Partying with intention

Is it just me -- or have the parties in this "scene" started to devolve? After shelling out $25 on Saturday for yet another party that was -- well, just DJs and dancing -- I was starting to feel a disturbing lack of intention in many of the "fundraisers" I've been to lately. Events that were once lavishly decorated are no longer filled with original art or tapestries. We don't see performances, or activities designed to engage us in a participatory way -- it's just another decadent party.

My friend D and I were sending some email back and forth today and analyzing the situation, and we decided to post this to our respective blogs. Here's our string...to be continued.

------------------------------------------

G: I agree with your analysis of the scene...the most mediocre parties are sold out these days and everything is both overcrowded -- and just too mainstream, too generic. What was even remotely Burning Man about that Mighty party? It could have been any club. The crowd was pretty superficial, and people did not even dress creatively (overall.) It is so hit or miss and quite unpredictable--for example I accidentally ended up at the Kinky Salon / Opel Valentine's party and it was electrifying--very creative and fun. That Opel last year was quite special, and the first one I went to 3 years ago was epic. But for a 5 year aniversary this one was pathetically weak. It was certainly not worth the lost sleep and losing the day on Sunday. How do we bring it back to serving the community and an artistic intention?

D: Yeah didn't mean to sound jaded but that party didn't have any intension dedictable by me except outside and by the time I chilled there, I was pretty physically spent. I've decided I need to scale it back some and get back to how this whole thing started - as in art and creativity, in whatever form. Some parties are good, but I need to be more selective. I like the parties in the woods the best. My impression is that the Burning Man culture here mainly, is going off on a party binge which is not serving the overall community. Three years ago, this didn't seem to be the case. But it is so mainstream now.

Of course there are other things going on which are great in SF - the beach cleanup is just the tip of the iceberg. But if all those people were at club Mighty every weekend, instead of selling 300 tickets or whatever the breakoff point is, they'd be selling 3000, so there are other Burners out there, happily.

D (separate thread): Good question. I went to the Opel party last year and was blown away, which is why I went to this one to begin with. I think it has become a club scene. The Burnal Equinox was considerably better and you already voiced a concern about that one lacking intension as well.

Fortunately, these parties don't really represent Burning Man. Our
community is still there. Some of them go to these parties - I met a
couple. But they are getting squeezed into the margins.

How we take it back is by remembering:

1) Not every Burner in the world has the luxury of going to Club
Mighty every weekend. Many Burners live in smaller town where even
smaller establishments don't have a Burner scene. It is about those
conversations around the fire on the Playa. We need to create little
communities like that here. It is about small gatherings, not large
ones.

2) Create. We need to create. Not just indulge. The latter is not a
sustainable model for us or the community and hardly sets an example
of being model citizens, which I think is what we were hoping to do
through Burners without Borders and beach cleanups, etc..

3) When we gather, there needs to be intention, a stated one through
gifting, communing, interacting, creating, leave no trace. None of
those were present at Mighty Saturday night, to any significant
degree. The psy trance parties I've been to recently have been a heck
of a lot better in this department.

There are starting points. If you have other ideas to add, maybe we
can compose an essay to post on our blogs, if you want to take it that
way.

Blessings,
D

G: I think you should post this in entirety to your blog -- and add it as a discussion topic in the Burning Man tribe. My friend C and I were talking tonight and she had some perspective (and she is not even a Burner, but a former hippie who was present during the summer of love.)

People are very scared and uncertain now...the world is increasingly chaotic and frightening. Global warming leaves us feeling helpless. The stock market volatility, the real estate bubble popping, the war that seems to never end... our response is that we want connection, community...just contact with other people can be enough. Connecting, dancing, socializing...partying wildly and with no aparent intention...this is a reaction to the paralysis we feel. So even though these parties feel meaningless, they do have a purpose -- they bring us together. They help us meet, connect and create community. We need to break out of this feeling of helplessness and start to organize with intention to make things better.

G

G (separate thread): There was an event two weeks ago, Ambiotica, that had a stated intention and a panel discussion. And the Union event at Grace Cathedral (coming up on Friday) is deeply spiritual in intention. So there are definitely people in the community who see the need. But this weekend also brings us an Anon Salon, a Kinky Salon, and Spikes Vampire Bar! Maybe there are different stages of evolution and these more shallow events suck in the newbies--who gradually progress to the beach cleanup and the yoga classes.

