Burning Green: An Initiate’s Perspective (9.3.07)

Last night I dreamed that the beige carpet in my room was alkaline clay gravel; my bedroom had been reconstructed in Black Rock City, and outside my window I could see cranes planting pine trees on the barren playa.

It’s been twenty-four hours of striking, driving, unpacking, cleaning and bathing. The revelation of Burning Man has burrowed deep in my spleen, releasing spiritual spores infecting every cognitive joint I once so carefully constructed. I doubt I will ever be the same again.

Thank you in advance to all the people and sites supplying the pictures for this perspective. It’s hard to believe that a week ago we drove to Reno under pastry-shaped clouds. We spent Sunday night there, holed up at the Sands, buying water and gathering our strength for the week ahead. Gilded signs and deteriorating casinos created a tinfoil illusion over the timeless race to find meaning in easy-won money. Lonely-hearted wanderers were on their last legs, those who could not be bothered with Vegas, crouched under smoke and craps and one-arm bandits wrapped in the glittered refuse of Americana.

Still, Reno was filled with honest, hardworking people, waiters, hostesses, clerks who witnessed the yearly migration of freaks through their gilded paradise into the deep Nevada desert. Who knows how they viewed us, counterculture hoodlums strutting about, greasy with crazed anticipation to go squat in some alien mind state. As I wolfed down the last vegetables that would fortify me for a week, my friend Sitari and I wondered if citizens of Reno imagined life out on the playa. Perhaps it was similar to how I wondered about it myself. After all, the anticipation of my virgin Burn was possessed with a jittery poltergeist of the unknown. I had managed to subdue my expectations, but not my hope.

We arrived in Black Rock City Monday as the sun climbed past its apex. Locating our camp, the Bouncy Bouncy Club off the 4:30 keyhole, Sitari and I set to work constructing the BBC bar we had been planning, and as the heat dissipated in twilight, we saw her initial vision come together, a turqoise shell of protective fabric contrasting against the endless yellow-brown clay lakebed. Fireworks sprang over an Esplanade dotted with theme camps, and I was struck with a deep sense of celebration. We had made it, arrived to witness the Man burn green.

It was in those first few hours that I also met Pan. Or rather, the pagan deity’s current incarnation, a contractor from Portland named Dr. Lem. Those of you who know him know his wild hair and nappy beard and Komodo dragon tattoo crawling across his leg and up his shoulder blades, his warm heart and extroversion. More than likely you’re also familiar with his pierced penis and his penchant for playing with it. He showed me what was to become a mainstay of playa hospitality. No, not aerated genitals—though those were abundant—but a big hug, and a heartfelt “welcome home.” Yet as soon as he welcomed me, he disappeared, running across the playa looking for his dome, which had been shipped to BRC as he flew in the night before.

With Pan gone, Sitari tired and the rest of BBC in lay-low mode, I rambunctiously journeyed out onto the playa alone, eager to play with my new reality. And play I did. That first night any preconceived visions were annihilated as I raced back and forth across the deep playa on my bicycle like a puppy with oversized paws. While the Esplanade by center camp had been constructed the weekend before, the deep playa remained dark. Geodesic domes and art structures embracing the far arms of the city were still skeletonized, and scattered lights blinked out beyond the Man standing below a bloated moon. In the distance, a few of these lights twirled around each other, floating across the darkness. Intrigued, I had to know how light could levitate across the desert like gyroscopic polypeptides. I raced past the man bestriding his pavilion in neon green, and saw they were bicycles leading lures of swinging neon orbs. The poignancy of design and effect was the first of an awe-inspiring week, and I waded farther in my new fascination with this surreal landscape, farther out into the dark desert.

A towering beacon magnetized me, and I drew near the Temple for the first time, with its giant ivory crossbeams, stacked circular windows and twin arms spreading concave bellies under muted stars. Approaching closely, I saw the intricacy of woven wooden lattices climbing up screens and supporting beams, radiating Shinto purity across the playa, piercing my heart with wonder. My virgin eyes began to open to the incantation cast upon the land by Black Rock City. It was a binding creative vision that gripped my mind as a shadow began to fall across the moon. As this lunar splotch expanded, the Temple tied an invisible tether to my belly, attaching me, tracking me. Knowing I would be back, I pedaled away, one man biking across a dark mystic sea, comforted by waves of novelty in my gut, by lights blinking around the circumference of the horizon.

I went to Opulent Temple, a party space by 2:00 that sported giant circular screens sandwiching a mesh egg encapsulating the DJ booth and supporting a giant double flamethrower. Seriously. Blasts of flame scorched the sky. Progressive trance danced in thin desert air, and the vibe was filled with ecstasy euphoria and the molded meanderings of psylocibin. Burners howled wild calls in the throes of ensuing transformation, prancing and praying to aligning synchronicity as the dark shadow of the earth eclipsed the moon in maroon.

But these mystic forces and the intense inertia of prior burns had caught up with the community. Under darkness, guerrilla agents infiltrated the Man’s pavilion, setting him ablaze almost a week before his scheduled pyre. One BBC devotee saw tufts of smoke bloom into tongues of flame from as far away as the steam-powered Tree House rising just beyond the Esplanade. Soon fire-trucks blazed towards the pavilion and those watching held their breath; even the premature burning set aside, people had crowded under the pavilion’s tent, standing by the wooden beams supporting the statue of the man; if the structure had gone up in flames or collapsed, human casualties could have resulted. Fortunately the first responders controlled the fire, squashing it before it could do any serious damage. Still, as the eclipse waned, we realized that the man had been charred, the pavilion blackened by rogue forces threatening our serenity.

As the hot sun rose on Tuesday and we witnessed the charcoal Man, we learned later that the man responsible was a performance artists named Paul Addis. An ardent burner in the infancy of the event, Addis had become misanthropic to Burning Man, complaining during his subsequent incarceration that the Burn had become too commercialized, that its appeal to the green left was a ploy to alleviate environmentalist pressure away from the, well, metric tons of immolated gasoline. Though the prank was ostensibly a protest, I couldn’t help but wonder at the arrogance needed to endanger the community for the benefit of a single individual. Individual artistic expression was one thing, but this single act was clearly anathema to the spirit of the event.

Or was it?

As the day progressed and we continued to evolve our camp as more BBCers arrived, inflating our bouncy castle and dome, and erecting our secret tunnel, the distinction blurred between acceptable individual expression and that which impinges on the health of the community. The repetitive clang of my mallet on rebar was meditative, and I could not help but play devil’s advocate with myself, questioning where the line really lay. If forced to choose, which should drive our behavior, our individualism or commitment to our community?

It was a question that haunted me as we rocked out at the Deep End, watching giant smoke rings curl up over the fat moonrise, channeling the energy of the new Burn into a serene state. But afterwards, as we listening to bagpipes and drinking Guinness at the newly opened Irish playa pub Paddy Mirage (yes, a real, two-story wooden pub), my warm, germinating illumination had grown hairline fractures. After the sun set these cracks bloomed into jagged cracking spears of uncertainty. Still, I subdued these doubts, preferring the route to fun. Tooling about the playa in Loki’s artcar “Cloud Nine,” which had the most comfortable damn cushions my ass had the pleasure of kissing over the whole week, we traveled to see Glitch Mob, incredible as always, tear apart the 4:30 keyhole. Syncopated breaks from the Space Cowboy’s platform were techno-futuristic breakbeat, generating a cloud of playa dust hazing over rhythmic joints framing melodies that popped squealing samples in creaking angles like circus contortionists slaying our brains.

Yet as danced, the questions in my head were exacerbated by a strange vibe. The vibe tasted like one related to the euphoric collectivism of my involvement in the rave scene but was flavored by a dark and frustrated egotism that I had found pervasive in the violent punk rock underground. It took me several tracks to put my finger on it, but when I did it stank of judgment, of individuals emanating condescension towards others, of those with fancier costumes or more friends bathing in elitism. This scent was very subtle, and at no time did I ever feel threatened or unwelcome, but the vibe was there, and it announced that some individuals were more important to the burn than others. As the BBCer Bebop put it, they were ‘burnier than thou.’

Now, such conceit is logical. Clearly, in the middle of a desert wasteland, self-reliance is the minimum threshold for survival, and those who drive the party, or the ritual, or construct the city from personal resources, are in fact contributing more and are more “important” to the functioning and success of both Black Rock City and the Burn in general. But the concept of importance is a slippery slope. For if the common BRC resident is undervalued, if at some level the community of people hard core enough to just be there and participate is not embraced, then for me at least, Burning Man would never achieve the evolved state of collective human illumination I had found so fulfilling in other undergrounds. Furthermore, such elitism is the source of, and only a few psychological steps (albeit large steps) removed from the arrogance and irresponsibility required for obsessed individuals like Addis to declare the superiority of their truth over the collective, and attempt to destroy the Burn by pre-empting its defining ritual. As I crashed Tuesday night it seemed that the very transcendence I had been hoping for would be illusory, and my heart was filled with doubt.

But Wednesday was a new day, and filled with adventure. Mid-morning a bunch of us BBCers biked over to the Golden Café laden with alcoholic gifts. For those of you who don’t know, The Golden Café supplies drinks to all, as it must in a gift economy; but only those who bring alcohol in quality and quantity are treated to medallions signaling the wearer as being worthy of better drinks. Well, we received those excellent medallions, but I was treated to an additional surprise. The Café was barely populated, its musicians not ready yet to take the stage, and so Bebop and I were able to borrow a guitar and base respectively, and jam out. Between work and writing and life I had forgotten the simple joy of playing music with others. The playa now gently reminded me of creative pleasures, and even though our session lasted less than an hour, I felt rejuvenated. A child-like happiness percolated up through my blood, and I felt alive, more alive than I had in many months. Elated, I itched to try my hand at the flimsy rock wall constructed across the street. Scaling it and standing upon its rickety structure, feeling a hundred feet tall, I gazed out at the massive circle of cars and tents extending back towards the airport and the black mountains beyond. I could not comprehend how many masses had migrated to the beacon of Burning Man within the last forty-eight hours. They now surrounded the alien planet of the Burn like rings of playa dust encapsulating a crystalline spirit.

