I live here

It is Sunday night, 7:30 PM. I would have been nervously awaiting my ride, scheduled to be here at 11. My hallway would have been stacked with blue Rubbermaid crates filled neatly with socks and t-shirts, dried fruit, batteries, dust masks, and all variety of other supplies to be carted out the open stretches of Nevada. Instead unpacked clutter lies about, frozen in a state of abrupt reversal. I would have been going to the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, nearly 7 hours from here. But I’m not. And I’m so relieved.

This year would have been my fourth visit. My first was brief - just a few days - before I had to return home and catch a flight. The next two were the full week. This year, I even had a decent tent. But my feelings have changed since I purchased my ticket in January.

For me Burning Man has provided an environment where irreverence and impropriety prevail. To see adults behaving absurdly, differently, empowered in their own identities, has been rattling. The headspace of dutiful repression appears as a choice in the context of rampant cultural discord. This is a useful thing. Shame becomes much easier to flush away as the taboo becomes the familiar and the awkwardness is dispelled by an economy where everything is free.

But what value is freedom of choice without a context in which to choose? What basis do I have to decide what I want, if and when I am free? I am a proponent of going with what is. That seems like a good starting place to me. The purpose of our experience is up for universal debate. But the experience of our experience is a given. As I open my consideration to broaden what it is I can sense and feel, it becomes apparent that comfort in the longest term requires a dutiful awareness of how short-term actions fit the program. That is, chasing the next step without a clear goal does not release the tightness of fear of mortality. We fear our death, our injury, the pain of what might happen, and we indulge in the escape of self-admiration and general apathy and their false sense of safety. But fitting with the program means the program takes care of that. Something sent me here, this little biological blip riding the pulse of my biography. My cycles tug and swirl to and from other cycles. If I let feeling flow, I recognize the value of my basic needs, lack of pain, comfort of warmth and shelter from the elements. I’m further eased by presence of food and water and the company of an ecosystem in which I can sustain these resources.

Thus, the idea that thousands of humans - some of the most well off on the planet - burn their extra resources to haul excessive amounts of supplies and gear to a location whose nature is entirely inhospitable seems counter to any long term valuable system of method. It may be that the value of the experiences of those involved makes this use of resources worthwhile. For me, it is not.

People all around us are actually suffering, trapped in situations of pain and scarcity driven by distribution of resources that occurs unfairly. It seems to me to be a given that resources that come from the common pool should benefit the common pool. That is only possible if common needs are assessed.

Burning Man is expensive to attend. It costs resources from the real world to make that world work. And the haves and have-nots maintain their positions. It's clear that some folks have cash flow and some don't, even in a gift economy. So what does it prove to build a new innovative equitable commmunity whose potential to work falters against the basic trend of life - to seek and retain resources sustainably - and whose accessibility requires real world wealth? For all that attend, how many wish they could but can't due to cost, health issues, work requirements, and other inescapable obligations? Not to say that none can play while some work. But isn't play more fun when the game is transferrable? When the skills make us better? Isn't play just what animals do to learn and practice behavioral value? Isn't that why it makes us laugh?

I see The Green Man as a disingenuous attack on the environment passing itself off as something different. To suggest that the event can acknowledge the issues relating to pollution and the destruction of natural capital while polluting and destroying that capital makes no sense. The amount of wood alone that gets burned! And the fuel of so many trucks, and RVs, and flights. And the waste generated. And the time and attention that could be placed on existing problems. What a fuck you to the rest of society that those with access to comfort and ease would leave it behind to amuse themselves with a wasteful conquering of inhospitable land. That given the chance to build art and community we would leave the stable present and choose to put our efforts into one smoldering pop of amusement. How can we give up on everything that lasts?

The creativity that is exhibited on the playa is profound. I'm in awe of the coordination and skill with which so much art, culture, performance, and style gets demonstrated. True their are drunk idiots in rubber chicken hats walking around. But there are also marvelous works of steel and fire and paint and sand. These are truly valuable contributions. Yet still, I advocate art as a force of healing to be applied to the wound, not some place distant. To fix society we must stay in tune with society, accept its principles, its restrictions, and push hard with our art and our will to promote strength and joy.

This year I felt dread as I learned of the heavy winds and dust storms that I was meant to face. A present reminder of what I was facing, and with just 3 days to go I questioned my motives. I picked up vinegar and lemon juice and lotion to counter the elements. And as I mulled over the distaste brewing in me, I wondered why I would leave the comfort of my apartment to access an environment where I could act more freely. An environment that is bad for my health, and in which no other form of life chooses to exist.

Isn’t the reason that I have resigned that it’s not available here? Doesn’t leaving society to setup a new society establish the underlying separation of Burning Man from the rest of the world? Is there really any value in having something in isolation that makes no sense in context? It’s the human context that is after all where all of the rest of us live all of the rest of the time.

