intellectual properties

burning man 2011: addenda

.::. previous .::.

• the WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE guy. we had a burn barrel in camp, which people would gather around especially in the pre-dawn hours when it was cold. and one dawn there were 10-11 people hanging out, and the sun came up, and everyone was jovial and chatting. our village had a lot of people in it and so i didn’t always know everyone hanging around. and so it was sort of weird when suddenly, a burly dude who’d been there for quite some time, talking, just chillin’, suddenly, in the morning light, freaked out a little bit and in a lull in the conversation, looked around and very startled said “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? HOW DID I GET HERE? HOW DOES EVERYBODY KNOW MY NAME? WAIT….WHO are YOU?” over and over again. we started asking him questions and it became apparent that this tripper dude had taken something unknown earlier in the night and the last thing he remembered he was at his camp, which he knew where it was, but now at dawn he finds himself sitting around in our camp, with no idea who any of us are, or how he got there. he then became agitated because he did not have his backpack, which he maintained that he NEVER took off, barely even to sleep, so where is it? he got up and stumbled away and we wondered for a brief second if he might be a narc? but determined that, nah. after a while he came back and sat down, and sort of glazed over and looked at the fire. and then, a few minutes later, this happened again. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? WHO DID I GET HERE? WHERE IS MY BACKPACK? and then he relayed that the reason his backpack was so important, besides all the basic burning man things inside, was that there was a book inside, given to him by the “woman he will love for the rest of his life”, who had written an inscription to him, and he really, really needed that book. he was distraught about this. i felt sad for him. he got up and wandered off searching again, not taking our suggestion that probably, most likely, his backpack was back at his own camp. i hope he found it.
• it’s a standard burning man lost tripper story, but it stuck with us and now, kind of like quoting the “WHAT DOES IT MEAN??” double rainbow guy, we will just randomly say “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? HOW DID I GET HERE” whenever it is even mildly funny.

• the movie theatre at the orange fence, which is a fully functioning movie theatre that seats….20? 30? and only shows movies in the middle of the night was showing this old Veronica Lake film “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941), for which we got in only to see the last ~1 minute. but turns out, the last one minute of that movie is TOTALLY APPROPRIATE for burning man. plus they give you free candy!
•  —–>CANDY POCKET.

I Love Pretty Girls With Bad Habits

I Love Pretty Girls With Bad Habits, originally uploaded by wtbzl.

at the Tuesday Night Party 8/30/11

by Whit.Bissell!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25483871@N06/6150979279/in/photostream

::SMILEY MAN::

Brendan & Amy #1, originally uploaded by wtbzl

shaded

shaded, originally uploaded by sgoralnick.

burning man 2011: all or nothing (you get what you need)

i’ve come again
like a new year
to crash the gate
of this old prison

i’ve come again
to break the teeth and claws
of this man-eating
monster we call life

i’ve come again
to puncture the
glory of the cosmos
who mercilessly
destroys humans

i am the falcon
hunting down the birds
of black omen
before their flights

i gave my word
at the outset to
give my life
with no qualms
i pray to the Lord
to break my back
before i break my word

…

you have set up
a colorful table
calling it life and
asked me to your feast
but punish me if
i enjoy myself

what tyranny is this

-Rumi, from Fountain of Fire

.::.

Black Rock City, 2011.

unlike previous years, i did not write anything in my journal while on the playa this year. not a single word.  never even removed it from my backpack.  it wasn’t that i made a conscious decision not to – i just didn’t.  last year i spent a lot of time reading and writing while there. this year i did almost none.  i was so busy doing….what?

so i don’t know where to start with this right now, as when i try to recreate history without a record  i always end up so confused.  what is appropriate to say and what isn’t, out of respect for boundaries, respect for relationships, respect for art, respect for humanity? what did i really feel then, versus what i feel about it now? after this 7th year, am i just repeating myself?

perhaps.

Continue reading »

sifted

dust settling

everything
- body, mind, soul, love, friendship, want, need -
has been put through the sieve
the finer points sifted out
-dust to dust-
only large chunks remaining to be examined.

pyrite or gold?

i can’t tell what’s next.

Q

last thoughts before burning man 2011

Forget safety.

Live where you fear to live.

Destroy your reputation.

Be notorious.

— Rumi

this many years and i still can’t narrow it down.

once i get there it all seems so immediately and abundantly clear, but beforehand it is like a phantom in the mist. how can that be?  like a far away lover you haven’t touched in months – you only remember the smell, the touch, the feel, the other information filed deep, resurfacing only exactly when needed.

.::.

i bring things like books and cocktail dresses.  someday i should set up The Most Elegant Library Ever on the playa, with deep couches and chandeliers and velvet ropes and lace curtains and walnut bookshelves filled with hardcovers of everything from Sartre to Seuss, where you can sit and drink champagne while reading silently, or have quiet discussions about literary subjects.

.::.

however, all moments of periodic dusted and sunbleached elegance aside, in the thick of it, i like to get feral and not give a fuck.

i like to go to burning man and get lost in its dream, subconscious wandering interspersed with bouts of extreme physical hyperawareness and athletic mania.  i like to be dirty and unwashed and sunkissed and running on empty and compulsive and punch-drunk and completely alive.

most of this is a personal experience, but at the same time i fall deeply in love with humanity and the people who commune with me and i want to feel all of them.

.::.

the rest of the world seems so fragmented, anxious, fluxuated, and holding its breath right now – my own life, and globally – that burning man seems like the safest place to be – the place where we can breathe, the place where we can all be perfect* for a little while, and not worry about failing.

*adj. exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpose

.::.

whether here or there:  love.

enter the hot dream

last night jayober & i went through the music files to make a rockNroll mix for burning man (so much electronica on the playa; i can’t take it for 7 days. we decided we need at least one rockNroll + whiskey afternoon). “just 1 or 2 songs from fav bands”.  after we finish, even without all our favs added, it’s 13 hours long.  i <3 rock and roll.

.::.

AWAKE (listen)
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day’s divinity
First thing you see.
A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by its quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

.::.

movement studies

last night we went to see our (awesome!!!) friend Mary Franck’s conceptual-performance piece, Permutae.

i had so many millions of things to say while sitting in that dark theatre,  and now i barely recall all of the places my mind went.

i don’t know why i resist loving conceptual art so much.  i think it’s because i can’t actually articulate why, and so when, afterward, i say “i absolutely loved it” and someone asks “why?” i feel suddenly unprepared, embarrassed to explain.  why do bodies moving absurdly through abstract scapes to nonmelodic sounds cause my self to dissolve?  the body as vocabulary, skin as an instrument: this speaks to me.

all i know is that not long after the performance started i realized that almost my entire body was moving also, while most of the rest of the audience sat still, the man next to me fully asleep.  not only do i enjoy watching, i uncontrollably want to be doing what they are doing.

i have an artist ticket to burning man this year, from doing butoh with BadUnklSista for BRAF and such.  it makes me feel odd as i still do not describe or consider myself an artist. but i think that i might do a solo butoh piece somewhere on the playa.  i will not tell anyone when or where.