BURNING MAN 2013 Cargo Cult: Part 1 - Virgin No More

These fabulous feet enjoying this year's Burning Man alien/UFO related theme!

At long last, 20 years in the making, I attended my first Burn and am a Burn virgin no more! Now I see what the hoopla is all about.

It truly is a remarkable and hard to describe event, involving among other things, hundreds of official art sculptures and thousands of art occurrences/happenings/events co-created by the over 60,000 people who set up camp for a week in the middle of a harsh, barren, dusty landscape. A magical wild city pops up like Brigadoon for a short period of time, then vanishes leaving no trace behind for the rest of the year. During its brief time it is a non-stop city that pulsates with life 24/7, containing everything from the sacred to the profane. People ride around in decorated bikes and strange art cars spew fire or glow with lights, many of them thumping along to the pulse of a DJ playing music and gathering the masses to follow and dance alongside. Various workshops are held all week long and the main economy for the week is gifting - so once you buy your ticket in (and bring along everything you need to survive a week) then everything you experience is free.

The week culminates in the burning of some of the sculptures from Thursday through Sunday night, reminding us all about the ephemeral nature of our lives. For me, watching sculptures burn is both a heart-wrenching and breath-taking experience. More on this aspect in another blog.

Feeling the smile of a first Burn

I still find it hard to believe I have known about Burning Man since 1993, when I did some research about the origins of rave culture and alternative art scenes for a speech & rhetoric class presentation. Incidentally according to my research, some of it comes from the legacy of good ol' Woodstock and Woodstock like events in Great Britain - where traveling bands of a music and arts scene would just  take over a meadow or farm pasture and camp out doing performances until they were kicked off the land - eventually making their way to into abandoned warehouses or applying for venues.

As a performance artist in Los Angeles, I have hovered around some of the Burner culture and friends who go for years, but never found the right moment for actually attending. I appreciated the Burn from afar, knowing that in some way my life was filled with similar experiences, but without really knowing what a true Burning Man experience was. All that changed when some new friends encouraged me persistently to attend. My Labor Day was uncharacteristically open, so I figured the time had come at long last to dive in. It was both what I expected and beyond what I expected. One cannot truly grasp the full scope of the event until they are there. I took to it fairly easily, as the spirit and aspects of it are all familiar terrain for me, but I still found myself in awe by its staggering and beautiful magnitude.

The Sunny Mooners camp tower and sign at sunset - designed by Gregory Frye

I attended with a new theme camp group called The Sunny Mooners. I wanted to create something for each member of our 10 person group, but knew I didn't have a ton of time, so decided that making some camp themed bandanas would be great, as I heard they were essential garb to have handy for the heat and dust. Winds frequently kick up the dust and a mask and goggles are needed in such times. While in Iowa over the summer, I bought some material from my aunt's quilt shop in the small town where I grew up (the beautiful Inspirations Quilts). I found two different batik fabrics, one that looked like abstract suns and one abstract moons. I sewed the two lovely fabrics together using four different colors of thread, did some trim work, and viola - we had our Sunny Mooner bandanas! I loved seeing the various members proudly wearing their swag out on the Playa (the desert stretch of land where the art sculptures are), and it felt good to immediately be part of the gifting spirit of Burning Man - which happens to be the theme of another blog...

Passing out the stack of bandanas

Batik fabrics suggesting our theme camp

XCountry Adventure: Kansas & Oklahoma Haunts

Fabulous feets at the cross roads

A few more pictures from my drive across country from Iowa to Los Angeles. This part of the drive was through Kansas and Oklahoma, which included some rather fascinating abandoned areas. The gloomy rain clouds also contributed to the desolate atmosphere. I find a kind of haunted, yet serene beauty in places like these. Click on image to see it full size. Enjoy! 

 

Snowflake is a wonderful xcountry travel companion!