Exhausted, I took a siesta to hide from peaking heat, and woke up in a different burn, an evolved era. The BBC camp itself hummed with excitement as our dome finally arrived and was inflated adjacent to the bar. Pan had returned, towing Little Orphan Annie and the towering, truck-sized Tonka. Sitari and I joined them, stocking up on booze and venturing out to Tao-surf (to cite the coined currency of Sitari) on artcars. I could never have predicted how the Burn would evolve.

As we snuck out our secret tunnel onto the keyhole and peered beyond the Esplanade, the playa had exploded in light. Where before there were sparse art installations scattered about the Temple in moonlight, now tens of thousands tromped across miles of clay, on foot lighted by glow sticks, riding bikes outfitted with el-wire, crowding art cars, and the collective neon glow outshined the full moon. The first vehicle we found was a two-story boat with mast and rigging. The five of us climbed aboard, and I watched in awe from the top deck as we sailed across the dry sea, past flaming cacti, bushes of bouncing Christmas lights, fire dancers pushing flaming flow weapons in trailing arcs, costumed bunny bikers, mirror-portals, giant bus-ships with party decks playing looped porn, glowing butterflies and ants and elephants trolling about the playa on mechanical chases, torch towers spewing gas-flames, lovers kissing on deep playa. Oh, and let’s not forget the guy who as far as I’m concerned wins the prize for the dopest costume on the playa with his bejeweled, head-to-toe armor complete with visor and lantern to light his resplendence. In the center of it all, the Man’s pavilion and the Temple were dressed in their formal symbolism. Black Rock City had hit critical mass, its residents crisscrossing each others’ paths ten thousand times per minute, making the playa light up like a giant pinball machine cranked on crystal meth. But the chaos, while wild and churning, was infused with spirituality, a conscious excavation for a buried holiness. As we hopped from the first boat to a glowing bus blasting trance, it at first seemed like the largest, most obscenely ridiculous rave I had ever witnessed, and its scale blew me away.

But as we neared Cubatron, that three-dimensional array of glowing orbs that blinked into and out of colored light, shifting patterns from rotating wheels to white snowstorms to sweeping rainbows to rotating light effigies of the Man, I started to see the burn as something like a rave but not a rave. And as we hopped to other art installations, and Tao-surfed over to Entheon Villiage to revisit epic Glitch Mob breaks and later the dark hammer of Bassnectar wrecking samples between gears of hard womp, the phylogeny of Burning Man began to clarify in my mind. Grooving to arrowheads of piercing bass, watching animated visuals twist on hexagonal cells of the giant dome, ideas began flooding my brain, inundating it with a deluge of realizations answering questions I had been struggling with for months. And one of these insights was a hypothesis on the phylogenic nature of sub-cultures.

After participating for years in various sub-cultures from the rave scene to the punk scene and several in-between, there were certain themes that seemed related, but not identical between these subcultures. This seems logical, because each subculture has certain values that drive the behavior of individuals and groups who participate. Some of those values are similar between subcultures, and some of them are different, but ultimately, since shared values often derive from the same ideal, the subcultures upon which shared values are based are related at a very basic level.

For example, if drug use can be considered a value in certain subcultures because it is practiced by, and drives behavior of participants, then one way to think about the relations of subcultures is to consider which drugs are valued. In the rave scene hallucinogens are valued, ecstasy being paramount to the pervasive “peace, love, unity, respect (P.L.U.R.)” mentality of the scene. Conversely, the punk rock scene values amphetamines more than hallucinogens, and the psychological analysis of why could be the subject of a whole perspective in and of itself. Clearly individuals from both scenes may use any host of narcotics, but when classifying a subculture it may be useful to assess what values the majority shares, because it is through these shared values that the culture is sustained. So given that the value of doing drugs is shared across the rave and punk scenes, but the value of the types of drugs is different, the rave scene and punk scene are related but distinct in a potential social phylogeny of subcultures. Furthermore, part of this difference stems from the mental state induced by these drugs, and the emotional connection between these drugs and other key values such as music. Indeed, the gestalt identity of any subculture is derived from a confluence of these values, from drugs and music to fashion, degree of sexual promiscuity, relationship to religion and politics, etc. For such a schematic to be totally accurate requires a comprehensive analysis of the derivation of subcultures that is far beyond the scope of this perspective.

However, observing the result of this confluence of values is straightforward if we consider the patterns of how individuals and groups behave. In many underground subcultures, the confluence of values produces behavior that often transcends individualism, and directs the group in a chaotic but harmonious dynamic. The Jungian concept of the collective unconscious is useful to understand this dynamic, in which individual behavior converges towards psychological archetypes across the whole, producing singular behaviors across the entire collective. It’s apparent in a number of mainstream and underground cultures, including not only the rave and punk scenes, but also mainstream sporting events, political rallies, religious rituals, etc. The origins of such behavior are a hot topic in many academic disciplines, but it seems intuitive that collective behavior is based on at least collective values, and likely even a collective mental state, which Jung talked about as a collective unconscious, and which I for shits and giggles have started calling “ego synergy.” The difference is that Jung’s collective state exists constantly, a deep psychological ocean of magma difficult to access, except in dreams or other transcendent experiences, upon which our individual cognitive identities float like tectonic plates upon the magma “reservoir of the experience of our species.” Ego synergy, on the other hand, describes the phenomenon whereby those tectonic plates fuse, creating a pangea of conscious collective identity.

The implications of ego synergy are far-reaching, and its study reveals insight into our origins as social animals, our current human condition, and, I believe, the psycho-spiritual evolution of humanity.

Ego synergy is fascinating in its capacity to exist cohesively in different states of free energy. Definitions can be based on these states to further breakdown facets of ego synergy and elucidate the phylogeny of subcultures. If chaos is the result of, or dictates ego synergy, such as in the rave scene where law and rules are avoided, the mental state could be called chaotic ego synergy. If order and structure are the result of, or dictate ego synergy, the mental state could be called orderly ego synergy. Many other distinctions could undoubtedly be made, but I find this one additional variable very useful to turn the abstract idea of cultural phylogeny into a useful analytical tool. With these two variables, 1) ego synergy vs. ego isolation (or individuation, as Jung would have it), and 2) chaos vs. order, one can construct a two-by-two matrix, with synergy vs. isolation on one axis and chaos vs. order on the other axis.

Any old scenario could fill the orderly ego isolation quadrant where people are individuals in structured situations such as taking a math test, and the chaotic by situations like an isolated mugging or a schizophrenic ambling down the avenue. The punk scene, I think, also falls within this quadrant of chaotic isolation, for though it has elements of synergy in it, even in the collective anarchy of the mosh pit individuals are out to quench their own frustrated thirst for aggression. The rave scene, conversely, falls squarely into the chaotic ego synergy space, freaks gathering in cuddle puddles, dancing till dawn together as one. Ego synergy derived from religion and political rallies seem to fall neatly into the orderly ego synergy space. Actually, it often seems to me that both religions and nations support a phylogeny model of evolving cultures. Initially every established religion and nation was comprised only of individuals on the fringe, revolutionaries challenging the safe conventions of their contemporaries. Only after the initial explosive revolution and ensuring chaotic growth did order seep in to maintain the reinvented reality that those first pioneers had created.

Indeed, applying this hypothetical matrix to Burning Man illustrates its complexity, because the Burn could be argued to exist in all four quadrants simultaneously.

Last Wednesday night, when the five of us Tao-surfed on art cars, took in the shiznitobam-Glitch and eventually wound up on the giant pink birthday cake floating out deep by the Temple blasting the ambient drum n’ bass stylings of Guitari, we witnessed a chaos, a wave of both individual expression in terms of costumes and fire dancing and explosive personalities such as our dear friend Pan. Yet we also participated in synergistic expressions such as the massive parties held in geodesic domes and on artcars, and the collective solemnity and purity radiated by those at the Temple.

But Burning Man also has intense order involved in it, much (to my understanding) that has evolved as the population of Black Rock City has exploded from a few thousand ten years ago to over fifty or sixty thousand at the Green Man. Not only are there the Ten Principles guiding both individual and group behavior, there are a number of ancillary proscriptions implemented to make the Burn safer and more enjoyable for the increasing masses. Examples are the outlawing of firearms, dogs, and types of motorized vehicles, prohibitions around which were not present when the burn began. Burning Man features its own special contingent for principle enforcement, the Rangers, registers vehicles and operates an airport. All of these elements of order seem not to derive from the original spirit of the Burn, but to be necessities that have come from the explosive growth of Black Rock City.

There is, however, another element of order that permeates the very soul of Burning Man – tribes. An invention more ancient than even agriculture or writing, humans have long cohered in tribes to survive in the wild, and so it is in Black Rock City. And the very fact that tribal organization are so prevalent on the playa, combined with the infusion of ritual, hints that the phylogeny of Burning Man goes far back before San Francisco first foundations, before the ravers or hippies or beats or any of our modern protests against the amorphous shadow of unconsciousness that plagues our modern society. It goes back to the days of the Druids and their solstice festivals at Stonehenge, back to the raving orgies in olive orchards where Grecian fornicating worshiped Dionysus.