I have friends going to the event this year, and I truly hope they have life-affirming experiences and pursue their intentions as they see fit. But I also hope that a recognition of the dominance of our own biology stays present in their festivities. I hope the realities of health and suffering and the interdependency of living systems - the ideals of the ecologically aware - shine through their experiences. I hope that people leave the event feeling more aware of their sensations, more grateful for their ease, and more energized to facilitate those conditions for the rest of us who did not attend. And perhaps some value will bleed beyond the harm.

Mia Mia Mia

And so it happened that I noticed an SF show, while checking in with Mia Doi Todd on MySpace. She'd been lurking in my top friends for some time, though I hadn't listened to or thought about her music in months.

The Make Out Room on 22nd is a kitschy bar known for its dance DJs. I'd never seen a live performance there. Bart Davenport had a sweet voice and charming stage presence, though still I managed to distract myself at the bar.

Once again, just as at the last show, I swirled around in my stool and was looking straight into smiling eyes. I - naturally - quickly looked away only to lose that gaze to the stage. Luck resumed with a chair opening up at a front row table, and the show began.

Mia pumped her harmonium with her foot while fingerpicking artfully on a nylon string guitar accompanied by a bookish fellow in orange-button-up on congas, cajon, and other hand percussion. The setup was exceptional. Warm and rich tones, good balance between rhythm and melody. Mia is a good song writer, intellectual yet open hearted, I tried not to stare.

I thanked her and her accompanist more than once, but still yearned to dig in with my will. How could I ask a stranger to join me for something personal? But music, with her. What a communion. Aren't people looking for that? I certainly stand by what I could offer, and yet I don't know her, she's on stage, and this is the kind of mentality that drives people mad. But is it? I mean, continuity is the path of existence, and shouldn't people find ways to interact, and pass along their ways, and wares, and arts?

And so I left quickly, annoyed by my own arrogance or peculiar sense of ambition. I don't know what it's like to be immersed in music as a profession. To create and get by with it. To accept it as your identity and be accepted by a public who offers presence and attention.

Perhaps in that state, musicians abound, and opportunities for collaboration or concert are neverending. But from where I sit, the music swells in me and stretches to grab the next pool of support like droplets combining as they drip along glass. Mia Doi Todd, won't you sing with me. I'll wrap your voice in the sing song clicks of my fingertips and pull at your melodies with the gentle harmony of timidity.

Or maybe I'll just show up for another show the next time you're around. Thanks in advance for the entertainment.

Gibberish

The act of externalizing requires internalizing as I see it, at least as it relates to expression. An authentic message exists before it is sent. And so writing to others, is especially in this context, my truest act of self-exploration.

Today I am heartbroken. Sad at the loss of someone close to me. The inability to find a way to interact in a situation when contact is everything. It’s only through my contact with my environment that I feel my existence. And only through contact with other points of consciousness that I feel its context.

I have good intentions but years of ingrained behaviors. I participate, but still yearn for the chance to step out, put down the load of understanding, and hold still, as it were, in a system whose entire nature is based on motion.

I have made choices which go against my nature. I have seen the value of coordination in the existence of all structure - their nature a coordination of their parts. I see this in structure both physical, emotional, social, political, astrological...

I know that joy is not a defensible position. I know that ease is not the state in which we are to constantly operate. I accept that oscillation between states is the universality of the universe. That my life and my choices are granular instantiations of the basic oscillations that led to me. My lifestyle is a polyrhythm of my matter and my soul, and my ability to cooperate with others - people in this case - is the difference between locking into groove with the band and banging out notes on my own.

Synergy. When you notice it, you’re already there. In an experience that is only credible as an experience, awareness is place. To know of what is, is to be among those things. To realize injustice is to have it there in your world, salient and addressable.

So there you stumble on knowledge, hoping for one thing, finding another, gaining one solution only to realize it opens into an entire realm of unnoticed problems. Hallways that are really doors, but only when you notice their locks.

I am heartbroken, sad and teary. Feeling the loss of structure in my social order. Feeling the burden of choice that I am closer to the beat of a pulse that thumps on me as I jostle against it.

Today is a day to see past the smoke. If an end means a new beginning, then what really must happen is change. The motivations to clarify what wasn’t working, to conflict with peaceful denial, means that I now must not deny the reality I’ve uncovered. Underneath the instability was error. Error that can be dealt with.

Shame is a poor resource for the open hearted. Sensitivity demands respect. Certain things simply cannot be accepted in detail. Too much information is too much.

Every time a thing branches, old branches become roots for new ones. New branches become petals for old branches, and new petals form roots for other petals. This is the reality of what I face. At what point do you address the branch, or the root? How grounded does a thing need to be to take flight? How far can a thing fly without losing touch with the ground?

Gibberish is a distraction and yet verbalizing is the state of internalizing thought. WIthin the chaos is a pattern - more than one - infinity. Today’s pattern is sadness, heartache, a desire to exhaust the smoking pattern of loss.

Tomorrow will be something else. Better or worse. I am your unnoticed pattern. I am your hope and my activity. Now go and act with discretion.