Kaleidoscope Coffee & Stories

Kaleidoscope Coffee is all about connections and creating connections.

Today’s is a guest blog by my friend, storyteller Cassie Cushing of Kaleidoscope Coffee & Stories.  She’s a gifted a storyteller, an energetic and creative producer of small mutli-arts events, and she roasted-and-brewed me the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had! Her brick-n-mortar Bay Area Kaleidoscope Coffee will be a magnificent place to connect with each other and all our stories. Keep reading here to read part of hers…  Cassie writes:

Kaleidoscope – coffee that tells a story – brings light and life to all those little things that might otherwise be easy to overlook, refracting and bringing together colorful baubles into an intricate pattern that dances with every twist.

I discovered storytelling a little over 2 years ago. I moved from Phoenix, AZ to the San Francisco Bay Area a little over 1 year ago. Moving is hard – leaving behind all your friends to go to a place where you don’t know anybody. It’s also a fun and exciting adventure – so much to see and explore! As the buzz and excitement of the newness fades or becomes more sporadic, there remains a sense of liminality – being betwixt and between, not quite settled, not quite connected.

Storytelling and my vision for Kaleidoscope has helped expedite some connections.

My storytelling friends and colleagues in Phoenix facilitated email introductions to Bay Area storytellers, which led to cups of coffee and conversations. I searched out story swaps. I kept showing up at the multitude of storytelling events with a gleam of excitement in my eyes and big ole smile, and people began to remember me – “hey, she’s a storyteller; she’s gonna open a storytelling coffee shop; that’s cool.” I danced the line between exhausted and enthused, between thrilled and terrified.

After about 7 months, I, as Kaleidoscope, began producing storytelling events focused on traditional myths and folktales for adult/young adult audiences. Wanting my shows to be multi-faceted, highlighting storytelling but embracing the arts in general, my web of connections began to grow, strengthening certain nascent lines with other tellers, forming new ones with more tellers, with musicians, with visual artists, with magicians. More recently, I’ve collaborated with other producers to expand and intersect each other’s audiences and create more connections between groups of people.

Kaleidoscope is happening.

I’m working towards opening a brick and mortar shop: I have a location picked out, and I’m close to fully funded, but even without that permanent physical space, it’s happening – storytelling, community, connection, art. Storytelling and my vision for Kaleidoscope, opened up my world to a place filled with passion, where people root for each other and get excited about fun and interesting ideas.

I still at times feel as though I’m foundering, wondering where or when I’ll have those deep and meaningful friendships I’d developed in Phoenix – because, let’s face it: there’s connection, there’s camaraderie, and there’s friendship, and there are layers to that. Friendship takes time and many shared cups of coffee.

In the meantime, I take hope from the connections I’ve made through Kaleidoscope and from this community – that there are people who believe in me and who are excited for what I’m trying to accomplish.

Join me for a coffee?

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Pam here:  My grown kids’n’spouses all live in the SF Bay Area; I was delighted to pump them for information to help Cassie and Will in their search for a home, when they moved to the then-unfamiliar-to-them Bay Area a year ago.  And this past year when I’ve gone to SFBA for gigs and/or to visit my family, I’ve gotten to hang out with Cassie sometimes, too – yay! I was so pleased and honored to be part of the first event she produced in September 2013 (performing in an evening concert with Cassie and Tim Ereneta – plus a magician and a visual artist)!  Boy can I vouch for her creativity and abilities as a small-event producer! (Not to mention as a coffee roaster and storyteller.)

I hope you get to drink her coffee and hear her tell sometime.  (She and Boulder storyteller Ann Harding will be giving a Fringe Performance together at this summer’s National Storytelling Conference – catch them there if you can!) Thanks, Cassie!

And, as always, thanks for reading – Pam