Indeed, such an ancient origin, with roots back to the ancestry of our evolution suggests several truths. Humans will always have a need to congregate in freeform chaos, to bask in ritual and marvel at the awesome power of nature both externally in the world around us and within the deep psycho-spiritual well of our identities. But as the truth and meaning and power of such rituals draw in ever-greater numbers of devotees, the leaders of such movements will react. Many times they react by withdrawing, by secluding themselves and barricading the demanding world from their secret revelation, just as the Essenes hid their leaf metal scrolls in Dead Sea salt caves. But other times such revelations evolve, introducing order to maintain the cohesiveness of the revelation in larger populations. Thus do the social forces of the Burn ebb and flow in undercurrents of chaotic waves crashing upon white cliffs of order.

But such analyses were academic, and did not relieve the same question that still gnawed at my tendons: what happens to a society based on the love and beauty of chaotic expression when it, out of the very need to adapt to survive, imposes order upon itself?

As I wondered, and we wandered from Entheon village across the deep playa once again, Pan became ever more coherently insane, peaking on mushrooms. We ranted about nakedness and portipotties and art cars powered by the energy generated from the vibrations of dancing. And as bass slithered into us from all corners of the playa, something else struck me as I strutted, letting the Tao flow from my pores, directing my steps. There was something unique and snowflake-like about this desert oasis of art we tripped across. Something had made me ethereally happy—not, as we so often envision the concept, artificially filled by the achievement of illusory goals—but truly sated, sanguine, downright bouncy. And when I searched for the source of this joy, it was unmistakable. It was this effervescent spirit of the burning playa. Like the incarnate god Pan, it was totally, wholeheartedly, irreverently unapologetic. For everything. There were no pleas for permission, no supplications for attention. Its vibrancy was its own, for no other purpose than to writhe in its own orgasmic creative pleasure. Naked, clothed, chaotic, orderly, synergistic, isolationist, none of it mattered next to the hard truth that it was. Perhaps I realized this in the moment that one sculpture of fluorescent lights broke, crashing down upon one participant, leaving live wires exposed as we went to inform the Rangers of this hazard. The art itself had no remorse for breaking, for living and dying in the flatlands. What was would simply be, quiet in moments just before dawn sang hymns of fiery rebirth over the lakebed.

That Thursday, everything changed. Again. The first half of the week had seen stale air, and except for winds early on Monday the playa baked under an oppressive heat. But now, Thursday early afternoon, gusts kicked up while we were out getting hammered at Damn Texans. Plywood was pried off metal scaffolds, sarongs were long gone and hats didn’t stand a chance. And as we barhopped, benevolently hammered from bourbon and tequila (and as Sitari got her mack on) I was amazed at how quickly the weather pirouetted. Uncertainty was everywhere, and as I rode out after dusk, once the wind died down, exploring alone felt like Monday, but twisted another level up the spiral stairway. The Man had been making its way back up to its perch on the pavilion in pieces; I ventured to the Temple again, feeling its tug on my solar plexus.

Unlike on Monday, when the Temple’s interior was roped off, now people congregated inside, crying, whispering, praying. Wooden latticework was covered in scrawling marker, and my eyes fixated on a hundred supplications and bon voyages and gratitudes and frustrations and dreams. But there was one saying that caught my eye, worming its way behind my retinas. “Our greatest fear is greatness,” it said simply, sandwiched between crossbeams. I could only sit and meditate on its profundity, and with each attentive breath I heard an undeniable suffering emanating from myself and everyone else there, hurting from the knowledge of how far the path is separating us from our dreams, and how painful each step is on the torn, cratered earth. But in that suffering, I also heard an air-raid siren of honesty, a pinhole path to the heart.

Later, I popped to breakbeat at the edge of the earth underneath metallic monkeys swinging in strobes, my light saber flowing with endless Tao, my soul content to forget my questions.

Friday the weather continued to whip us with dust and leather, but we were granted a morning reprieve to retrieve some filmy goodness. Bebop, Pan, Sitari and I wandered out to the Playa on foot to snap pics.

From under the Bone Tree we entered the pavilion, learning about at least an attempt at exploring the potential for green activism and engineering, and even though Burning Man itself has to be possibly the most un-green, abusive waste of gasoline I’ve ever witnessed, the waste is a logical exuberance of celebratory survival, and the pavilion was at least one step toward suggesting another way. Somehow this reconciled in my mind, because if there was one tenet that had planted itself in my head ever since arriving on the playa, it was that only vision has the power to transform reality. This was evident on the Man itself, which had been finally completed back atop its perch, the emblem of a phoenix branded on its face as a mark of its resurrection.

Though the weather soon became intermittently inclement, I had managed to grab my bike and witness the beginning of critical tits, a parade of thousands of topless women proud of their breasts. Interestingly, as one who’s always been a breast man, I was less turned on than I was inspired by the confidence and empowerment against the cages of modesty.

Soon the trail of nudists moved on, and I was determined to see one statue before its scheduled destruction. Huffing over near 2:00, I gazed at five metallic worshippers. One mohawked man sat in the lotus position with his hands to his heart, figures bowed and several iron women gasped and clasped their hands above their heads in reverence to that which was before them, a 90-foot oil derrick. The symbolism was simple, and it challenged me. It challenged all of us, and the very fuel of the Burn itself. I could not look away.

Finally the strong winds mutated into harpy dust tornadoes tearing about the playa, churning from the dry lakebed to a sea of evaporated water and dust above. White tsunamis crested from nowhere and blinded us from seeing three feet, caking alkaline microns into our skin that only vinegar would remove. Later I heard the story of one girl who became disoriented in the whiteout, and wandered about until she found a Ranger. “Fuck!” she told him, “Am I glad to see you! Do you know where center camp is?” And the Ranger pointed over his shoulder and said, “it’s twelve feet that way.”

But I had my bandanna and my goggles and I wasn’t about to let a little dust keep me from my trip. I hopped on my bike and rode out to the Deep End again. Only this time, instead of a magnificent sunset, the world was coated in ash. Not that it mattered. The Deep End was packed, partiers all there with the same coconut shavings of dust smeared over tinted UV-lenses, bandannas and dust masks tied tightly across their faces. The vibe was fierce, an epic battle against the elements that raged around us like the throbbing of bass and boots pounding against clay. A primal perseverance whirred from the crowd like generator electricity caught in a cable array ripping apart a rushing river of electrons.

Eventually it became too much for me, though when I left, the Deep End was still explosive, refusing to die. I spent a bit of time in the Paddy Mirage again to escape the worst of the storm, but then was back across the playa again, soon back at camp as the whiteout blew over. Then, suddenly, drizzles of drops plummeted, practically evaporating before they sizzled on the hot ground. We barely had time to jump out from our shelters and spread our arms welcoming the rain. But when we did, the sky cleared to reveal a colossal rainbow arching across the clouds--and then another one straddling its twin. We stood as tall as ants, peering up at these twin rainbows, this omen of Mother Earth once sent to Noah in cycles of fury and welcoming bosom. For a brief, fleeting moment everyone on the playa held their head high, humbled by rays of diffracting light.

Friday night was fun too, riding Cloud Nine out to Root Society, checkin’ out Rabbit in the Moon over at Opulent Temple and letting Freq Nasty bring in the new dawn. But the rest of the week was prologue to the day that that dawn started – the day of the Burn. No really, for real this time.

The day was hot again, but by now I was used to the extreme heat, the pervasive sweat stagnating in this city of ambient ever-present dust. To pass the day, Pan and Tonka graciously invited me over to the airport around high noon. We biked out behind Black Rock City across a flat and dusty expanse of playa, where they showed me around the tiny air traffic control center. Pan showed me simple memorial, impressing upon me the sadness afflicting the community for the loss of one of the greatest burner pilots, Berk, who died in Idaho as I’m sure every hardcore burner dreams of dying, in a three-hundred-mile-an-hour fireball detonating into pristine mountains. Pan, intensely emotional, was insistent that I knew that this man, whatever his flying acumen, was responsible for more gifted flights in 2006 than all other burner pilots combined. Truly, it is an enlightened society that judges a man well for his selflessness.

They also introduced me to the air traffic commander, Hoot. Now, I don’t know if they call him that because of his keen eyesight, his nocturnal nature, or his constant humor, but I found the man both hysterical and genuine, ready to please a complete stranger, filled with stories of near misses and aeronautic mishaps and mile high clubs. Out on the airfield sat reconstructed Russian biplanes and World-War II style prop planes next to the latest and greatest in single-person jet screamers. Over 150 planes had been registered for the Green Man, a significant increase from the year prior, further proof of the explosive growth of the burn.

As I took my daily siesta, the sun sank behind the western hills. When I woke up, Burn night beckoned, the center of the playa tugging on the hook it had planted that first night when Luna escaped the pounding sun in the shade of planet Earth. Cloud Nine was our constant friend again, its comfy cushions escorting us out onto the playa. But if Wednesday night was madness, Thursday night schizoid freakism and Friday pure cracked-out reckless abandon, at least then the masses seeking hot times and enlightenment could amble freely.

Saturday night, on the other hand, was dense.

The most tightly packed, in fact, I had ever seen such a chaotic gathering of people. Around the man they gathered, pink flamingos and fire spinners and metal rhinoceros and elephant artcars, double busses sporting DJs, and thousands upon thousands of glowstick-wearing, fur-sportin’ lunatics babbling in tongues and jitterbugging in caffeine and cocaine and speed, their skulls disintegrating, their neuroganglia spilling out all over cold lakebed in anticipation. Right on playa-time, the fireworks started. There had been ad hoc rockets blasting in the atmosphere all week, but now the explosions really began, sparkling in the hundreds against the stars. And suddenly, they stopped. The Man glowed neon Green for one second more, before a plume of fire immolated him, roaring up in a gurgling feast of gasoline. He burned and burned, and when he fell, the masses rushed in, trampling each other in violent passion to caress the scalding wood and metal, to unify themselves with the fallen spirit of Burning Man. Distinctly unsynergistically, I stood back and watched, basking in revelation.

