On a flatbed truck, racing toward a victorian house, we’d been scrambling around on the roof, affixing security cameras on empty ladders & myself & a whiskey devil glanced at the nebulous sunrise. it was exploding. it was a madman of pink and orange, racous over miles & miles of the most expansive meadows of acres of brightest broken egg yolks marigolds, orangey & luminous, the color was mashed with saffrons and poppies, skyscraper sunflowers, there was clouds of the sunset, dispersed in balls & we could see the sun laid before us,
on a platter of panorama, like it was our job to name colors & save dreams for the blind. what are dreams like for the blind? the truck was going so painfully slow, even though we were racing & some of us had donated our toes. the texture of burlap hung heavy with the thought of missing that photograph. of the sunrise, for the cities & plagued us ’til we leapt off that flatbed, barefoot, racing for our silver boots to get back out there, to stand in the mist until, the color changed & we were lost forever.
as we ran, the grass belched with moisture under our feet, rapid to announce the coming daylight.
if only my words were liberated enough to describe that spectrum, i’m sure it made a meaning for meditation or something to dissect with fingers upon waking, before fleeing through my palms, slithering through my sleep & back to the nexus of the elastic, to make me pull at my strawberry braids, frothing about my city,
muttering;
A few years back, i let someone gain access to my online journal that i didn’t know very well. At the time, it was locked to only friends, and this person let something slip when interacting with me.
“Mary — were you high when you wrote that prose?”
For those of you who aren’t tremendously familiar with my extracurricular activities, i’ll mention that i’m generally sober. I don’t need alcohol or other unnamed substances to enter a state that will allow me to access something joyous, something strange, something feathered & palpable to… do something different.
I had a visual feast earlier, spending time on my own, staring at images that evoked a sort of understanding of material driven-ness to the current state of affairs. As i walked to my car on my own, stairs up to the moon, i fingered a thought:
“As we keep getting bigger, so do our disasters.”
I drove home, weaving together those black sheep, the thoughts that don’t fall into a defined paradigm,
and as i was leaving the desert, my back was slightly turned to a friend,
who said:
“All those really good writers, i’ve met them, and they’re just weird.”
Here’s a few thoughts; damaged, probably not what you think i mean, or what i meant to say, but because i can. I’ve spent too long hesitating, being afraid of my art — of being too much, of an answer i don’t want to gain, of generic metaphors or words that will return to me, at moments where i’m unprepared for the repetition in someone else’s mouth.
But now, here’s to letting go. To engorging more words, with spontaneous moments, to more life like this one i’m here for.
Still life, waiting for the tune to begin. As elusively as a glance upward, toward the moon – an indication of the disasters growing bigger or smaller, in our hearts, in our minds, in our water –
in the water.
in the water.
So, objects remind us of those moments. Those moments we had & cannot return, a still life fixated on what was once, what passed, what was meant to be.
Blood on our chins, roses in our mouth, sunset in our thoughts, scraped & bruised from the merry go-round, stripes & pies pulled together for what, a moment alone to reflect?
this is the sound of — the what?
A girl, manifested on the cliffs, a pagoda filled with, illuminated with, all alone & glowing red, bushes & trees stumbling nearby exclaiming –
on a mountain road, swinging the moon, like bees, the lines & the telephones, shadows poking at coyotes & glowing like porn through the windows –
two am, a swirl of red & white twirling, wrapped up around the shoulder, or should it be hot pink? marie antoinette wigs? white? a curl, the juxtaposition of witchcraft,
and she wanted to choose the scent spellbound, for all those teenaged years she midst, in the arms or hands of the winding, the almond glow & tang, bottles lined on windowsills underhanded by the dogged moon.
Ripping the net, open to little stones flashing in photoshop in each diagram, leaning back in a green sequinned dress or an orange ruffle, fluff, flurry of glass boys & boys.
oh, that diamond of late night thoughts & feather butterflies, to the luxury of alone, to the quiet murmur of just you, and thoughts, and high heeled shoes, and knowing that the sentimental & the shallow & the meaning & the beastliness of existence is all tied to those fucking objects, that will propel us to the answer of untimeliness.
Twisting & crawling & being a golden damask & a fallen fringe & a haunted eye & a corner array of rainbows & the biggest, gaudiest richest, heartburn for the brain that you can possibly fathom, sliding down your throat like an accidental belch on alcohol, the acid strumming in throat, a harpist fucking off purposely.
