< d u b m i x >

"A
p o l i t i c s
o f
d r e a m ,
u r g e n t
a s
t h e
b l u e n e s s
o f
s k y . . . "

--HB

Black Rock City haunts me.

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

Our camp is small, semi-circular, full of Brazilians, Italians, Swiss, a
few token Yankees. Intensive self-adornment underway each nite. . . . great
pasta and sausage . . . names too long to list. . . a huge coat made of white
stuffed animals for the burn. Out on the playa, people swarm around Dandelion
to get hugs. . . altar to Yemanja . . . "why can't anybody clean up after
themselves?!". . . . brazenly bronze-Naomi, feathers from the calves down. . .
A rug under the parachute, lit with a Coleman lantern, makes for our
tribal living room. . . The Om Kitchen is communal and very cool. . . walls
torched at the end.

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

Black Rock City has always haunted me.

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

"Sorcery works at creating around itself a psychic/physical
space or openings into a space of untrammeled expression."
--HB

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

. . . the most precious moments the most unspeakable . . . a fire alarm
box, on the Esplanade. . . Ivory at the cafe. . . a complete nervous system
in EL wire . . . cellphone sitting atop the overflowing toilet. . . alone
under the Milky Way, city-lights across the horizon, storms of
laughter, screams, soundsystems 280 degrees as the breeze shifts. . . Agape
dancers oozing across the edge of the Black Lite Stage. . . Stars Wars
melody after dawn, & morning trumpet-call . . . naked bodies making love to
the sparks that rain from the bonfires. . . day after the Burn, a fat naked
man covering himself in the ashes of The Man. . . three hearts . . . three
dragons . . . the fabric spiral . . . team effort raising the Masquetorium
tent. . . yoga and movement circle in the Om Kitchen . . . falling asleep
Monday nite in someone's art installation . . . never finding the Temple of
Love. . .

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

Was my whole life simply a series of echoes
from this place that existed outside of time. . . ?

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

. . . neighbors in the tent next store argue over who was hogging the
blankets. . . Our Mother Of Donuts shrine . . . cold water sprays for all
those who drop their pants . . . aboard the Dragon-Mobile, some girl,
beatific pierced & dreaded, lying on the bar, each person taking turns
French-kissing her, all lit up like a Renaissance dinner tableau. . . the
static art pales next to the inspired insanity of playa dialogue . . .

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

Long before I set foot there, I felt its dust devils at play in the
recesses of my heart.

. . . c. 77, drew comic of crazed gathering around
pyramid of fire; never understood what it meant . . . Ballard's
Vermilion Sands, decadent avant-garde resort community,
on the edge of a dead sea, composer who grows musical
plants, The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D . . . Or Delaney's
Dhalgren, another misty city, filled with ambiguous sexualities
and creative perversions . . . Jack Kirby's New Genesis . . .
R.A.W.'s Illuminatus! trilogy. . . in the 80's, absorbing Bataille's
philosophy of excess and sacrifice, Marcel Mauss . . .
Tzara & Breton, calling for daily Life dissolved into Art. . .
"Create Situations!" . . .c. 86, I envisioned a rite of sacrificing
consumer eidolons on a fire-pyre, . . . my "mutant love psalm"
. . . visions of The Imaginal Rave pointing far beyond anything
extant in 91 . . . Hakim's Bey's Chaos and TAZ invocations. . .

Mid-90s, Frisco raver friends, first to take techno sound system
to the playa, came back from Black Rock with mad stories.
But I was too lazy to make the trek. . .

Then, in August 98, invited to a Spiral Oasis theme camp meeting:
I felt myself there already, smelling the wind and dust of a place
I'd never (or is it always?) been.

Well. . . If I felt myself already there, I guess I'd better finally fucking go!

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

". . .erotic art in itself makes a better vehicle for enhancement
of being/consciousness/bliss. . . A sort of Western tantrik porn. . . "
--HB

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

. . .the endless parades of hyper-tribal-styled entities through the center
cafe (the ultimate tribal donut?!). . . stumble across video on Tibetan
Kala Chakra mandala, ascending/concentric levels of reality and gates
between. . . bulletin board of random thoughts: "When in doubt -- TWIRL!"
. . . Kids packing up next door, Monday morning, one says to the other: "Tell
your mom you came to Burning Man to save the world."