---------------------------------

D: I like all these discussions and agree with what you said about people craving connection. I've had similar thoughts.

I think it is important to keep this in perspective. In San Francisco, there might be four events in one night and they conflict. My question is does that happen in Portland and Eugene, Oregon too, where there is a substantial Burner concentration as well? I feel that San Francisco is getting hyper. Of course my personality allows me to get pulled into it all very easily.

But we as community need to also build inner strength and things which are sustainable. I don't mind that everyone is at a different stage along the continuum. But I also think we - as community - need to think beyond the infancy stage. What can we do, most likely in little communities, not large ones, to be more sustainable? I am talking in terms of environmentally and consciously. I don't think Larry Harvey would have an issue with this vision. Indeed, I think this is what he has been attempting with strong regional emphasis.

So this brings me back to the San Francisco issue. Because this is the epicenter, for lack of a better word, of the Burner community, we haven't developed a strong regional cohesiveness the way Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, New York, Chicago, and yes, even LA have. So we have to develop in other ways - community outreach (Burners without Borders), Groove Garden, arts events, support groups, and more.

I don't take issue with dancing your brains out. That's why I go to these. I do take issue with paying 20 bucks to be packed like a sardine in a crowded bar with a bunch of drunk people, and where Sunday you nurse a hangover instead of lifting a finger to even clean up your mess. This is so *not* what the Burning Man website talks about. Sure there are networking opportunities through these, as there are in 10,000 other ways, including some of the aforementioned. I love using fancy words.

What I don't want to happen is for us to decay into the decadence which resulted in the 1970s, which so many people speak bitterly of. I think the risk is real.

To be continued,
D

(Dustfish party photo -- taken at the moment the party was busted, by Eric Gillet.)

The newest reason why you should never eat grocery store meat

This is from the excellent newsletter by Dr. Mercola:

www.mercola.com/2007/mar/1...ell-you.htm

There are dozens of moral, ethical, spiritual, political and environmental reasons to completely eliminate factory farmed meat from your diet -- but this new one is particularly disturbing. Yuk.

FDA Approves a Spray-on Virus to Keep Processed Meats ''Safe''

VirusThe FDA has approved a mix of six bacteria-killing viruses designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products. The viruses, called bacteriophages, kill the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium. This is the first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive.

Listeria monocytogenes can cause a serious infection called listeriosis. About 2,500 people in the United States become seriously ill with listeriosis each year, and 500 die.

Lunch meats are particularly vulnerable to Listeria because they are generally not cooked or reheated after purchase.

Consumers will not be informed as to whether their meat and poultry products have been treated with the spray. Intralytix, the company that produces the virus spray, also plans to seek FDA approval for another bacteriophage product, this one designed to kill E. coli bacteria.

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

This new process substitutes "spray and forget" for good hygiene and quality control for food. Bluntly speaking it provides meat vendors with more leeway to get away with poor quality control, poor hygiene and meat that's too old because it takes away some of the bacteria.

Economic pressure being what it is, there will be vendors who will take advantage of this and who will then have a competitive advantage over vendors that *do* pay attention to proper hygiene and quality control

This could be a landmark event as it proposes to launch an enormously broad application of this bacterium-killing virus when only a select target group needs it. When meat leftovers containing this virus are disposed of, they will spread this virus throughout compost heaps and perhaps even into sewage sludge, providing a great opportunity for billions of bacteria to encounter this virus in great dilution under a variety of conditions.

Who is willing to bet that no bacteria will develop immunity? This strongly resembles the same irresponsible attitude that was at the bottom of the American habit to prescribe penicillin indiscriminately for everything from coughs and colds to sprained ankles.

There are no safeguards against the emergence of a new strain of Listeria that might develop and that is resistant to this particular virus.

Bacteria live in an ecosystem with competitive pressures. If you remove one bacterium like Listeria, you create an open invitation for any bacterium that isn't targeted by this specific virus.