All week I had been thinking about the nature of the burn, how at its core it’s a celebration of both creation and destruction, of alpha and omega. We revel in our survival against the harshest of climes, ascending an arduous path in the face of fierceness. But this fierceness is surrounded by art, music, psychotropic insight and beautiful friends, and is an awe-inspiring celebration, a mystic dance that untangles the path before us. We celebrate in tribes, chained by organization to have the freedom to get beyond constant survival tasks, to bask in creation and illuminate ourselves in immediacy. But though the burning of the Man can be interpreted in a thousand ways, it said to me that the immolation, the destruction, of the stationary body, even the active participant with his arms raised, is necessary for growth. As many have observed before, death yields evolution. In this case, it is an evolution of the spirit, a growth spurt for the purity of society as we search, unsure of our identity in the turbulent adolescence of our species.

Indeed, it is those who are willing to look the inevitability of death in the face, those who peer into the existential mirror of mortality with unapologetic fatalism who will shape the future landscape of the underground. Whether in the past it was the devotees of Dyonisus, the revolutionary Buddhists chanting in the face of castes, the occultists summoning demons at the peak of the industrial revolution, the beats, hippies, punks, ravers or burners, each underground must seek the figurative pyre to find themselves. Only those with nothing to lose, or at least, who recognize the illusion of everything we seem forced, against our better judgment, to gain, are willing to tear it all apart, to sear the flesh, to burn the body and release the spirit by whatever means necessary.

All week I had wondered: where is that line, where the worship of the self becomes less important than that of society? Where do orderly and chaotic ego synergy dissolve? Here, in wake of the Burning Man, I had two answers.

1) One interpretation: death. Our human nature dictates that in our destruction our isolated exuberance is diluted with concern for the community. It is through our community, through our children and our impact on society that we achieve some modicum of immortality. Is such genetic and memetic ingenuity not amazing? Only in a universe of utter abundance can such immortality be achieved for rotting flesh. In building our ephemeral Black Rock City, distilling into focus and then disintegrating in a matter of days, we both embrace our wandering souls of expression and also recognize the need for something greater, for a memetic ocean of humanity, a metahuman archetype of Jungian proportions.

2) Another interpretation: the Esplanade. Both Black Rock City and the deep playa are synergistic in nature, but it can be argued that BRC is inherently orderly, with its clockwork streets, its ice vending, its gifting economy, its Ranger station, its airport. For fuck’s sake, it even has a central decision-making system in center camp, the quintessential sign of sociological organization. But the playa…the playa. Art placed at random, tree houses near satellites adjacent to metallic giants with exploding heads, crisscrossed by art cars, bikers, footpads obeying no lanes. All radiate from the Man, but in no set pattern, the only organization the burner’s path under the constantly shifting sun and moon. What a sensation it was, and will continue to be, to stand at the edge of the Esplanade, that narrow strip of middle ground between growing organization and exploding randomness. What a feeling it is to contemplate its interwoven spiral, hinting that all distinctions between order and chaos, individualism and synergy are but illusions, artifacts of neural nets and dualistic thinking camouflaging the truth of evolution.

In both answers I saw kaleidoscopic reflections of evolution. Myriad vicissitudes crossed my mind, and though many I had pondered before, one was new, and put down roots. I had seen it subtly in every sight in the default world, but there was a shift here, symbolized by the Burning Man and explicit out on the edge of the world. It was a shift in perspective, a deep awareness that worship is an action, and requires both a subject and an object. Too often in our lives we are taught that it is the object that is holy, and that we, the subjects, must pray or beseech an other to bestow holiness and worthiness upon us. So it is in many overarching societal structures: major religions, political hierarchies, corporate cultures, family values. But out here, the spirit of the playa reflected that falsity with an unalienable truth. We, each and every one of us, is the source of holiness, and the objects of our worship exist only to focus that illuminated energy towards whatever end we choose.

On we walked. And I wondered, perhaps ego synergy evolved in the tribal history of humanity as a lens to multiply and focus our innate holiness on a massive scale, thus enhancing the inspiration and connection resulting from spiritual meditation. And if so, perhaps chaotic ego synergy was more ancient than orderly synergy, more resonant with our primate instincts that ruled social structures at the dawn of man.

But my philosophizing was cut short for the night’s main event. Pan, Tonka, myself, Sitari, Shirley and two of Sitari’s friends came to the oil derrick and parked ourselves hundreds of feet away to witness fireworks spewing, tearing apart the night sky in weaving, sweeping artillery conflagration. Thousands of rounds exploded in golden phosphorescent shells that wove a net of light. I could describe it, but not my awe, not the sparks that filled my spine as the sky ignited. Just go on YouTube, or transport yourself back in time (it’s just like walking backwards, only four-dimensionally). A pillar of fire exploded into a mushroom cloud, consuming the derrick, leaping up to the cloud line. We watched, mesmerized. Gasoline pumped along the wooden derrick and fueled the intense flame, eventually disintegrating the base and bringing the structure crashing down.

The structure having crumbled, we strolled towards El Cirqo to catch Bassnectar, and midway there the thought occurred to me: If the Burn must become more orderly in order to fatten itself on more chaos, so be it. Would there be less space for wandering? Perhaps. Would the stars be drowned out by neon light pollution? Almost certainly. And if the burner population continues to explode, and the burn splits regionally, what then? Will we have the same cohesive, centralized spiritual journey? That is a question only time will answer. But one certainty is clear. If ticket sales had been capped at twenty-large, neither I nor tens of thousands of others would ever have seen this underground dawn. And if the goal of the Burn is not to seclude itself in secretive elitism, but to be a beacon of illumination for any willing to brave its hardship, then it would be the height of hypocrisy to deny those wish to partake of it, even if the population of burners encompasses the entire human population of Earth.

What then of the “burniers”? What fate is in store for those that would deprive the scene of its change, growth, evolution? What of Paul Addis, the arsonist who tried to maim a vibrant underground and underestimated its internal treasury of symbolism? For you, Addis, I’m so very sorry the world cannot remain as small as it once was. I’m sorry that you have to share an incredible life changing experience with more people, and have an even greater world impact. I have only pity for you, for you are a mother hen, fretting when your chicks leave the nest and learn to fly. Go hide in isolation, by all means, never bask in the gleaming heaven of ego synergy or experience spiritual growth beyond conditioned prisons masquerading as unbending ideals.

Those willing to look in the mystic mirror cannot deny we stand at a crossroads of humanity. Our global population grows exponentially, draining resources. We still battle amongst each other as tribes, letting nationalism interfere with common human goals. Unlike Burning Man, our world does not have the option to cap ticket sales (or if it does, that is a topic for a future polemic). Thus, we must adapt, we must consciously and systematically redefine and implement our values if we are able to survive as a species. More thought must be devoted to this, but for now suffice to say that Burning Man can be a microcosmic experiment, if we choose it to be, an ephemeral diorama of how human society, at its heart, wants to function. If we learn from it, adapt to the evolving nature of the Burn, perhaps we can expand that knowledge to our world so that future generations practice rampant selfless expression instead of the egotistic avarice.

So let the biggest ups, the most love and respect be had for hardened, crusty burners teaching virgins the ways of the playa, showing them this new frontier with open hearts. For such growth, though painful, can only lead to the transfer of memory and energy beyond the body, and grant immortality of the spirit.

A few of us converged with the larger crowd at El Cirqo to witness the man, the myth, Bassnectar, mashing samples, bashing bass, tweaking pitch, seeking newness in every tempo, in every shift between flipping switches and fader pedals. Everything from 80’s beat to hard metal to drum & bass was woven together, a synergy of genres that formed a new identity of sound. It was music without borders, beat without labels or pretension, only utter hard shagging of eardrums and rampant burner joy.

Later, as his set faded into that of Antennae and Freq Nasty rounded out the night, I stepped out onto the playa, the beats to my back. At peace, I practiced my tai chi, watching as the statues that previously prayed to fossil fuels now surrendered to the black mountain and the majesty of the rising sun warming their metal bellies. That silver Sphinx artcar was there, eyes blinking blue and green. Any familiar with my previous blogging know the significance of the Sphinx as a personal symbol for the quintessence of Tao. It stood there, judging me, judging us. All I know is that it found us worthy. Of what, I’m not sure. This kind of truth takes its own time to be revealed.

Sunday was a chill day, sleeping, eating pancakes to Wilson Phillips, striking our sapphire bar. But as night fell, we saddled up Cloud Nine one last time to travel to the Temple. Sitari and I got close to the fire barrier and sat, feasting on the last visuals of the shrine as a soprano sang arias of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and then “Redemption Song.” A procession of torchbearers brought the death pyre to this Temple of holy forgiveness. Tens of thousands sat, unflinching, as a flaming beam was placed in their soul center. Soon ivory wood was engulfed, the surfaces of the narrow perpendicular beams black against white licking flame. Heat scorched the playa, raising the wind profile, kicking up dust. But nobody moved. Virtually all were seated, meditative. As the Temple continued to burn and burn, a kite ghost of the Burning Man flew overhead, lifted by fiery winds. Though the body had melted, the spirit remained. I found nothing but answers, and though I knew that more questions would inevitably arise, I did not fear them. One disembodied female voice suddenly split the silence. “We are so blessed!” she sang.

And the Temple toppled, pouring to the ground.

A singular peace had encapsulated the spirits of the Burn. From the silence, a shrieking voice cried out, but this was not the isolated voice of one individual. It was the cry of a synergistic ego, a massive ring of bodies acting with one mind, our shrill voice circling round and round the central burning detritus that was once whole and remained holy. It was the voice of a metaorganism, a primal portal into our future.

At dawn we left, braving exodus, the sierras, mediocre Chinese food and too many hours of driving to return to our modern megalopolis. It chafed, this structure, this illusion of permanence after so many hours of freedom. But it also glowed from underneath, and everything was connected. If this is what it takes to transform, to see ourselves for the men and women of divine choice and creativity that we are, then I say set fire to every sense of permanence. Do no damage, harm no individuals unwilling to participate. Let the eternal fire burn internally eternally, and let it burn from the center of each of us.

