Connecting Through Creativity and Vulnerability
That’s what TheGlint aims to do
Last Saturday, I attended a salon that was designed to feel like a casual evening at the home of a good friend. The magic of the night was that most people don’t have a friend with a palatial space where more than seventy people can mill comfortably through art installations and performances, nor can they create the kind of atmosphere where interactions go far beyond the pleasantries and the “so what do you do?” conversations.
The use of high-tech and entrepreneurism to make real human interaction more meaningful is a dream of this generation. TheGlint has set out to explore this by bringing together artists and technologists in a space that is very intentionally neither a party nor a professional gathering, but a realm of creativity and vulnerability. Each gathering is carefully curated by a network of curators so that there is a mix of guests from various disciplines and each person has the chance to interact with someone who they might never have otherwise encountered.
The organizers asked me to come early to get a feel for the space and the flavor of the event. I arrived while the hosts and performers were still setting up, and I loved those first few minutes when there were only a few people in the room and we all walked up to each other and started conversations without hesitance or self-consciousness, and total strangers interacted with the ease of long-time friends.
The space lent itself to creative interactions—not long after I arrived I found myself laughing with another young woman as we tested how far we could slide in our socks across the gleaming wooden floor. As I encountered new people we explored together through layer after layer of the house filled with golden evening light, climbing the ladder to the roof and challenging a photographer in the group to capture all of the hues fading beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.
The centerpiece performance—a combination of spoken word, dance, and two fantastic DJs—was completely unrehearsed. The performers seemed to be varying degrees of comfortable with this set-up, and the crowd didn’t quite know how to react at first. Crouching awkwardly elbow to elbow with my neighbor, I felt bad for those who had worn skirts or were otherwise unprepared to spend over an hour on a hard wooden floor. But the power of a good beat is irresistible, and I loved watching the faces of the crowd as they became absorbed in performances.
TheGlint was definitely a special space, but the participants were no better than the general population when it came to following instructions to put away our digital distractions, or even silencing phones—several of which went off embarrassingly during the performance.
The night left me longing more than ever for a space where phones and any other devices we permit to run our lives are confiscated at the door.
The evening had no sympathy for those who weren’t willing to jump right into conversations and take that step of walking up and joining a discussion with strangers. A few people sat on their own, observing without interacting, and I’m not sure how much they got out of the night. It was definitely less intimidating for those of us who were there before the rush and had a chance to make a few friends, and the size of the crowd definitely became overwhelming at points.
There were so many interesting people to meet that several times I found myself distracted, and at the end of the night there were still other people I wished I could have talked to, or conversations I could have finished. But then I realized that these were the kinds of conversations that don’t really end, but rather they seemed to expand and echo and flow into one another. There were many recurring themes in the conversations, but one that I found especially interesting was the performance of identity. So many people were saying “I have my own start-up, doesn’t everyone?” with the same wry smile, and rather than launching into a description of their work, they chose to share some other part of their identity instead. We were talking about ourselves not in terms of what we do but in terms of what we are passionate about, and how these two concepts can become one. Many of the conversations seemed to be more of an exercise in imagining and actualizing ourselves as we want to be.
I’ve been to all kinds of gatherings in the Bay Area—bonfires with Burners, fancy intellectual dinner parties, women’s groups where we all shared deeply, naked hot springs trips where queer and straight friends alike all ran around in the woods together, and of course the joyous, raucous Pride parties. There are so many amazing spaces for connection here, but what struck me most about TheGlint was the recognition that despite all of these opportunities for connection, we are all still frustrated by the clique-factor and exclusivity of our chosen home. This was interesting to hear from the attendees who were almost all young and privileged, and that degree of self-awareness was necessary and refreshing.
In future it would be fulfilling to see TheGlint grow into a space for self-reflection where the dialogue is not just about our identity as San Franciscans, but how we can shape that identity to be more inclusive.
Late at night the lights were dimmed and quiet returned as the the crowd thinned. I wasn’t ready to leave but I was also struggling to keep my eyes open when I noticed a handful of folks who had rooted through the leftovers in the kitchen and were concocting something that smelled delicious. Communal cooking has always been one of my favorite ways to connect, and that intimate, unpretentious cluster around the stove at 1am struck me as the real moment of success of the evening. I’ll be eager to see what the next Glint serves up.