What are the chances that we will be surprised by a newspaper article decrying the death of 100 elderly because they had sprayed luncheon meat in which very rare but virus-immune bacteria had developed (and had a chance to develop because standards of hygiene went down and the meat was kept out of the fridge for say 24 hours).

Applying this virus in the food system simply is not a good idea as:

* It's an enormous intervention that isn't really needed, because with proper hygiene and fresh produce you will not have difficulties for ordinary healthy people, and those with a weakened immune system or special vulnerabilities can simply take special care.

* Due to its intended broad and indiscriminate application, there are no safeguards whatsoever against this novel anti-bacterial weapon not being blunted by allowing billions of bacteria to encounter it in great dilution, develop immunity, and pass that immunity on to their colleagues (which is a known mechanism in bacteria).

* Like so many other "innovations" it only seems to benefit the producers of this virus by creating competitive pressures to use it if your competitor does so too (which is of course their good right, but not necessarily beneficial for society as a whole). This "innovation" will make processed meats an even more dangerous food choice than before.

If you haven't been concerned about processed meats yet, here's one more reason: At one point, the FDA had concerns this spray-on concoction might contain some toxic residue from the bacterial mix of sprays. The agency claims human contact with these residues in small quantities doesn't cause health problems, but are you willing to bet they won't?

Considering the increasingly experimental and dangerous nature of so much processed food -- like irradiation and genetic modification as well as this new spray -- there are many reasons to go organic.

You may have wondered on occasion if organic food is really better for you. Besides the fact that organic foods are not treated with sprays, radiation, or genetic modification, organic food differs right from the start, in the way that it is grown. Where traditional farmers apply chemical fertilizers to the soil to grow their crops, organic farmers feed and build soil with natural fertilizer.

Traditional farmers use insecticides to get rid of insects and disease, while organic farmers use natural methods such as insect predators and barriers for this purpose. Traditional farmers control weed growth by applying synthetic herbicides, but organic farmers use crop rotation, tillage, hand weeding, cover crops and mulches to control weeds.

The result is that conventionally grown food is often tainted with chemical residues, which can be harmful to humans. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers 60 percent of herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides and 30 percent of insecticides to be carcinogenic.

Pesticides can have many negative influences on health, including neurotoxicity, disruption of the endocrine system, carcinogenicity and immune system suppression. Pesticide exposure may also affect male reproductive function and has been linked to miscarriages in women.

Aside from pesticide contamination, conventional produce tends to have fewer nutrients than organic produce. On average, conventional produce has only 83 percent of the nutrients of organic produce. Studies have found significantly higher levels of nutrients such as vitamin C, iron, magnesium and phosphorus, and significantly less nitrates (a toxin) in organic crops.

There is little question that organic foods are superior to non-organic ones. However, I see many patients who are not eating any vegetables because they either cannot afford them or they are too difficult to obtain.

Please understand that it is better to eat non-organic vegetables than no vegetables at all. In the same vein, it is also important to realize that fresh non-organic vegetables will be better than wilted and rotten organic vegetables that are occasionally the only ones available in smaller organic produce stands.

-----------------------------------------------------------

After living in France and seeing what meat is supposed to look like, what a butcher shop is supposed to smell like (and how animals were once upon a time raised) I stopped eating factory farmed meat in 2001 and became a vegetarian shortly afterward. Coincidentally, I haven't had food poisoning, stomach problems or the flu since.
- g

A power animal visits my office

I was on my way to the Flambe Lounge on Saturday night, when I got diverted by a power animal.

My friend Cyn was with me, and we decided to go to my house first and fix dinner.
I was giving her the grand tour of my apartment...kitchen, bathroom, office....when she let out a terrible scream.
Aaaaaaaaaheeeek!

"There's a wild animal in there, in the corner, on the desk! It's dead. I think it's a huge rat ... or a racoon." "It's horrible... No, it's kind of cute!"

On Thursday, there was a racket all night while I was asleep, and I woke up to find broken glass all over the living room, and
all of my vases knocked over in the kitchen. I thought it was an earthquake. Now I realize that a wild animal had been trapped in my
house for about 3 days while I was out of town...luckily just in the office.

She insisted on calling the fire department. (Me, the pioneer woman, I probably would have opened all the doors, dropped a piece of cheese next to the exit and run out of the house...but she's a government official, and a city girl who has probably never seen an animal wilder than her lethargic, studio apartment-bound cat, and wanted to do whatever officials would do.)