Let us sleep on down pillows and eat omakasa sushi and drink dirty martinis from crystal goblets and spill out in Jacuzzis and recline in box seats and relish every minute of our obnoxiously wonderful and luxurious lives as if we had just departed from the playa. Let us make every moment the object of our worship. Let us pursue hedonism not for the illusion of material possession, but truly for sensation itself as our playa-selves lather in prismatic immediacy and wonder.

If we can do that, if we can become conscious of what is true and what is truly illusion, then maybe, just maybe, one day we’ll have the courage to burn it all and rebuild our selves like a phoenix from the ashes.

I can’t wait to bathe in vinegar.

Guest Blogger! Sitari -- "Mad Hatter's Attack Metaphor"

I often use rabbit holes and wardrobes as metaphors for my underground nights. I once described the legendary MorYork Gallery as Narnia so often that my companion thought it was actually titled so. Last night, the rabbit hole metaphor hopped off the page to pummel our brains with flamingos, whacking reality through croquet arches poised on a well-manicured mental lawn.

Our twin top hats tipped to the night, we drudged through the stale tediousness of Hollywood to the Mad Hatter's Art Party. Storybook characters, fully animated, intently strutted down concrete corridors; a mouse scrambled by with a huge tray of sandwiches. A rabbit clad in a red jacket, pocket watch and hot pants disappeared around a corner, the white puff of a tail perched on perky booty luring us obviously into metaphor manifest.

I spend my Saturdays submerged in costumed parties, yet was still surprised by the sense that everyone there had a full Wonderland wardrobe.
"Honey, what should I wear? I simply cannot decide between Queen of Hearts and Mad Hatter tonight."
"Why don't you wear the Cheshire cat lingerie, it will nicely compliment my hookah caterpillar."
"Splendid idea, dear!"
And if these ornate Wonderland wardrobes had a purpose, the red-lit lounge suggested it was to entice and be removed. The space seethed with the seedy vibe of kink, perhaps a very specific Alice in Wonderland fetish. The uncomfortable overabundance of whips and lip-locked pairs suggested a secret we missed. Was it not on the evite?

Moving from the warm odor of nag champa and other people's sex, we wandered deeper into the Wonderland warehouse. Freaks scattered across the pink dance floor, taking advantage of the ample space to dance like you do alone in your underwear. Transvestite Alice graced the decks, a dark beard poking out from under a crooked blonde wig. A goddess in pink playing card bikini tangoed across the floor with a plastic flamingo. The he-she-dee-jay spun tracks and minds, twisting breaks with salsa, rap with 80's love songs, NiN mashups with the Backstreet Boys. While not particularly conducive to establishing groove, the musical mess was the perfect auditory accompaniment to the visual freakfest before us. A Spartan warrior glided by, his armor made from decks upon decks of cards.

Bjork played; interpretive dance broke out like an Icelandic tarantella. Contemplating Tweedle-dee in headstand next to me, I poured the last of my Drink Me vial into my mouth. The potion's potency was not enough to keep me afloat, thus we retreated giggling back into the night, awed and awkward. Was it the environmental mindfuck that left me confused? Perhaps it was the fun and weird mixed with striking feelings of inadequacy and otherness. Typically, my descent to the underground is filled with a sense of magic, culture, knowing and debauchery; rabbit holes and wardrobes allude to the hidden wonder, as if I needed to explain that. Yet just as that last sentence insulted the metaphor with its obviousness, the literalness of Wonderland manifest suffocated its mystique.

Electric Daemon Party - 5.15.07

Imagine for a moment being struck by a bolt of lightning. A terrifying electrical storm rages across dark clouds surrounding you. Peals of thunder explode, rattling your eardrums. For a moment time drags and in the calm you almost sense it coming, fine hairs springing erect on the back of your neck, a subtle scent of ambient phosphorous. Gravel by your feet seems to levitate slowly as the world fades to white, deconstructing into light. Time snaps, and CRAKOW! One-point-six million raw volts surge through under your flesh, through your bones, up your spine and into every cell in your body. Your muscles are flash frozen, immobile. You cease breathing as your skin fries. Yet for some strange reason, you don't die. Instead, you become a charged particle, an entity of pure electric energy expressible only by mathematical formulas half a blackboard long. Accelerating ever faster, you approach the speed of light, and as your form drops away your essence dissolves into spiraling galaxies as you unify with all.

Your eyes droop open; clouds above have cleared into lavender dawn. Sitting up, you realize you're covered in burrs and thicket grass. Your shoes are smoking. (They weren't doing that before.) You raise your muddy hands to your frazzled hair as you realize that holy shit, yes, you have in fact been flattened by an immense rushing river of electrons. Contemplative as you rise, you realize that the hand of God has been upon you. You have been chosen to receive a vision and have lived to tell the tale.

The question, spirit siblings, is what do you do now?

This is the question embedded in every inch of my reality these days, as I reflect on The Do Lab's 2007 Lightning in a Bottle. If there was buzz going into it, upon its conclusion the Blogosphere became a charged ball bursting with one over-arching question: "what happens when you catch lightning in a bottle?"

The answer, for me it least, is that raw energy is harnessed to forge a magic key.

But as usual, I am ahead of myself. When all memories occur in an endless moment, it can be difficult sometimes to willingly adhere to the illusory linearity of time. Fuck it; it's the journey that's important anyway.

It had all started some weeks earlier, on our sober trip along the synchronicity highway. We had seen something, or rather, it had seen us, its cosmic eye branded across our foreheads. "It," was the Tao, Sitari's souljoynektarflow, and we had become drunk on its revelatory rush. Knowing from prior meditations the value of "structioning" (to mangle a Jaynesian term) as a means to conjure forth the Tao into our consciousness, we set forth a grip of guiding principles, as blasted over email to guide our journey through Lightning in a Bottle:

Guiding priciples
1) Instantly upon arrival at Lightning in a Bottle, our minds open; we become hyper-aware of the current of Tao (a.k.a. joysoulnectarflow) flowing all around, and realize that it, in fact, is also conscious of us. It welcomes us into its amphitheatre of meta-awareness, and we instantly know that we have entered a safe harbor of expression from which to forge a magical artifact encapsulating ancient power...

2) Surrounding our amphitheatre of meta-awareness is a ring of doorways, leading to every and any destination imaginable. At one point during our sojourn, one of these doors will bloom into warm radiant light. As we approach it like moths to a flame, we see it is locked, and requires a key. As we pull out our spiritual keychain, we see that indeed, one key among the thousands we possess is also glowing. Though we did not realize it before, this key has imprinted upon it a glyph of a Sphinx, and as we match key to keyhole the glowing door dissolves, bathing us in the evolution beyond...

3) In this space beyond we see a vast plane of clouds and sea beneath our feet. Above this plane, in the middle of a deep, blue sky, is a hunk of burning ore surrounded by a ring of fire. We know we must forge this ore on this plane before it cools, so we plunge it into the current of joysoulnectarflow, which forms and cools the ore into our artifact...

...It is this artifact that will become the platform of our memetically-engineered construct.

“fanfuckingtastic,” Sitari responded, “but we need more, I argue that's one extended principle…” (And thus she replied with even more)

2.) Tickle the rabbit and you will see....

3.) Employ Sitari’s 2 rules of the playa: smile; do everything you are invited to (except drugs) even if, especially if, it scares you.

4.) At one point, we will realize we are not breathing air, but breathing in the taosphinxysouljoynectarflow. We will be able to see, smell, taste, hear, feel, sense, feed and fuse with it. In that moment we will ascend and find a new key for our spiritual keychain, that with the ble-BEEP of a fob can transport us back to this hyperconnected state at any moment.

5.) At one point, someone will offer you a delicious recipe for chocolate chip ragamuffins with cream cheese icing.

Knowing that it is better to be prepared, we also concocted a multifaceted camp of collectively complimentary elements. Aside from the usual tents, air mattresses, lanterns etc., we had lugged along Sitari's costumes and growing quiver of staves, some bongos, a boomerang, enough food to feed five elephants for fifty minutes, and a healthy assortment of beer, wine, and of course, tequila.

Riding the 101 up the coast was satisfying as always, and I was glad to escape the metropolis for a few days. Ours was a trail through a golden land, dry grass hills the color of exotic spices interspersed with lush greens worshipping a scene only a pagan could appreciate, brilliant Apollo rising on a chariot of cherubim clouds, heating the endless salty sea. Soon enough we blew past Camarillo, then Santa Barbara until we hit the 154 and turned inland into the Santa Ynez mountains. Vistas became breathtaking. The land was a patchwork quilt of amber fields and thick deciduous forest, rolling in lazy peaks and valleys. Smaller and smaller roads siphoned our car from the freeway, leading us into a vale nestled between groves of oak. As the festival had commenced the evening previous, hundreds if not thousands of cars were already there, stacked in snaking lines across a wide, flat grass lot. Red-tailed hawks danced lazily in the sky, skimming currents of air. They were everywhere as we unpacked our ensemble, laying out bin after bin of equipment and food. It didn't take us long to realize that we had a lot of stuff. Perhaps too much stuff for just our humble camp. Fortunately for us, however, festivals often support healthy barter economies. We had lots to trade, and we were searching for something very rare and valuable in return: an ephemeral ideal.

Other times, I might have had the inclination to worry about how we were going to move all of our crap up into the camping area. But that day, exercising the guiding principles, breathing in Tao with every inhale, it did not concern me in the least, nor was I bothered when the truck taking camping gear into the festival had just come and we did not know when it would return. The sky was as pure and light a blue as on the cosmic color wheel, and surrounding us was the warmth of a natural oasis, a haven for spirits to gather and play in meta-awareness.