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

A faerie-land mothership improv-city that docks for a week . . .
& dissolves back into playa mirages until next year. I fancy that Black Rock
City acts as one big interdimensional portal, crossing point between
parallel realities, where people of all times, cultures, forms and costumes
can step between worlds without standing out from the crowd. . .

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

". . . but weird & naked, feathers & bones, tents sewn withcrystal,
black dogs, pigeon-blood--flashes of amber limbs tangled in sheets
--faces in starry masks kissing soft creases of skin--androgynous
pirates, castaway faces of columbines sleeping on thigh-white flowers
. . .atonal punk reggae scored for gamelan, synthesizer, saxophones
& drums--electric boogie lyrics sung by aetherial children's choir--
ontological anarchist lyrics, cross between Hafez & Pancho Villa,
Li Po & Bakunin, Kabir & Tzara. . ."
--HB

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

Monday morning, that is. After Sunday, the night of true magic.
Foxiest Kathleen on the 13 Moontribe dancefloor. . . a brilliant chaotic
three-way dance, weaving in and out and around one another. . . flares go
off and we all run towards the Burn.

. . . With Vivica and Lara around a ring of fire, a huge, granite dolmen.
Fire-dancers. Lara on shrooms swaying back and forth, moaning, crying,
gesticulating, praying. Eventually calming down, she takes the feather and
intensively inscribes strange glyphs into the sand, inside a cartouche. . .
.
Safe. Predictable. Tepid. (The burn.)

. . . But maybe that's mostly because its my third time, I've been through
the ringer already, lost my mind and had all the cosmic revelations twice
before. . . and why must it always be the same?

But Sunday, the energy, the energy, the energy. . . Everybody, everything,
awake and ALIVE. Crystalline cutting-edge to the night air, piercing
purity of intention, of presence. Foxgluv at Point Arena--"The Gates are Open"
. . . . I felt validated by them, by all of us, by everything around us.
We had skipped across that thin but cavernous gap, to the EternalNow.
A beautiful drawn out version of "Trick and the Treater." Their song "Jedi"
a simple and endlessly looping anthem. Close with "Paradise."

Earthgirl: "Black Rock City, YES, at last--this IS Paradise."

The best darn "blithering hippie shit" in the known universe, that's my
review of Foxgluv at Black Rock City 2000.

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

"Burn the Little Man!"

"We all have a little man inside us!" The inspired Cacaphonist rants into
the bullhorn, as people gather round the wooden effigy of the Little Man.
"We all have many little men running around inside us. Release your inner
little man, your little men. Let him burn! Let them burn! Will somebody
stand next to the little man? Yes, stand so that your shadow
engulfs him! See how the little man is only a fraction of the bigger
man?!"

"BURN! BURN!" chants the crowd.

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

"Paradox: to embrace Chaos is not to slide toward entropy but to emerge
into an energy like stars, a pattern of instantaneous grace" --HB

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

No drugs this year. . . Yet even prosaically experienced, Black Rock City
still exists. It is. And it works. It actually works.

I find myself saying to Will P. as we stroll across the playa, "there is
really no way to over-estimate the importance of this." Nods in agreement
. . . Will sees it as "the biggest single collection of intelligence on the
planet."

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

. . . the endless queue of cars, heading out from the playa in slowest
motion, as Radio Free Burning Man plays noise-guitar dirge, clouds
somber overhead. Teardrops of rain on the windshield . . . ache of
great beauty glimpsed. Always the urge to hold on to it.

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

. . . in 99 and again this year, back "home", I wake up in the
wee hours of the night, look out my window. I'd swear I was still
out on the Playa, only the camps look the same as the familiar
structures next door--had they been reconstructed on the Playa?
Am I here or am I there? . . .

More than any other place I've ever been:

Black Rock City feels like Home.

( ( ( -:- ) ) )

"The
Assassin-child,
psyche
of
fire,
holds
sway
for
one
brief
dogstar-hot
night."
-- HB

--c.twist, 9-33-2000
<donut@hooked.net>
{quotes from Hakim Bey's "Chaos"}