The fire department chatted with us for a while (things aren't very busy here in Marin) and they told us to call Animal Control...and animal
control rushed right over as if it was a big emergency.

It was kind of embarassing when animal control turned out to be a petite blonde woman. (Three women -- no match for a wild beast, right?)

"Please let it be a possum, and not a racoon," she said. "I was praying for a possum the whole way driving here from Novato." Yes, animal control, our tax dollars at work, drove 40 miles round trip to deal with a furry little critter.

It made me pause and think how detached we've become from the natural world, from the animal world, where we are now so unfamiliar with these creatures we can't identify them, where we're in mortal fear that they'll bite us and give us rabies (when we're the enemy, we're the ones who have taken control) and where we have emergency workers who rush out to eliminate these creatures from our precious comfortable space.

I'm sure that opossum was thinking: "Hey, I own this space. This is my planet too." Maybe that was the message I needed to hear, or maybe it was about the wisdom of playing dead when your oponent is near.

The animal control lady went into the room with a big stick/stun gun thing...and walked right out with the most adorable
little opossum, his tail curled around the stick and clinging to it. She dropped him in the backyard and our adventure was over.

By the time I dressed and drove over to the Flambe Lounge it was 1 am and getting kind of tawdry. It wasn't Burning Man...it was an embarassing cliche of Burning Man. All party and none of the edgy magical creative substance that makes Burning Man revolutionary.
(Sweaty middle aged men rolling in too much fur and too tight pants. Party animals their 40s making out in the corners, Wide black beladonna-eyed girls in feather boas and pink spandex.)

The next day, I asked my friend Diana, a student of the metaphysical, what a possum
might mean symbolically as a power animal, and she looked up Opossum in
the medicine card...

"If opossum shows up on your cards, you are being asked to use strategy
in some present situation. Rely on you instincts for the best way out of
a tight corner. If you have to pretend to be apathetic or unafraid, do
it! Oftentimes if you refuse to struggle or show that hurtful words
bother you, your taunter will see no further fun in the game.

"Warriors have used opossum medicine for centuries, playing dead when the enemy
nears and out numbers them. Then in a flash when the enemy is least
expecting it, the war cry is heard. The fright of this serves to
further confuse the unsuspections opposition. Victory is sweet when the
stategy is one of mental as well as physical prowess.

"Opossum may be relaying to you that you are to expect the unexpected
and be clever in achieving your victory. This could be a victory over a
bothersome salesman a nosey neighbor. In essence Possum is beckoning
you to use your brain, your sense of drama, and surprise - to leap over
some barrier to your progress."

The little critter trashed my office... ripped papers everywhere, little
muddy pawprints on everything, and possum poops strategically placed in
the most uninviting places. I wonder if it's symbolic that the possum
was in my neglected business/writing/organizational space, where my tax papers now lie scattered in a frenzy, where I started an internet video company, and where my novel lies half written and incomplete.

Native American and Celtic shamanistic beliefs are strong on animal symbols. These symbols are referred to as "totem animals" or "power animals." You'll often hear the two referred to synonymously, but those that follow traditional Native beliefs explain that a totem animal is one that is with you for life, often an animal with whom you share a connection, either through interest in the animal or your resemblance to or shared characteristics of the animal in question. A power animal or spirit animal is a spirit in animal form that comes through with a specific lesson for you, and will change throughout the course of your life.

They're here from the other side to help. Does that mean it's time to roll over and play dead?

Here's more from the Internet on totems:

rap.midco.net/spiritualstew/animals.html

Wake up, it's time to change.

To start greening your life, try this list:

www.treehugger.com/gogreen.php

The simplest thing we all can do is stop eating meat. Rasing just one cow consumes 12,000 gallons of water. Meat and dairy production is extremely resource intensive.