It did not take us long to make friends. Three rustic souls had parked nearby and had approached us, sniffing out like minds. Flower power radiated from Jenna, Eric and David, and it was clear that they were experienced festival hoppers. They, like many others, and us had come from far and wide to witness a live set from Bassnectar, musical shaman of the underground breaks scene. Though they were only staying the day, they kindly offered to wait with us for the truck, and to help us take our ridiculous train of containers to our as yet unknown camping spot. As we moved our bags to the interior of the parking lot to be in a better position for the truck when it did finally make its return, the conversation turned to boomerangs, Santa Barbara, other excellent festivals attended in the past. Knowing no reason not to start the party though we were far from set up, we opened several Sapporo tallboys, and soon, as it would many times over the next two days, conversation soon morphed from words into music. The travelers had brought a wooden recorder and fife, and combined with bongos we held an impromptu parking lot party powered solely by human fuel. Hawks circled overhead as we pounded out an ode to confluent flows.

It was at that point, solely content we were, five fated amateur musical expressions, that we first met Baz the Prophet. He appeared innocently and coincidentally enough in his cultivated afro and indigo bandana, a small, lanky fellow with a radiant aura. Actually, it had been us who had stumbled onto his territory, drinking and making our ruckus right near his black sedan. He and his two friends soon sauntered by, and, since like-minds agglomerate (as like-substances dissolve), Baz and his companions soon joined our impromptu party as well, commenting on just how ridiculously much Sitari and I had lugged out to Santa Barbara for a scarce three days. Once again we laughed, replying that the food and drink was for all to share.

Perhaps it was the critical mass or mystical significance of our three tight bands rolled into one, perhaps it was the presence of such raw potential bringage (a term coined by Sitari), but finally the truck came to ship ourselves, our friends, and of course, too many material goods out to the campsite. Yet our sojourn in the parking lot was fortuitous, for Baz kindly invited Sitari and I to join their camp. So it was that piecemeal we lugged our various containers to a shaded glade nestled against the edge of a hill surrounded on one side with hedges of poison oak. The glade was a perfect camp, secluded, overlooking the workshop stage, just hidden enough to envelope us in a safe haven, yet readily accessible to several of the main stages--the very main stages where, at the peak of break-beat eruptions, we would see visions.

But first, walking around, gathering our bearings, Sitari and I stumbled onto a pack of roving festival hoppers, and all of us rather simultaneously spied a stack of perfectly cut blocks that suspiciously mimicked – no, they were! – giant Jenga blocks. The six of us could hardly believe our eyes, but in a culture founded on participation, there was only one path for us to follow. Sensing the flow of the Tao trickle between nine-inch blocks, round after round passed where all six of us successfully outwitted gravity, eager to punish us if we were too brazen or crass. It was a welcome exercise in acting upon the wu wei, the effortless path of the Tao, finding secret intersections of space were we could insert our essence and surgically re-organize potential energy. As often occurs in Jenga, eventually it was not the removal of a block but the careless replacement of it on top of the pile that caused the tower to fall (another profound lesson!). And when our experiment finally crumbled, something special happened that proved we were no longer trapped in the metropolis. Not a single player decided that they were exempt from replacing the displaced; every one of us helped rebuild the tower to its original specifications, a theme that would be echoed again and again before our sojourn concluded.

Before the night culminated in the awesome thunder of Bassnectar, in the velveteen caress of wooded twilight, I confess I experienced deep moments of intense displacement. While not a professional festival hopper, I do enjoy a good festival from time to time, camping in the wilderness surrounded by artistic evolutions. But here, looking around, every individual I met seemed to achieve an incredible peace, an engagement with the mystic currents that glided invisibly between the oak groves. Uncertainty proliferated in my gut, and for a few brief moments I doubted whether as a neophyte I was worthy to share this place with the evolved spirits surrounding me on every side. I wondered whether we would find that ideal we so hungrily hunted. Then, as if in some synchronic answer to my questioning, a lone hawk suddenly swooped down, talons spread, into a tall tree growing before me. Almost invisible between silhouetted leaves, I watched it nestle into comfort in the woodland paradise it called home. Just like that, riddling my bongos to the beat of a nearby drum circle, my doubt subsided. I knew then that if I had the opportunity to share a place of mystic peace with creatures of such pure magnificence, I had absolutely nothing to fear.

And besides, monkey chant was calling.

I had never witnessed the monkey chant prior to that night, but as I sat at the edge of the circle with Sitari, watching those in the center whoop, deep, bop, sowang and fawoosh their way into humorous communion with ourselves in the rings, I witnessed one of the most pure examples of ego synergy I had ever recalled. Heretofore I've primarily addressed my theoretical concept of ego synergy in fiction, but the concept is a traditional one in the study of organizational behavior, based on observations of how individual humans tend to blend their egos in communities, generating a collective mental state reflecting the cultural dynamics of their overriding environments. Sports arenas and corporations are two Petri dishes of ego synergy we witness every day, while underground parties another example seen by those of us lucky enough to experience such raw displays of power. Monkey chant impressed me greatly, separated as it was from any infrastructure, sound system, architecture or history other than our own primal human need for communal expression. As we formed torso waves, brought our energy to a crest in hooting joy reaching for the sky, we sang out a chaotic prayer welcoming the descending nocturne.

Monkey chant died in reverent silence and the crowd dispersed, so Sitari and I made our way to where Glitch Mob had begun amping up their set. Sitari and I see members of the 'Mob fairly regularly at Space Island, and are continuously impressed and driven by their mad bringage (there's that damn word again!). But here at LIB, edIT, Borreta and the rest of the posse must have implanted auditory cybernetics and fired their laptops in platinum, because every syncopated break lashed out in angular electronic tongues. Floor space became packed under a white parachute canopy intertwined with plastic branches, as a central circular dais sprouted jitterbugging limbs. The gyrating crowd was wrapped around their turntables. From the breaking storm, tweaking samples recalled a mantra of Rage, and hundreds of fists shot out in defiance. Though I've since seen it all again on YouTube, nothing can quite compare to being there and hearing "killing in the name" tear robotically through the air. Apparently Glitch Mob felt the same, evidenced by edIT remarking as their set died down that we had been "the illest crowd they had ever slayed." No doubt – they had pureed our physical forms into cyclone energy, and we were just getting warmed up.

As Glitch Mob departed, leaving a hive of festival hoppers waiting for the main event, a surreal performance manifested on stage. Spontaneously, hundreds sat, echoing the same theme from our earlier Jenga game: a profound and universal acceptance that the joy of the crowd depends on the attitude and behavior of every individual. Respectful, reverent, we sat, hushed, waiting for what was next.

Metallic antlers were implanted into the central dais. A fair brunette drowning in flowing white fabric was chained to its twisted iron spires. Before the imprisoned maiden, a treasure chest glowed eerily. Soon a trilled aria sprang from the woman as two strongmen wearing leather, covered in ink, huffing, licking flame, lit the tips of the metal antlers on fire. An androgynous, angelic figure pirouetted on stage and swooped towards the glowing chest, producing a giant brazen key. Guiding principles sparked in my mind as the Angel unlocked the lid and retreated at the escape of another dark-haired vixen, this one dressed lasciviously in leather. Curvaceously entrancing the audience, she pivoted her hips to the cadence of the soprano's melody. As the angel retreated into the glowing chest, one archetype of floating holiness was replaced by a lusty symbol shedding clothing as her dancing became increasingly frenzied under an undulating opera climaxing in spewing flame. Then, darkness.

We had hardly noticed the new setup on stage through the applause, but as thunder dropped from surround sound, there was little doubt that we had hit the core of the night, the headliner in all his shamanism, Bassnectar. There was a faint, brief whiff of smoke, a remnant of the trail of slaughtered sub-woofers piled neck deep from previous gigs. But neither Sitari, nor I, nor any of the other hundreds there felt too much pity for the fallen as over the next two hours and change, boulders of broken bass were hurled upon our eardrums. Sampling profusely from both Mesmerizing The Ultra and Underground Communication, Bassnectar conjured hurricanes of alto force summoning a grass roots nation to incant its sublime inner essence. Cisco, my spirit siblings, rhymes with muthafuckin' disco. The crowd in that tiny parachute room tripled, and our bringage intensified tenfold. Over the waving heads of dancing fools I spied a troop of roving giraffes, inebriated and grooving in their rave gear between pure white mushroom men and burners decked in dark fur. Above the plastic branches and parachute roof, the sky opened, raining sparks of bolted protoplasm down, energizing hundreds of naked cortices. Heaven and earth merged, ambient ghosts harmonizing on compressed wings, dancing between crystal caverns exhuming a deep, abdominal war cry emanating from the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

In the middle of raving masses, between groaning Richter vibrations, a vision: around my solar plexus shone a fragile yellow ball containing flakes of ultra-purified compassion.

Sitari, dancing yards away, was given a vision as well, but while mine was simple, humble, private, hers encapsulated the vast rush of humanity surrounding us, commanding air molecules being battered about by hammering woofers. Above our heads bloomed billion-watt comets of joysoulnectarflow sweeping over the crowd, floral indigo entities caroming in and out of existence like electric break beat daemons born from one raw source.

After that rush, sleep came easily, with fleeting, elusive dreams.

Awaking in the misty morning, we campers desired only two prizes. The first, a new day every bit as transcendent and explosive as the solar cycle prior. The second, perhaps even more aggressive and aspirational: clean portipotties. But then this second desire came true and the spirit of the forest ( i.e. solid forethought by The Do Lab) allowed us to devirginize fresh holes with processed camping food! We knew then that nothing was impossible, that if a satisfying shit could be had in the woods, surely we bears had tapped deep into the synchronicity highway, that reality was ready to be remolded like wet clay.

