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I was incredibly moved by Amanda Palmer’s description of the moment that passes between her and a stranger when she hands him or her a flower. Wanting to take that concept and run away with it, I decided I wanted to meet as many people I could in a small frame of time. However, I did not just want a meaningless passing that the individual would forget about. My purpose was to break down the barrier of the “crowd”; the large, non-intimate machine. We pass around the crowd, we move out of the way of the crowd, and we move through the crowd—but no one looks at the crowd for individual potential. As artists, we build our own communities and that’s how we survive—off of the people who support us and our success. That’s how Amanda did it. I took a day to chip off single pieces of the crowd and made each my friend. I avoided small talk—the purpose was to genuinely learn something deeper about the people I talked to. I asked the question, “If there was one thing that you could change about your entire life, what would it be and why?” This question allowed me to ask something very impactful of the individuals, and they answered. In a few short moments, I learned something about an almost stranger that one of their close friends might not know. And in homage for them trusting me with this information, I trusted them to write their response on my body in sharpie. I literally wore core values of (no longer) perfect strangers on my sleeve. In that moment, we trusted one another. My community grew that day.

“My purpose was to break down the barrier of the “crowd”; the large, non-intimate machine”