In memory of John Bryan - legendary prankster, king of the underground press, counterculture pioneer

I just learned yesterday that John Bryan died. Most of us in the Mission knew him as the crochety guy who worked behind the counter at Abandoned Planet bookstore on Valencia Street. The Planet is a San Francisco legend -- a tweedy used bookstore with that leathery, dusty, slightly mildewy old book smell, a patchwork of Persian carpets on the floor, a patina of history, a cat snoozing on the counter. It always felt like home to me, and for the ten years I lived in the Mission district, I passed in and out of the store without paying much attention to the white haired man behind the counter, who usually seemed to be in a bad mood.

One day I stopped inside to find a copy of Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test," and his blue eyes lit up. "Nobody's asked for that book in a long time," he said.

I learned that his name was John Bryan, and he was one of the original guys who rode on the legendary bus, Further, with Ken Keesey and Wavy Gravy . We spent hours talking about the Summer of Love, as John showed me rare books by Alan Ginsberg and other legends of the beat era. I bought a rare book by Timothy Leary called "The Psychedelic Experience" just because the trippy end paper and cover art caught my eye -- though John warned me it wasn't one of Leary's better books and it wasn't even a first edition, either.

"What was it like riding the bus?" I asked. His eyes lit up...he regaled me for hours with stories about those days, where one day blended into the next in a psychedelic purple haze, where everything was utterly in the moment, the perfect moment of now.

"Was it dangerous. Did anyone get lost?"

He laughed. "Well, some people lost themselves in it, I sure did. There's only one problem with riding the bus," he mused.

"Once you get on the bus, you never want to get off."

We laughed for a long time about that. And even though I never rode a magic bus, I'd experienced glimpses of that life a few times, and I knew what he meant. Perfect moments, perfect timeless moments of absolute happiness in the now. If one had the luxury of riding, day after day, for one long, endless perfect summer of perfect moments, why not?

I told John that the scene was back -- and described the festival scene -- Burning Man, Raindance, Earthdance, Synergenesis... he was spellbound, disbelieving.

"I had no idea this was going on," he said. I urged him to go to Burning Man, to see it with his own eyes. "It's the acid test all over again, with hundreds of Furthers -- they call them art cars now. Dinosaurs, golden dragons, furry cats, pink cupcakes, Victorian houses...thumping, pulsing nightclubs on wheels, casting a light of video onto the paper white desert floor while people in glittering costumes dance and bicycles shaped like neon lit fish weave back and forth, laser beams overhead, fireworks..."

It was like running into Rip Van Winkle and describing the future. It was incredible to me that I was the person who finally delivered this message to him--that nobody had made the connection between then and now.

John had never heard of this magical new technoshamanistic, psychedelic world, the logical evolution of a movement he and people like Leary and Keesey helped start 40 years ago. John didn't even realize that the underground press he started still lives on, in hundreds of thousands of blogs, on virtual communities like the Well, and now, social networks like Tribe. That there were now hundreds of magic buses, many powered with vegetable oil, and that the scene was global now, it was everywhere, everywhere all at once.

I said he should go this summer, that I'd help find an RV or someone who could give him a ride.

"No, no. I'm too old," he said. I told him that the chemist and author Alexander Shulgin, in his 70s, was rumored to be heading there in September.

John paused for a moment. "No, I'm just too sick now."

He was 72, frail, walking with a limp, weak heart, his teeth were falling out, he shot up insulin to stay alive. Maybe he wouldn't be able to handle the rigors of the dustbowl, the extremes of heat and cold, that even a day out there might do him in.

John did himself in, not long after, on February 1. The pain of his long illness was overwhelming, life was overwhelming, and he left this world and broke on through to the other side. That era did a lot of people in -- Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison -- many of them never lived past 40. Bill Graham died. Timothy Leary died. Jerry Garcia died. Wavy Gravy is ailing but still hanging in there. Now we're losing our tribal elders. The oral history, the legacy of their perspective, passes away when they leave us. And all we have is the books, most of them out of print, sold in dusty used bookstores on Valencia Street like this one.

The San Francisco Chronicle honored him with a long obiturary two weeks ago, and I learned about his death last night from a friend who was very close to him in his last year of life. He was a pioneer of the underground press, the first editor to publish the work of poet Charles Bukowski, editor of the LA Free Press, contributor to the San Francisco Oracle and writer of one of the more interesting and revealing biographies of Timothy Leary.

It was not until reading his obituary today that I realized how much of a legacy John left us -- and how much our community owes pioneers like him today.