And clay our reality became as Sitari and I journeyed past faeries workin' it on the workshop stage, swirling in satin hues, past breaks already pouring from genie-bottle stages. Running into Christian the Blacksmith fiddling with about twenty pounds of potter's clay, we eagerly took the reigns on an art project he had begun earlier. Soon, as others joined in, Christian's diorama of a well and barren trees became surrounded by high walls on which glyphs were etched, idols set, faces weaving into windows, naked bodies swimming through solid walls.

Satisfied momentarily with our contribution to the communal artistic landscape, we wandered aimlessly, drinking tallboys, dancing to breaks, napping in one giant mesh hammock, but it wasn't until the afternoon that our creative energies were able to fully merge into the fast lane. "Hobo is the new tribal!" random psycho clowns shouted, running across the grassy fields around where we had been dancing to the crazed funk of Wazulu the Ill Dravidian. On the sandy dance floor, we again ran into Baz, gettin' busy, poised for ridiculously deep drops with his finger pointed towards the sun, proclaiming the party. Too soon the set concluded, and we three famished travelers headed back to camp headquarters ready for more tallboys and gourmet sandwiches.



As we ate, neither Sitari nor I suspected that what we had been searching for was also hunting for us. It began innocently enough. As it often does, the conversation naturally turned towards ragamuffins. We mentioned the Devil, and though it's cerebral trip was too intense for what either Sitari or I really wanted, it happened (coincidentally?) to be exactly the type Baz favored. And of course, Sitari and I were on the lookout for synchronic ragamuffins on which to meditate, since the last batch had been bunker than a Las Vegas virgin escort. (Coincidentally?) Baz just happened to possess precisely this strain of ragamuffin, and, being in a barter economy, we did not hesitate to trade assets and consider ourselves quite clever in the process.

But when you ride synchronicity, it always rides you back.

As we gathered on grass to perform the exchange, a friend of Baz came to chill as well, a girl named Dorothy, whose spacey façade couldn't hide a worldly, perceptive introspector. Conversation morphed from our current deal to the mali that was running rampant around the campground, to the mystic fluid atmosphere surrounding us as we reclined on loamy cushions shaded by oak. As hawks circled above a fifth person joined us. He seemed to float in from nowhere, to materialize on the wind. One look at our new friend and we instantly recognized an enlightened spirit, his heightened senses, a true hypermage. In his presence, the five of us vibing off of each other, the conversation evolved, jumping frequencies, existing between dimensions. Great works of literature emerged in our shared mental space – commentary of The Illuminatus! Trilogy and associated Robert Anton Wilson adventures bled into Andaraeon Theory, a rare tome of great wisdom. Talk of illumination and poetry sifted into a true connection, and in that pure space, a sharing of mysticism. As we spoke of experiences in which we had touched the divine, it was this magus who managed to trip us out the most. Once, he confided, he had mistakenly ingested over a hundred tabs of LSD; in this altered state of consciousness he crossed a doorway and witnessed the world break apart before him, atomized into ever-smaller bubbles, endless units of infinite.

And so, without consciously searching for it, Sitari and I had found our ideal, hyperintelligent communication with other individuals. True, awake, aware, the afternoon glowed for us as shadows slowly drifted into evening. All revelations end, and perfect moments eventually digested by the samsara of reality. But with the festival still alive and the Tao wrapped around us in a mystic afghan of empowerment, it was impossible to feel anything but the most sublime joy as our small band broke apart. "Thought club" had snuck up on us, we realized, as Sitari and I monkey chanted our little lungs out. Only instead of us holding it, it had held us in its blessed outstretched palm.

Once again monkey chant ended, and once again we trucked to that same parachute room replete with plastic branches, the decks nestled in the trunk of a pretend tree. This time, however, it was StarFire pounding the decks, placing breaks around the bounding banging of his electronic drum and fat piqued bass. Then Freq Nasty took the stage; if Bassnectar had dipped his spindly fingers across the soundscape, Freq Nasty drilled deep, spiraling inward, reversing his flows into slow, methodical stomp diving like cannonball waterfalls off cascading bass scales. Around us danced hundreds of past and future friends, all divine and glowing. One girl waggling adjacently with mischief in her eyes dared us to circle the packed dance floor, and there we went! Bobbing, weaving, flowing our energies around gyrating burners slowly dissolving into deep freaky bass, we reached the front, dwarfed by the energy of the magicians on stage. Indeed, Freq Nasty's progressions were symbolic of the spirit of the festival itself; every time we thought we had reached some core mantra--

womp…womp…womp…womp…womp…womp

--new eruptions of force exploded into

FWAH FWAH FWAH FWAH FWAH FWAH!!!

So it was that after two hours (and two days) of such continuous mindfuckery, we were spent, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Sated on visions, our skin still tickled and tingled with electricity. Though sound systems had subsided at midnight, festival hoppers still swarmed everywhere, gathering in small groups playing instruments, mastering flow toys, dancing under distilled constellations. A few of us gathered around the fire pit, warming our hands and faces, basking like charged cathodes. Suddenly, a bizarre, Italian-accented laugh leapt from the dark, as one unmistakably outrageous demon burst into the circle in tracksuit and voluminous mullet. Mojo Mangina! Scourge of the seven festivals, Mojo cackled and enumerated all the pleasures of owning (and being?) a mangina as he bounced along the stone border caging our fire. We laughed in our illumination, warm and content.

The next morning, after leaving no trace of our presence in that shady green glen nestled under gliding raptors, Sitari and I crept back towards the vortex of Los Angeles. Before submitting again to our modern madness, however, we stopped for burgers at a small joint in Carpinteria overlooking the ocean. As we reclined against boulders, digging our toes into fine white sand, we re-examined again our guiding principles. Sitari had discovered a spiritual toolkit, an indestructible Swiss army knife constructed from a lack of expectations and a daring will to exploit every inch of opportunity to which one is invited in this world.

For me, the vast quantities of mystic electricity that had raged across my system spontaneously congealed into a simple realization. If we are able to breathe, see, hear, taste and feel the Tao, if we can backstroke through its river of awakening, then what is to stop us from being the Tao? What is to stop us from disintegrating our limitations into its molten flow and unifying with the divine on a daily basis? By distilling our powers of compassion we might see that, on a very basic level, we exist as a part of a larger consciousness that can open any door we choose. This was my key, forged from energy of captured lightning catalyzing a monumental shift in perspective. Above our default world, our salty sea of conditioned systems and pigeonholed existences, there floats an primordial orb of fire. It is infinitely aware, and waits patiently for us to embrace it, to spurn the default and customize our own personal surreality. All we have to do to access this ancient power is just lift our eyes towards the light.

Sober Trippin' on the Synchronicity Highway - 4/28/07

When you see the portal, my spirit sisters and brothers, when its siren’s call reverberates through your True Self, open the storm windows of your coelem, merge with that trans-dimensional membrane and adsorb yourself into the infinite…

…Once in a long while, a single day shifts all a human's perceptions. A single day that reveals the power of the mind to tap into reality and mold it, a puppeteer dancing to projections, sane, destructive, artistic, transcendent, all that we have in our hearts....

…by the way, if I've EVER wondered where all the burner drum n' bass was, no longer! At the climax of everything, in the hours treading murkily into a downtown dawn, I witnessed my first live drum n' bass set. Now, I've seen a lot of drum n' bass in my days; perhaps not as much as some, and certainly not as much as the man who shook Earth’s foundations with syncopated bassy bliss, but a lot, and certainly enough to have deity-be-damned skyscraper standards. Yet KJ Sawka was the single greatest live drum n' bass set I've ever seen, and his presence anecdotal proof of the power of synchronicity...

…but if I do this out of order, it'll never come across right. It's gotta be done from the beginning…

…as with many journeys, the origin of action occurs prior to excitement. The thursday prior I had gone running, and as I rounded out my route I had achieved a euphoric state of Zen. Suddenly, from the silence, a phrase materialized in my mind: "To the Sphinx go the Lava People." I had no idea what it meant. But that was okay, because Saturday I was slated to meditate on synchronic ragamuffins with my good friend Sitari (of prior blog fame). We'd been struggling with the purpose and format of a mental construct with which we had been playing. Not knowing what else to call it, we titled our cognitive experiment "thought club" (which we both concede is a terrible name). An alternative to the often mindlessly misunderstood aggression outlook of Fight Club, it was to be a method of more efficient and meaningful human communication. Hyper-intelligent communication, one might say. As in, the telepathy that hypermagi share while navigating dimensions beyond the Astral plane. This was one goal of our meditation, to discover the purpose to our cognitive meanderings. And in an attempt to direct our session I had sketched out some guiding principles:

1) There would be a magic word designed to bring us back to reality (as opposed to other realms we might be flying through.) The secret word was: “ragamuffin.”

2) At one point in the trip, we would see a key. At the right moment, a phrase would be recalled in our brains: “To the Sphinx go the Lava People”

3) The meaning behind the phrase would be one of three pillars of Thought Club…

…Morning mist greeted Los Angeles that Saturday morning as an extraterrestrial seductress, breaking early against a mountain of minds…

…I arrived at Sitari’s place around half-past the solar zenith to see the Brewery Artwalk, a semiannual event where a community of artists, living in a converted Pabst Blue Ribbon factory (of all awesome locales) open up their doors and welcome in the public. With over three hundred lofts to see, there was more than any one person could reach, but Sitari and I accepted this impossible challenge with childlike glee…

…From the first moment, walking into the factory complex, a giant Pegasus reared on hind legs above Mack trucks as if stolen from a monstrous Olympian carousel. Visual art of all shapes and sizes massaged our cortices, skateboards painted in black and white masterpieces, faces blending into faces; floor to ceiling with flamboyant neon in acute angles, crocodiles and mobiles professing grand adoration of L.A.; utter dead tech, chains and metal plates covering entire interiors, metal hooks piercing, blending galleries with a hot-tub, plasma screen, pimped-out bar, multiple make-out spots under a make-shift machine gun nest; birdcage with jawbones surrounded by surrealistic detail of ten thousand rainbow portals into Faerie; god lighting; giant bronzed, brazen cowboy remonstrating randomly; handmade stone jewelry and glass cases with taxedermic butterflies and dove feathers arranged in radial designs approximating pyramids of cloth and chains; Psycho Girlfriend, giant animatronic dolls with eye patches and backpack straps, spork dress, beaver computer, mannequins scantily clad in leather (nice…); The Church of Art, a loft tucked in a corner holding but one old man singing jazz, drumming a cacophony on a single instrument, a conglomerate of horns, toms and bass drums, lamenting the ghost of Hollywood, a specter haunting those failing at fame. Sitari sincerely wishes all of you spirit sisters, brothers, to become one-tenth as awesome as that soul, who, in the twilight of life, has ceased to find fear frightening, bathing and playing in humor ether.

