BLINK

If you live in the Cincinnati area and haven’t heard about BLINK, you must be living under a rock. BLINK is a light, art and projection mapping festival spanning 30 city blocks from Findlay Market and crossing the Roebling Suspension Bridge into Covington. There are food trucks, live music, performance artists, murals, beer booths and lots of people. Actually, there are 1.5 million people projected to attend over the four day festival.

Harry and Ollie enjoying Marty’s Waffles.

Jason, Ollie, Harry and I couldn’t be left out on such a momentous event, so we headed to Covington this evening. After pausing to get a treat from our friend and all-time favorite food truckster, Marty’s Waffles, we headed over the bridge into downtown.

The thing that struck me about Blink was the sheer number of people in attendance. It’s remarkable to see thousands showing up for the soul purpose of celebrating the arts and humanities. While I understand that Cincinnati is going through a full renaissance, I can’t help but thinking there is more at play here. There something compelling 1.5 million people to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

Sure, the company of my men was enjoyable, but I spent much of the evening contemplating the success of this event. I started with hard core people watching—which included completely diverse group. Where else would you find yuppies on a double date, hipsters, soccer moms enjoying a girls’ night out, teenage jocks, bikers, a family with 7 kids still wearing their Catholic school uniforms at 9pm, two drag queens and a pregnant lady smoking a cigarette? If I go back tomorrow night I may have to create a stereotype scavenger hunt just for shits and giggles.

The most striking people watching was on the Roebling. Passing hundreds of people while walking in line with eerie and futuristic music playing and the lights changing was mesmerizing. True to my usual self, I smiled and locked eyes with as many people as I could during the procession. There is something so primal about a quick connection with another human being. I could have walked the bridge four times just to continue to have that experience—my family, not so much.

So what compelled all these different people to come together?

The bigger picture, as I see it anyway, is that people are desperate for connection. We’re all so engrossed in our screens, living virtually that we sometimes forget our most basic human need of interpersonal interaction. Now that most of us socialize online, more of us are working from home, nearly everyone shops online and it’s increasingly easy to have prepared food delivered directly to your house, there’s frequently no immediate need to leave our homes. As we retreat into ourselves, which is comfortable in the moment, we lose the opportunity to meet others and build relationships which is better for the long-term. This pushes us more into the facsimile of social connection that is Instagram or Facebook and further away from living, breathing people.

With the ability to segregate our news, music, entertainment, all media actually, it’s easy to veer off into small groups that share similar views and interests. Worse yet, it’s entirely possible to only consume media that reflects the conclusions we’ve already made. Without exploring diverse opinions or even having to politely navigate being around people with opposing viewpoints, it’s easy to vilianise others.

Speaking of media, back when there were three TV channels and only a handful of local radio stations, we had shared experiences. With today’s endless YouTube channels, streaming services, cable TV, satellite radio, podcasts, etc. you’d be hard pressed to find someone consuming the same things you are. While it’s nice to find a niche, I’m pretty sure shared experiences are something we still crave. As we continue to silo ourselves, large-scale events like Blink are even more crucial in keeping our communities from being wholly disjointed.

People are naturally attracted to light which explains the allure on a base level, but it goes deeper. The beauty of BLINK is the nod to the past with a futuristic vision. The use of technology juxtaposed with the architecture of historic buildings reinforces the bright future of our city while remembering where our roots. Bringing light into the dark celebrating the emphasis on knowledge and advancement over ignorance and poverty. And the fact that BLINK communicates these themes in a manner that appeals to the masses makes it all the more powerful.

In the end, BLINK is bringing people together—a lot of people. Enjoying art and music and food and drink—all the things that make life so rich—is a great way to build bridges. BLINK gave me hope. Hope in the idea that we have more in common than not. Hope that we can repair the connections that modernity has frayed. Hope that creating, especially beautiful art, is a valued endeavor.

If you’re in the Cincinnati area and haven’t been to BLINK yet, get your butt there Saturday or Sunday. And check out my very amatuer videography below.