My mother, who has gone, has described it as anything you want it to be - a defenition so broad and imprecise as to be applicable to everything and so, meaningless. I would narrow it to: many refined and intense potentialities existing purposefully and by necessity within a specific band of experience. Not much better, but then you would have to desribe the band, which will flumox one by not being handily two dimensional.
Two things create necessity: the desert (which many say is out to kill you, but like the sea is indifferent) and the mass volume of souls present. On the one hand it is the most crass and twinkling two step bass to which the Eurotrash and their close cousins of the Silicon Valley flock to and beat upon as moths' wings - the faux fur and glitter set. On the other hand it is a locus of mystical experience for those so spiritually rootless and undefined that they must, they cannot cohere alone - the incoherant hippies and put upons putting faith in the universe and not much else - leastwise themselves. On another hand the industrious, the proud, the meglomaniacal welders and beat-uponers who sumon energies and laboring minions and produce labrinous artworks often broad and superficial, occassionally profound. On a fourth hand, the working-man outcasts - bitter and black who strive in self imposed ignomy months before and after, surveying and staking and striking and pulling and directing and always always it was better before. On a final hand, everyone else - the vast majority - the normal to the unreal with toes in the sand and hands on many small sticks and cups and prayers and pills.
And I - who have been three times now, and each time leave with ambiguous sentiment - I am generally of that final camp. But bitterly must aknowledge that, though I have added to the miasma of dwarved art, and though I have helped my fellows as they were before me, and though i sought to express what to me is not ever really unexpressed, to me it really is a very big and very cool party and I share some vulgarity with the flybys (though I do avoid the drum and the bass).
This year, however, I went undercover with a schism of the fourth group, the Gate Perimeter and Exodus Crew - the guardians between this boundary and the next, always looking out or in, and dissapointed or perhaps relieved of full and direct participation. Their palatial headquarters is 'the Black Hole' which it indeed is, with the gravitational force of a well stocked bar and surley but convivial codependents. A Cheers for the motley goth damaged with parent issues and desperate need to be capable and to be seen as capable, even at their most abandon - the control factor of anarchy. I felt like Hunter S amongst the Hells Angels, belonging through will and willingness, but not through belonging.
I took as my nome de event 'Minotaur', which surprisingly was accepted, and to the camp behind me, on who's porch my own tent opened, I believe I was a minor celebrity. My goal for the week was to show up to my (gate) shifts as fully capable as superhumanly possible given the other goals: to willfully participate in the desert's efforts to destroy my body through deficiency of sleep, sufficiency of alcohol and various narcotics, and finally, to do it all with style. It was this last, I believe, that endured me to my neighbors. No matter how deficient my serotonin, I stood straight and clear eyed and happy and well put together, in a sharp suit perhaps.
I went alone. I hitchhiked. I joined no camp. I arrived at midnight and set camp without help. I rutted in spiritual solitude. The people I hoped to see, I did not see. I danced to no-wave for hours in a foggy room. I met the dawn sun at the trash fence with nothing but two bleary eyes and regret. I washed myself of name and titles. I was no thing save Minotaur, roaming neighborhoods with calm eyed curiosity, sexuality clipped to my belt in my trusted hide paddle, throwing cards of mysterious prognostication to strangers.
There was the day the slow build of heavy desert rain woke me before dawn. The beats upon the canvas of my tent set my dreamless sleep to syncopation. When I was finally at sea on a soggy raft I woke and the thunder began its insensate approach like herd bison.
Rain then thunder then lightening. I got up and slipped naked into the rain. The air had not just taste but density -- I was swimming in ozone. Not a soul was in sight and the intermediate light revealed no time. I was floating in timelessness alone. Then without warning, but with all the warning of the strikes before closer and closer, yet still without warning, lightening broke in half the moment - the former on one side, the present on the other. And I was released and fell to ground under my feet and felt the naked vulnerability in the smoking dawn, air eyes and ears shattered, giddy with nearness to blind mortality.
