Before I, and I dare say many of us, knew it, a week had passed, and it was the 26th, the day before the official start of the Soulclipse festival including the music, and the day the gates and camping opened for ticket-holders. Also the day many of the performers arrived, who I had been expecting with much excitement. If I had until now been busy trying to divide my time between the installation of the main-floor deco and preparation of the performers' camp, I was now running around like a headless chicken, trying to track down, welcome, orient arriving performers and assist them in finding their camping area.

Matthew had done an amazing job over many months of corresponding with and organizing nearly a hundred performers and fire artists, talented and inspired individuals and companies from all over the planet, that were kind enough to offer their participation, even though there was very little funds available for reimbursement. I consider having had the opportunity to meet, play and work with these wonderful people and artists a huge privilege and blessing and one of the most instructive and inspiring experiences of my life to this point, which I have my dear friends Hilla, Yogi and Matthew to thank for for entrusting me with and all the other wonderful people that were part of the Indigokids crew for making my task possible and lending a hand where and when ever needed and possible.

By the evening the number of people on the festival site had doubled, more than once, and, despite of course being giddily excited about the upcoming events, I remember exchanging glances and words with other volunteers to voice the shared feeling of "what are all these people doing at our festival ?"

The next day more and more people arrived and towards the afternoon the excitement was rising in anticipation of the opening ceremony that was scheduled to be held on the main dance floor at five 'o clock, which was surrounded by twelve tipis that had come in the anxiously awaited shipment from India .

All morning I had continued to collect further arrived, and inform all, performers of a meeting in the early afternoon to generally brief everybody and specifically organize the big extravaganza for the opening ceremony. Matthew, who actually managed to free himself from his heavy load of other responsibilities and attend the meeting, and I had agreed to keep the performance plan as loose as possible, encourage everybody to play and perform where and when ever they felt the flow, with an eye towards somewhat equal distribution towards the three sound-systems (while yet having made and handed out a regular schedule for all that preferred to stick to a more organized approach), and to generally try to foster as much collaboration and cross-inspiration between the various teams of artists as possible.

And what an amazing group of people we were, many of which I got to know better and feel a deep admiration for as performers and sympathy as people, all of them wonderful artists. There were the fantastic Firebirds, who had travelled all the way from Hungary with a small bus loaded with props and gear and lovely people, there was Magma, part of a larger performance troupe from Russia with great costumes that showed me the secret of making fire rain, Firedancer from Frankfurt with their well choreographed and yet free feeling style, the graceful duo of Flamba Saltatio, also from Germany, the powerful brotherly duo of Lightwarriors, originally from Austria, though operating out of Ibiza, Psycusfire with their wild abandon from far away Oz, Pyroptix with astounding double staff antics also from down under , Shambhala Fire, a lovely bunch of international travelers with some of the most technically flawless graceful poi and Brooke's delightful Indian dance moves, Julien and Maude from Switzerland with lovely stilt-costumes, Mayakara with their strong female energy from Germany, Nick and Gosling, who I had connected with earlier via the web and encouraged to come, with their can do-hands on approach and infectious goodwill, part of the magical Tepooka from Edinburgh, and a slew of fantastic individual performers, my dear friends John and Asli who, like me, live in Bali; Jessica, my effervescent swedish friend with whom I started learning poi with from the same guy, many years ago in Koh Pha Ngan and who now is married and living in Turkey; the seductive and tireless Charisse a.k.a Flaming Cherry, dancer, traveler and blogger extraordinaire of tribe fame, and the proverbial cherry on top of the cowgirl....
Along with Charisse there was a whole wonderful family of performers friends of mine from the West Coast Burning Man tribe, who were doing the Nectar Temple or chill out area, many of which also have their presence here on tribe, including Elijah, Lynx, Pema, Kat, Meadow, Carrie, Natalie, Amber, Heidi and Ben and Isaac and Jessica of Phoenix Rising, who now also live in Bali part of the year.
There were many more that my mind was to full and overwhelmed to remember by name, though my thanks go out to each and every one of them for helping make this whole adventure an amazing experience for me and for being patient and in good humor with me as I attempted these, to me novel, tasks and responsibilities.
Most of and first of all Matthew, whose trust, support and advice , as much as the example of his unwavering spirit in the face of adversity and his indefatigable smile carried me through many a challenging moment and made my task possible.