Your brain caught up to smoking lilies. Your eyes caught up to the sound, waving purple & luminescent, guilty scent of lavender, you say what is in your heart & mind, but you don’t call, because we’re communication on the keys of my typewriter, just the words black & solid, just the sounds echoing, barking late into the night, because no one else is awake to hear it, night all, we feel solidarity in our alone because allegedly the whole world is awake, just not where we can see it.
SEE IT. GOLD. AFRICAN SAHARA. YOUR BURNING TRICK to your GLAZED MIND. We’re awake. We’re awake. Those fucking metaphors are awake, tricking you into thinking your mind. Those fucking minds. Those nuisances. Those minds. Those disparate thoughts. Those minds. Smoking. Being. Flowering. Opiates. NO MORE, SAY the sober,
but the drugs think about it, even in the sober, those crystals & those beds & those animated melatonin & the vitamins & the herbs & the fantastic moments where everything is so sharp it stabs you in the eye with a thousand midgets dancing under a burning tree, a baseball bat pyramid with the laser in a corner, where each solid wood core meets,
where did we get to all these materials mashed down, so far from the source? The distance from the source measures how much we feel that apocalypse is nigh. THAT IS NIGH. THE BEST is NIGH. FORTNIGHT OF WAVERING IS NICE. We’re all perfected, in our insecurities about dying alone, but let us be human, let us
I woke up this morning feelin’ a little homesick, so i thought i’d share songs with you that bring me early morning sunrises watching bikes do lazy circles in the long shadows of art sculptures, people dancing under the fading stars drinking tea, trampoline bounces, houses on wheels, flocks of unicorns, long desert drives & everything that the pilgrimage to the playa provides.
“Avalon” by Juliet
My first journey to burning man, my rideshare popped this CD in & we grooved through the pine trees up the 395, PVC pipes sticking out my hatchback until we arrived in a dust storm.
“For Your Pleasure” – Fred Everything Featuring Karl the Voice
I feel that electronic music resonates deeply with people that attend burning man, because the treble & bass replicates the intense highs & lows of being in a socially unrestricted environment that encourages one to live in the moment. This is one of those pleasurable songs that sounds like a warm afternoon on an art car, or a breeze on a 50 foot platform alone watching a sunset.
“Glitterball” & “Hayling” by FC Kahuna
FC Kahuna has some great dancey beats like you’d hear at the deep end — Hayling is an exception, one of my friends mentioned that they’d play it while coming over the 447 every year…
“Gypsy Queens” by Balkan Beat Box
One morning as the sun was rising, i was dashing down a street to find a portaloo, and i came across an entire New Orleans Paddleboat on wheels & it had an entire band playing interstellarethnomash music, similar to Balkan Beat Box. I stopped & did a jig in the street. Totally parade worthy!
“Dust Devil” by Butthole Surfers
I’ve never heard this song at Burning Man, but if DPW had a theme song… “A flaming mass of oil & gas… and screams of ecstasy!”
“Freak Out” by Colorshow
Some of my burner crew has this awesome Pop Hop band called Colorshow. Last year, one of my friends rode up to our camp on a giant banana blaring this song. Yes, we’re gonna freak that ass out.
This is just a short compilation of music that brings me back to Black Rock City – how about you? Any songs that bring you the playa? Please share!
A coupla months ago, i was whisked out of town by my dear friend, Matt. We’ve gone on many adventures together to an amazing spot in the Sequoia National Forest, called Remington Hot Springs. Some bastards want to blow it up, so go sign the petition after the link.
Anyway, when we were out there adventuring & waiting for the moon to rise, we came up with a neat project. Since i just happened to have bubbles & heart shaped sunglasses & Matt had a 6 million candle power flashlight, inspiration struck & amazingness was born.
You’ll need the following:
♥ a really dark location outdoors (or indoors would work, but the night sky is pretty amazing, and the flashlight makes a really neat disappearing spotlight into the stars)
♥ a flashlight with million candle power
♥ sunglasses
♥ bubbles
Prop the flashlight upright toward the sky. Put on sunglasses & proceed to blow bubbles OVER the flashlight (the sunglasses help protect your eyes, because it is really, really, really bright). The bubbles look like phenomenal exploding rainbows!!! Photos don’t do the beauty justice! Try it out for yourself…
I think it would have been really neat to have varying sized bubble wands & bubble guns. What about a field of people doing this over lots of flashlights? I think my head would explode with the colorful beauty!
Afterward, Matt & I ended up hanging out for hours in the hot springs under the full moon. Lovely. More photos of the hot springs on my flickr.