XCountry Adventure: The Pollinator Prairies of Madison County

Fabulous Feet enjoying the prairie

Enjoy these photos from an hour spent among the prairie around the Roseman Bridge of Madison County, Iowa. While on my drive from Iowa City to Los Angeles, I stopped here in search of a very special locally made type of honey I had purchased from the gift shop the year before. Alas, the store was closed, but I enjoyed engaging with the various pollinators surrounding the area instead. The sight of around a dozen different giant yellow swallowtail butterflies among the prairie sunflowers was inspiring.

Roseman Bridge (where "Meryl and Clint" fell in love)

Can you spot the two butterflies bookending the pic?

Down by the riverbank, some tiny Eastern Tailed Blues gather together for suckling the moisture

You can see the flash of blue on top their wings.

Underside of a Comma Butterfly

Comma Butterfly with wings open

A popular thing for visitors is to sign their name on the bridge, as this German tourist is doing.

A scene from another era

FAETOPIA - The Big Joy San Francisco Adventure Part 1

 

Performing a piece celebrating the work of James Broughton aka Big Joy

During the week leading up to gay pride weekend in San Francisco, I participated in FAETOPIA, a pop-up queer arts, ecology, theater and community center that ran June 21st – June 28th 2013 organized by members of the SF Radical Faerie community (in particular Kyle DeVries, Zac Benfield, & William Stewart). I was honored to perform 3 different performance pieces on 3 different nights in Faetopia and as a result get to connect with and view the work of many wonderful creative people. Faetopia coincided with The Frameline Film Festival, so I managed to also view 3 great documentaries on queer subject matter. Then to cap off this fabulously festive week, the Supreme Court made their ruling on Marriage Equality! It was a thrilling time to be in SF.

Part of my excitement for attending Faetopia was for the opportunity to perform a piece honoring the work of James Broughton. This year the documentary about him called BIG JOY was released in festival circuits, giving audiences a glimpse into the fascinating life of this most unusual filmmaker and poet. I had previously only known a mere sliver of his work, but thankfully the creation of this film brought more of his words and visuals to my attention. I had no idea just how powerfully his poetry would resonate with my being until I started researching his body of work. Mark Thompson, the gay activist-author and friend of James, urged me to focus my attention on a section of his writing titled "Hymns To Hermes." 

Broughton gave up the opportunity to be a Hollywood film director (offered to him after he won the 1954 Cannes Film Festival's Award for Experimental Film, which was handed to him by none other than my favorite artiste Jean Cocteau - I love that connection), and moved to San Francisco to be part of the beat generation of poets. Broughton's poetry is a feast of the senses and a expression of a joyous, witty, free spirit.

I was quickly able to find 5 poems that I felt could be constructed into a short performance piece that had it's own built in story-arc of sorts. I had just a week to work on staging and memorizing the poems I selected from "Hymns to Hermes." I was inspired by the visuals of one of his films, "Dreamwood" and so used images from the film to inform my performance. I made the performance a bit like a ritual, in which I sacrifice a bird that symbolizes my body. I then reach into the bird and pull out strands of colored beads and pearls instead of guts. I then ripped the wings off the bird, turned them inside out to reveal rainbow feathers and placed them upon my feet like the wings of Hermes. I then hoisted my legs into the air and invoked Hermes to make love to me (as Broughton's poem so aptly describes). Finally I rose back to my feet and recited Broughton's passionate piece urging Hermes to "relight our blithe birthright."

The performance went extremely well. I was so lost in the moment, only afterwards in talking with friends did I recognize how much "hissing" there was throughout the performance. Hissing, by the way, is a very good thing for the Radical Faeries, it's a way of subtle cheering without interrupting the flow of energy that clapping would. I also meet Broughton's partner, Joel Singer, whom greatly enjoyed the performance and gave me permission to create a full-length show based on Broughton's works. I had not intended to create a show, but after reading many of his works, I found that they inspired me to create an hour long performance. In the same way that I created "Cavafy's Caress" based on the poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy, I am now excited to develop a piece utilizing Broughton's words and imagery to create a one-man show - a delicious feast of words and visuals. And thus, a new mission is underway to do just that!

with Joel Singer & Mark Thompson backstage after the performance