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi

I'd like to ask you this: consider sponsoring a tribal elder this summer. Let's create a comfortable camp for the seniors and bring these people to the desert, show them that their legacy lives on. Let them know that the children are continuing their work.

Help save historic UC campus - free film screening on Feb. 24

www.indybay.org/newsitems/...8363660.php

For many years when I lived in San Francisco, as I walked past the old UC Extension campus building in the Lower Haight on my way to the Muni station in the Castro district, I'd admire the handsome urns, the palm trees and the ornate Spanish Mission-influenced frescos. Like most people who walked past at street level, I had no idea that behind those pink stucco walls is one of the oldest buildings in the City, a historic treasure built in 1855 with ornate handpainted murals, graceful archways, fireplaces, and an inner courtyard garden with towering palm trees and a stunning view of the city and the bay.

When the building shut down a few years ago, weeds grew around it, and it became covered with unsightly graffitti. Like many in the neighborhood, I started to wonder why the city wasn't cleaning up this unsightly eyesore. Now I know why.

UC Regents have quietly engaged a private developer, AF Evans, to convert this historic 19th century site into high density condo and retail shopping center -- solely in the name of profit. It's tantamount to saying: "Let's tear down Coit Tower and build a mall. Or, why not pave over Golden Gate Park and put up a parking lot?" Yet the building has remained boarded up so long that new residents in this high turnover neighborhood might not even know what treasure is inside. Two full city blocks of San Francisco with a stunning bay view, the parcel could easily be worth a billion dollars. Yet the land and the campus, lest we forget, belongs to residents of California, who paid for it with their taxes.

UC Regents are seeking to rezone the campus, which if approved, will permanently end its 150 year history of public use. The building was originally the first college in San Francisco, the San Francisco Normal School, and later became the campus of San Francisco State University. Most recently it was used for adult education and continuing education for UC Berkeley Extension.

Eliza Hemenway's poignant film, Uncommon Knowledge: Closing the Books on UC Extension, gives a revealing look into the behind the scenes politics behind this event, which surprised even the staff and teachers, who were stunned when they lost their jobs. The campus has remained in limbo, empty and hollow, despite the fact that it was extensively renovated just before it was closed down. A local citizen group, Save the 1800, is organizing to save the campus and hopefully return it to public use, ideally as a university campus and public park. Here is the trailer:

www.youtube.com/watch

Hemenway, a six year employee at the facility kept a camera in hand during the closure, and captured a rare glipse into the politics behind the scene at the University (at times, the screen goes black as Hemenway hides the camera under a desk.)

Her film is a personal, poetic journey behind the scenes as plans unfold to close its historic San Francisco campus and convert this billion dollar land parcel into a lucrative private development. It's a revealing look into higher education and culture, as well as a hauntingly beautiful portrait of a campus and the community it served. It has a fog shrouded San Francisco feeling, and is accompanied by an edgy urban soundtrack written and performed by locally acclaimed musician Tim Barsky and Everyday Theatre with additional music by The Toids.

FREE FILM SCREENING AND PUBLIC FORUM: Saturday, February 24 from 4:15 - 5:30 PM, at San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St. (at Grove), Koret Auditorium, located on the library's lower level. Enter at 30 Grove St. and proceed down stairs.

PUBLIC HEARING: on the Draft EIR will be held Thursday, March 8, 2007 in Room 400, City Hall. Call 558-6422 the week of the hearing for a recorded message for the exact time of hearing. A request has been
made to hold the hearing at 6:00 PM. This is the only public process planned regarding the re-zoning of the campus.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: about the film, Uncommon Knowledge: Closing the Books at the UC Berkeley Extension" visit www.hemenwaydocs.com

Rolling the Film, premieres Saturday -- is life really this beautiful?

The promotional blurb says: "A med student, a teenage runaway, a lawyer, a drag queen, a high school
basketball player, a drug dealer, and a teacher all cross paths in the
Ecstasy-riddled L.A. underground party scene. Rolling is a turbulent journey
that takes a tough yet entertaining look at this unique drug phenomenon.
With the pace and style of a documentary, Rolling captures the essence of
Ecstasy culture, exposing the delicate balance of relationships and
responsibilities with chasing this drug-induced euphoria."