Climbing into the interior of the superstructure, up steel stairs, we penetrated into a maze of art, one interconnected series of rooms holding oils of our executive branch presiding over a crumbling, post-apocalypse with roaring dinosaurs, descending aliens, fallen towers. Adjacently, a polychrome silhouette of Morrison looked appropriately profound drifting between lemon and lime, replete with lettering circling him, the quote his inspiration to challenge the boundaries of consciousness. "When the doors of perception are cleansed, everything appears to man as it truly is: infinite." –William Blake.

Then there was the brief respite from our overwhelming artistic tornado at our Bad Ass Friend’s downtown loft overlooking depot train tracks. (Do you know him too?) We ate Kahlua brownies and talked about tattoos. A little girl named Lux ran around rambunctiously, oblivious to the trappings of adulthood. But larger patterns pulled us into metascopic fates as the afternoon sun waned and downtown turned a faint shade of purple…

…Our meditation called, and we prepared. Sitari gathered her favorite books to visually peruse. She had never meditated on fractilized phychodublimatic ragamuffins before.

As they often do when synchronic ragamuffins are involved, things did not go as planned. We meditated, but very little happened. A modicum of low-level illumination, some silliness. Sparse sparklies, fluid tai chi. We tired, became sober again. She was disappointed but I told her that that is the way it goes with meditation sometimes. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Hungry, we made noodles and tofu with garlic sauce and broccoli. We opened a bottle of chianti and had a quiet, simple meal, a platform from which to decide what to do next.

When in doubt, apparently, burners bathe in art.

What we didn’t realize was that the mental exercise we had conducted prior to our uneventful meditation would restructure the remainder of the night…

…Create: Fixate was bumpin’, an arty Hollywood hangout not quite underground in the metacurrent, not quite languishing in our pop-modern Xanadu. Incredible art, though, Alice's first apartment, magical surrealism snaking up the walls, across the floor, into speakers of breaksologists engineering miracles of sound. Next time you traverse the world’s galleries, spirit sisters and brothers, ask yourself, “how does the art feel?” You may be amazed at how some can tear at you with disturbed neuroses disguised as Mario heads wishing for forty-fives and clock towers, and other canvases squirm about as if animated, dancing with ambient humans to electronica…

…Classy elevators…Fedora is the password…

…Between stone heads curving and denying their own stationary selves, a circle of ivory polypropylene robotic claws curl inward over a garden of potted hand-cacti. Some distance away a switch in a frozen control panel, a bunk activator for this transporter to Moryork (a honeycomb art gallery web of alternate lands, cabinets to ancient empires, sky-scapes scraped from soda cans, waves of materials inundating each other into artistic samadhi. Truly, the gallery is too intense to not command an essay of it’s own. Consider the moment you read this sentence, spirit sisters, brothers, as the event horizon to a wormhole into some future where your soul feasts at Moryork’s table of the surreal)…

…And through this artistic cornucopia at Create:Fixate, Patricio sweeps his fingers along LPs as if they were supermodel clitorises. Dirty wompy breaks syncopate inside our brains and sucker-punch us into participation with the rest of the crowd. A burner girl with rainbow tassels peaking from her dark sleeves twirls the most graceful hoop I’ve yet witnessed. She’s feeding on Patricio as he spins the very track inspiring Sitari’s prior blog entry, and instantaneously we all transform into “creatures of the motherfuckin’ night,” descending into a dichotomous state of primal reflex and psycho-spiritual euphoria. Yet as transcendent as his breaks were as they were injected into our spines, sparking sympathetic neural ganglia like electric chairs, truly the most incredible moment of the day up until then was about to dawn on us:

There they were, a wonderful burner couple wearing black, both pierced to high heaven, sportin’ tats. She word glasses, he a shaved scalp. I think they saw me dancing, approximating inventive geometries, wearing a vintage fedora and my Aenema T-shirt with its dual-irised eye. Perhaps they recognized me as a spirit sibling. “I have something to tell you,” the burner woman said, drawing close enough for me to smell the metal of her nose ring. “An event you must attend. It’s called Lightening in a Bottle, and it will be an amphitheatre in which we spirit children may play in meta-awareness.” Okay, so I paraphrase.

“I’m already going, I say,” which derives a smile and a quick chat about how rocking LIB will likely be, and how sweet Tool already is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the greatest rock bands to grace our ear drums. But the most amazing part of the repartee is not the burner couple, though they are striking, nor the invitation to an event I eagerly anticipate, though I salivate, nor our mutual, genre-agnostic amore for syncopated music, though that especially is portentous. The most amazing part is that her name, her Playa name, is Lady Lava. His, if I’m not mistaken, is Mr. Molten Magma.

Effortlessly, we have met the Lava People. And they are going to the Sphinx.

Instantaneously Sitari and I are dumbfounded by the fact that we have located our spirit siblings through sheer coincidence in this giant cave of slumbering consciousness we call the modern metropolis. True, we were attending a burner-friendly event, so it perhaps was inevitable that we would have been invited to LIB, but meeting the Lava People themselves? I like to imagine that we set the stage for ourselves, programmed within ourselves a struction (as Jaynes would term it) that was mysteriously fulfilled…

…Visions multiply in our minds of Sphinxes stationary on the Nile Delta, deconstructed down to atoms and flowing in the vast joysoulnectarflow of connection between all entities of illusory mass. I realize later that what we have stumbled onto through our experimental combination of meditation, art and good old fashioned magic, is the Tao, that mystic middle path connecting ancient sages with a plane of reality which is not reality, but indeed a simple singularity window into the divine…

…Though the day transpired in a single instant, my paltry words failing to describe such intimate magnanimity must be linear regardless of how cogent my communication is. On we go, still gearing up, co-combustion engines defying the physics that will eventually wear our bodies into the ground. We must delay that inevitable impermanence and subsume ourselves in every moment alive!

Soon after, Create:Fixate is about to close but we are nowhere near any forks which might prematurely stick us into oblivion. We truck to Space Island. I wonder how this night can continue to escalate, but my doubt is short lived. We transform for at least the fourth time in twelve hours as we penetrate that nondescript warehouse door into some wonderland cross-section dissected from a future human age. Frosted film spread from the entryway into darkness is sated with glowing pictographs on cinderblocks, wrought-iron angels and ceiling canopies hiding fur-lined alcoves. edIT soon saunters on stage, maestro of a brigade of laptops, effects pads, etcetera. Powering amplified bursts of sonic breaks, two-step moves multiply as the floor crowds with other spirits unwilling to quit their journey at some arbitrary night’s end, preferring instead to watch the dawn slip up over the urban landscape.

As if a follow on to the sign of the Lava People, a dear friend of mine mysteriously appears from nowhere, converging in synchronicity. In the shadow of a painted fiery phoenix screaming across imaginations, questions are raised, and conversation abounds about the creative process, artists musing on the muse and the long, arduous process of sharing one’s artistic vision with the community. Sitari is elsewhere, and as is her seductress’ nature, has procured herself a momentary lover, macking inside the fur-line alcoves vibrating above speakers. These are precious quiet moments, separated from the driving, breaking bass but still near to it, just teetering on the edge of transcendence long enough to bask in the comfort of love.

Then, just when we least expect it, the culmination. All the proof has already been seen, integrated into our True Selves. But, as if a reward for our, not faith exactly, but perhaps trust in our own hypermage natures, we bear witness to the most purple-haired dope-ass D ‘n’ B set of my young existence. KJ Sawka, the man! This myth and new legend rises on stage! In flurried hours of fury he crouches above his drum kit as a warlock intent on sublimating the junglists’ alchemical quintessence: live drum n’ bass. For years I had dreamed of making, hearing, appreciating drum n’ bass not only blasted from speakers, but built from chords and toms in real time. Yet KJ Sawka did me one better: like a true musical grenadier, he blasted boundaries, a one man army simultaneously sampling junglist beats, pounding a confluence of syncopated drum rolls, fills, beats, progressions. His jungle was a cabal of ebony will-o-the-wisps tempting the freshly dead off the New Orlean’s bayou. Or better yet, an ancient seismic force ripping apart the crust of ego, threading new magma along our subconscious sea beds, conjuring forth islands of present awareness between the vast twin currents of memory and dreams. We hardy few surrounded the stage as the night unraveled before our tenacity and the sky paled, hidden behind cloth eraser clouds. In the dawn we drank in a new sun salutation, intoxicated by fermented beats and dank, dark agglomerations unveiling our hidden humanity…

…It was one of my most memorable meditations, that sober trip down the synchronicity highway. A scuttled ritual did nothing except cleanse our doors of perception, but that was enough. Our own expectations of spiritual transcendence evolved along a new order of magnitude, revealing infinite doorways open to any following the path of the Tao…

…And I can’t wait to travel to Santa Barbara, to immerse myself in Lightning in a Bottle, to bask with you, my spirit siblings, in our amphitheatre of meta-awareness…