As we finished our meeting and everybody went to get organized for the fire extravaganza that we had loosely organized for nightfall around the main dance-floor, after a video projection planned to segue the opening ceremony, the excitement for the upcoming events was palpable in the air.

A quarter to five the, until now, wonderfully blue skies over the festival site started to cover with thick clouds. Ten minutes before the scheduled ceremony it started raining, with an increasing tendency, and I do believe it was five 'o clock sharp when hail corns the size of peas started pelting down on us painfully, making us cover under trees and take shelter where ever possible. I remember standing under a tree and peeking out at blue skies on all horizons , as the dark clouds continued to sit over only our valley, dumping all they had in them exclusively on us for over half an hour.

Disaster had struck ! The deluge had lasted for less than an hour, but had left enough water, not to mention kernels of ice, to flood almost all of the site. Those whose tents had not flooded where likely to find them floating around a large, lake-like expanse of water like ill-equipped house boats. As I made my way across these flood-plains towards the central market, cultural area and Indigokids headquarter/central nervous system to assess the situation, I could not help but laugh, as I trudged through water that in places reached above knee-level when ever I chose the wrong path. I do believe this may have been the first of numerous times I slid out and landed in the mud, in fact so numerous were these occasions that I will in future omit them from the narrative, out of considerations involving literary style and personal pride.

It all seemed desperately funny, including the lake that had formed at the entrance to the market area, that had to be bridged with blow up canoes, smartly taken from one of the stalls offering river rafting trips on the Köprülü, until my cellphone rang and my parents, who, awaiting the opening ceremony, had taken shelter from the storm in one of the tipis surrounding the main dance-floor, gave me the bad news.

The main stage had collapsed !
The stage and sound-system, which had not been built by Soulclipse volunteers, I am glad to say, but by a company from which the sound-system had been leased, was the kind normally used for the largest rock concerts and reputed to be the best in Turkey. It had been covered with a big, relatively flat roof, and this had filled with rain and hail, the huge weight buckling the four towers, from which it was suspended, sending it crashing down onto the stage and all the equipment assembled there for the opening ceremony! There had been several people on the stage that had all been lucky enough to jump off the collapsing structure to safety in time.

I quickly made my way to the few converted shipping containers that housed IndigoKids headquarters to try to find out what was going on, see what I could do to help and be there for Hilla and Yogev in their obvious hour of need.
Finding them handling the situation as calmly and efficiently as possible, characteristically rising to the challenge, I found out that music would start as soon as possible on what had been the alternative sound-system.

As the sun was setting, the temperature dropping and the site about to turn into a muddy swamp it seemed obvious what the element was needed to re-ignite the dampened spirits: FIRE !
When I arrived shortly afterwards at the shed where we kept the fire toys and the several barrels of the cleanest possible fuel available in the country, that Matthew had gone to such lengths to track down and IndigoKids kind enough to supply for free for all the performers, it was clear my fellow firefriends had quickly come to the same conclusion.
As we grabbed our toys and decanted fuel in smaller containers I shared another kind of the cleanest possible fuel with those who were interested, an elixir send to me for the occasion from dear old friends of mine from the West Coast, from a another life that seems just a dream, guaranteed to keep at bay the cold and give us the necessary energy to heat up the dance floor...

...and so we did. All night long "my performers", as I had quickly, in the most affectionate and respectful way, come to think of them, and I, lit up the dance floor, pouring our all into energizing and hypnotic sets of fire and dance, again and again, into the early morning hours, as our flames light and heat together with the music and the fantastic light show's interplay with fabulous decorations rekindled hope and melted all involved into a pulsating gestalt of dancing bodies and fused psychedelic minds.

To Be Continued.....