I watched the trailer at www.guba.com/watch/3000034946. It captures that ephemeral, joyous feeling, a feeling like a centrifuge where all of the joy and bliss in your life is concentrated down to the essence, all the sadness and pain are drained off, and all you have left is happiness. Rolling is a roller coaster ride in fast forward, glowing with the golden light of a So Cal endless summer, where everyone is beautiful and young (this is LA after all.) I'm intrigued by this film, but the trailer ends ominiously, with the screen in black, a woman screaming for help in a medical emergency.

Is Rolling just anti-E scare propaganda? Or is is so overwhelmingly positive that the filmmakers had to throw this nighmarish scene at the end for "balance?" I'll watch the film Saturday and let you know.

www.rollingmovie.com for more information.

The world premiere of Rolling will be held at 7:00 pm at the Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th Street,
San Francisco. A second showing will be held at 4:30 pm on Saturday,
February 17.

-

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

www.vsocial.com/video/

I stumbled on this fabulous Beatle's video for Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds today. As small child through the peak of the 60s and 70s, growing up in a conservative, East Coast suburb, this was the closest I ever got to hippies and psychedelia, but somehow, I feel it had a profound influence on me. I mean, come on, we knew what was up on a subliminal level, you know? It's a beautiful, childlike, fairytale-innocent animation and it really does capture the joy of being in the moment.

I owned two copies of this album, and I still have them--both stereo and mono. As a kid, the Beatles were a lot more fun when they got turned on, tuned in and started their candy coloured, electric Kool Aid flavored, Sargeant Pepper phase.

www.last.fm/music/The+Be...rts+Club+Band

The song Lucy in the Sky may be the first example of modern "break beats" -- it has a complex arrangement typical of later Lennon-McCartney compositions; much of the song is in 3/4 time, except in the chorus, where it switches to 4/4 time.

The song also shifts between musical keys, using the key of A for the verse, B-flat for the pre-chorus or bridge section, and G for the chorus. It consists of a very simple melody over an increasingly-complicated underlying arrangement which features a sitar, and a Hammond Organ, whose sound was altered by Lennon and producer George Martin.

Now that I've heard it again, I'm hungry for a marshmallow pie while I ride in a newspaper taxi adorned with celophane flowers. Hey, that sounds like a Burning Man art car theme if I've ever heard one.

Bohemian Carnival, darkness on the edge of circus

Saturday. We didn't know where to go, and somehow arrived at the subculture circus, Bohemian Carnival. I didn't plan on ending up there, and don't know why spirit told me what to wear, but somehow, I blindly followed her directions, layering a white fur trimmed vest, gold and white metallic bell bottoms, white stiletto boots, a white top hat with feathers and my white fake fur coat. I looked in the mirror and thought: "If Tom Wolfe was born 40 years later and he was a drag queen, he'd look like this."

When I walked up to the DNA lounge, through the veil of smoke and the crowd of people loitering in bondagey, dark, pierced Goth white white faces and black, black hair, I thought, "This is definitely not my scene." But I paid my $15. I had to step inside.

When the bouncer gave me a nod, and I slipped into the red, red room, the sweat and the greasepaint and the roar of the throbbing, whooping crowd assulted me and I thought, "This is SO not my scene."

Everything red and black. Dark, edgy, scary clowns in grotesque face paint. Burlesque, vaudeville, a vibe like the shadow side of a carnival.

But I couldn't resist...

The energy of it all swept up and took me into another world, that world my little brother and I used to visit when we'd slip away from our parents into the backside of the traveling carnival, when he'd urge me into the tatoo parlors, ever curious about the seamy side of life. The shadowy uncertainty of a funhouse, not knowing what might grab you, or who might slip and fall. The sheer life giving joy of witnessing beautiful freaks flirt on that uncertain tightrope of death. This is your brain on the flip side of Cirque du Soleil, this is a resurgence of what it really means to be vaudeville. Vau de Vire! Life!

There was an authencicity, an unrehearsed, participatory spontaneity to it that seemed refreshingly archaic. I imagined that this is what the traveling vaudeville was once like, back before it was cleaned up and Vegas-ized.

