to the blog!

Let’s begin with a good ol’ fashioned introduction.

Hi there. My name is Bailey and I’m The Traveling Bee. A few general bullet points about me, if you don’t know me already.

• I’ve worked in the publishing industry for over a decade. I’m a freelance writer, editor and content creator.

• My writing has largely focused on travel, but I like writing about all sorts of things. Writing about myself is the scariest. 

• I’m also a working aerial acrobat, both a performer and instructor. What can I say, I’m really into flying.

• I’m based in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s lovely here.

Pre-pandemic travels to Tahoe. Gorgeous place, eh?

I’ve mulled over how to start my first public blog post for a couple weeks now — should it be business-like or irreverent? Should it discuss travel, writing or circus? Who is it for? Potential employers, my friends, or just myself? Am I a person or a brand, or both?

If it were business as usual, answering those questions might be a bit easier. But I’m writing this entry two months into a quarantine for an international pandemic, and life is firmly not business as usual. Like many (most?) people, everything that I defined my life by has been stripped away. My travels, my commissions, my gigs, my classes. Now it’s just me, trying to figure out how to pivot and adapt. 

In the vein of being honest, all this change struck me at an important time. I had been working myself into the ground for months, stacking project on top of project, hopping from commitment to commitment with barely a moment between. Freelancer FOMO is real, y’all. It sits on your shoulder like your own personal Anxiety Devil: pitch now or you’ll miss the publication opportunity. Don’t say no to this gig — you might not have another one. Better produce more content NOW or everyone will forget about you. The Big Burnout was going to catch up to me sooner rather than later.

And then the world came to a standstill.

No sugar-coating it, the financial fall-out has been real. I’m a travel writer with no travels, a teacher separated from her students and a performer with no stage. But something else has happened in this moment of forced stillness. I’m writing just because I like to. I’m reading more, and I’m finding new ways to dance. As the days pass, I watch the Tennessee trees light up with bright green leaves, blossoms coming and going in staggered technicolor bursts. The southern springtime humidity prickles my skin, and everything around me is transitioning into a new state. Time for me to take a page out of nature’s book — time to grow.

I asked myself why I write in the first place, and I wrote a long, soppy draft about my path to the page, a gloriously terrible, self-indulgent piece of writing that shall absolutely never be read by anyone else. But it brought a few things into focus.

Writing can be a tough profession — it’s not as simple as just being able to spin a good yarn. You have to be marketable and to know how play the game. Article angles have to generate clicks and headlines have to be SEO-friendly, and sometimes your best, most favorite story — the one about that beautiful moment on a mountainside that defined an entire adventure, or that meal that doubled as a profound history lesson, or that funny hotel clerk straight out of a Wes Anderson film — will never be published.

But despite all that, I still write. I love writing about cool people doing good things and beautiful places that should be protected. I’m in love with the art of paying attention and practicing empathy, of writing to make a difference or to make someone feel something.

I want this blog to be a space for dreams. For observations and honesty. For silly stories and vulnerability and art. It might be all or none of these things, but if nothing else, it’ll be genuine. That I can promise you.