About Hydrant Musings
TLDR: this is a space for reflecting on my journey to create a world that embodies the Hydrant Spirit.
I’ll be sharing lessons and philosophies from building Verci (the main focus in my life currently), and sharing research rabbit holes on on community building, utopias, art and creation, urban-planning, and technology :)
→ Hydrant Lore: @hydr_ants
→ Hydrant Spirit Manifesting in: Verci
The Origins of the Hydrant Spirit
About a year ago on a walk through mid-city, Los Angeles, I stumbled upon a fire hydrant that caught my eye. I hadn’t really noticed a fire hydrant like that before. But this one felt magical. A slightly faded yellow character that glowed in the evening light filtering through the buildings. It captivated me.
I went home and painted this hydrant, not giving it much more thought than that. But as the next few days went by, I found my attention being repeatedly snatched by fire hydrants I’d pass. It was as if my aperture of focus had narrowed towards an otherwise unnoticed element of the urban landscape.
Life became a scavenger hunt for the next interesting fire hydrant. From the physical shape of the hydrant, to the blemishes and discolorations, the collages of stickers or the graffiti tattoos and splattered paint; each hydrant sighting uncovered a network of characters - each with new idiosyncrasies - that observed their local landscape and became canvases for their subculture.
I believe in the metaphoric potential of fire hydrants and their shared spirit
As I’ve fallen deeper into viewing hydrants through an artistic lense, hydrants have become a metaphorical muse for my journey and north star. Mainly, that fire hydrants are not alone. Each figure is tied together by an invisible network of pipes and shared underground infrastructure that enable them to fight the fires of the world.
My North Star
The hydrant spirit embodies my quest to build a more conscious & collective world that is full of love, beauty, belonging.
I believe that through more intentional communities focused on collaborating to solve the grand problems of our generation, we can find more individual and shared purpose and build a connective cultural tissue for fighting the future ‘fires’ of our world.
The hydrants are a symbol for these connective cultural values and intentions. A symbol that ties together those who align with these principles of conscious creation.
How this Relates to my Substack
For this Substack, I’ll be exploring a few themes as it relates to the Hydrant Spirit and my north star (these are bound to evolve):
What does a community of fire hydrants look like? I’ll be exploring what a community of fire hydrants looks like. What are the shared principles and infrastructure that will align us and that the world needs? How might we optimize for individual and shared potential? And how might we spread more love and belonging?
Lessons from building Verci → Currently, the hydrant spirit is being manifested through Verci, the passion-project I’ve dropped everything in my life to build with some amazing friends including @ami and @naz. My primary motivation is to help the people around me the best versions of themselves; I believe that creating spaces and fulfilling community is the stepping stone towards seizing our individual and shared potentials.
Sharing learnings and research from explorations over the last 4-years into different fringe societies, communities, and civilizations.
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