Four amazing DJs were simultaneously spinning and mixing a crescendo of breakbeats and the whole crowd pulsed and danced around the acrobats. A girl bungee jumping on silk as everyone whoops and hollers, dancing faster, faster. Acrobats climbing a pirate's rope ladder, nothing to catch their fall. Two gorgeous muscled women sliding horizontally, up and down, up and down a pole, rubbing their nipples, pantomiming more, as the crowd roars and surges and the DJs spin faster and faster.

I took off the fur coat, then the next layer. We had to dance, the energy swept us up away in a rapture of pure, uninhibited esctatic simultaneous raucous laughter. The circus was us. Caught up in a gilded freakshow of beauty! A woman in a gold sparkly lame bikini, swaying her hips with a flaming hoop. Pretty men swallowing fire. Poi dancers, center stage, inches away from us. The ringmaster, Boenobo, the Gooferman clown in a Sargeant Pepperesque red jacket and inflated shoes and striped black and white headgear (a pair of artfully arranged pantyhose he says!) urges me on stage, but I'm too shy. Maybe next time.

My friend Diana is a holistic healer yogi type but she loved it. Loved it! By the end of the night, I have to admit, I did too. Everyone loves a circus.

These are photographs taken by Eric Gillet, a Belgian professional photographer who was there. He caught the shadows, the theatricality, the raw sexuality and the heat of that night.

flickr.com/photos/24682...594493323603/

More information?

www.vaudeviresociety.com/event...x.html

Union -- our artistic takeover of Grace Cathedral

I wasn't sure what to expect at Union. As we arrived in Grace Cathedral, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of true spirit I felt inside the Cathedral -- a sense of higher power that I have only felt inside the world's greatest Cathedrals, such as Notre Dame in France. It wasn't just the space itself, the container, but the life force this gathering filled it with.

The fragrance of amber, frankinsence, myrrh and patchouli enveloped us as we were annointed with essential oils as we arrived. Burners in cutting edge artistic fashion flashes of pink hair, long flowing sleeves, fur coats, intricate embellishments, held hands in ritual (calling in the directions) within a circle on the lavender labyrinth at the back of Grace Cathedral. We finished in a slow spiral dance.

At the end, Karma Moffit played a conch shell, echoing through the cavernous arches of the Cathedral, bringing us back here. From the altar, a DJ played glorious, uplifting, jazzy music. A beautiful woman costumed in a white feathered mask and glittered headdress, a delicate dove, started to dance, within the labyrinth. Some traced the labyrinth in personal meditation, some of us danced alone.

I meditated on the overwhelming power of the gray stone arches above me -- and the sense of being ensconsed in the vaulted space that seemed to contain the heavens, feeling the vibrations of our Union intensified to a higher vibration inside that golden number. A flood of creative ideas flowed to me. Insurmountable problems suddenly seemed solvable. I felt less alone.

It was a counterculture takeover of one of the most important spaces in the city -- a significant symbolic event with profound spiritual intention at unifying our community and bringing a higher power into play to accomplish what needs to get done. We reclaimed the church and stripped away the dogma and control, brought back ritual, community and spirit. For that brief moment it felt as if we truly could accomplish miracles together.

As the Grace Cathedral website says of the process of walking the labyrinth, the last stage is Union, returning. "As you leave the labyrinth, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for."

UNION was inspired by the Council of Grace: Brad Nye, Brooks Cole, Colette van Praag, David Chang, Dwight Loop, Eve Bradford, Gordon Davidson, Karma Moffett, Lynn Augstein, Mikael King, Paul Nicholsen, Ron Tofanelli, Samantha Beers, Sarah Drew, and Vinit Allen. It will take place on the third Friday of every month. Last night I was invited by Carol Luna and Brad Nye (the Artsfest director) to an event called Union at Grace Cathedral. According to the invitation: "UNION is intended to activate and rejuvenate the spirit and provide an igniting of our deepest individual and collective spirit within the unfolding potential of a fertile, conscious path here on Planet Earth. UNION will further cultivate an exchange of inspired ideas, the creation of new relationships and the reunion of old, and a sowing of fertile ground for deep social and consciousness evolution."

Additional Information:

Visit www.ArtSFest.org or call (415) 561-7802.