We taunt the fragility of life and relations. In the face of chance and the arbitrary we lean on the table. We suck at the bones of the earth having scraped off the flesh. We drink-me-eat-me that which would kill us. We smoke we fight and laugh. We venture to create and we burn what we have made.
There was the night I walked among the useless exuberance of humanity burning light and heat and noise. I walked with two friends and held them in two hands. I guided them as they mushroom crystalized the spectra. One, in himself, we set down and he found a small patch of stars. One, with her eyes aflame, skipped across the plain delighted and engorged on inputs.
There was the working day shift laying miles of cones like a cool hand road crew between two broad indifferent skies.
There was the night I howled and slurred with boozy strangers at a bar on a corner and staggered off together muttering plans like shore leave sailors
There was the night, my penultimate night, of the Gate, Perimeter, Exodus Party -- an event that heartened to the way it was before anarchy, in scale, becomes dangerously riotous. I walked the knife's edge between the control and destruction. I ate the wrong eat me and willed within against my valiant heart, my too tired body and those damned fungi. For four hours of palpitation and seamed torn reason I pitted sheer will to be and to appear capable. And then will was victorious, I ramped back up to firecracker laughter and dusty pickup bed rides.
There was the night I found a man crying, crying that he dreamed and dreamed he would burn in hell he was condemned Dig deeper I said dig deeper than their paltry hell, get cast out of your own garden with your own Adam and Christ. And three day latter he walked out of the desert and thanked me.
There was the day the slow build of heavy desert rain woke me before dawn. The beats upon the canvas of my tent set my dreamless sleep to syncopation. When I was finally at sea on a soggy raft I woke and the thunder began its insensate approach like herd bison.
Rain then thunder then lightening. I got up and slipped naked into the rain. The air had not just taste but density -- I was swimming in ozone. Not a soul was in sight and the intermediate light revealed no time. I was floating in timelessness alone. Then without warning, but with all the warning of the strikes before closer and closer, yet still without warning, lightening broke in half the moment - the former on one side, the present on the other. And I was released and fell to ground under my feet and felt the naked vulnerability in the smoking dawn, air eyes and ears shattered, giddy with nearness to blind mortality.
We taunt the fragility of life and relations. In the face of chance and the arbitrary we lean on the table. We suck at the bones of the earth having scraped off the flesh. We drink-me-eat-me that which would kill us. We smoke we fight and laugh. We venture to create and we burn what we have made.
There was the night I walked among the useless exuberance of humanity burning light and heat and noise. I walked with two friends and held them in two hands. I guided them as they mushroom crystalized the spectra. One, in himself, we set down and he found a small patch of stars. One, with her eyes aflame, skipped across the plain delighted and engorged on inputs.
There was the working day shift laying miles of cones like a cool hand road crew between two broad indifferent skies.
There was the night I howled and slurred with boozy strangers at a bar on a corner and staggered off together muttering plans like shore leave sailors
There was the night, my penultimate night, of the Gate, Perimeter, Exodus Party -- an event that heartened to the way it was before anarchy, in scale, becomes dangerously riotous. I walked the knife's edge between the control and destruction. I ate the wrong eat me and willed within against my valiant heart, my too tired body and those damned fungi. For four hours of palpitation and seamed torn reason I pitted sheer will to be and to appear capable. And then will was victorious, I ramped back up to firecracker laughter and dusty pickup bed rides.
There was the night I found a man crying, crying that he dreamed and dreamed he would burn in hell he was condemned Dig deeper I said dig deeper than their paltry hell, get cast out of your own garden with your own Adam and Christ. And three day latter he walked out of the desert and thanked me.
A woman fell from an art car and was killed. I went by at night, unaware - there were police all around, lazily. Red and blue strobed in different frequencies. She was a covered bundle.
A men fell of his motorcycle was killed coming around a bluff on the highway. A pair of rez police directed traffic either way. The man lay on his side resting on the asphalt uncovered.
It is always there rushing at us, God absently raking his fingers across the face of time. There is always a blind curve, a misstep. But now, in this moment with this choice, I can take my will and apply it. I can destroy on my own terms and I can feel it and love it.
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