NMScene

Preface

I feel like I must write this edition of From the Front Lines in a slightly different fashion. The direction I’d like to take this writing is in the form of a letter to my younger sister, Candace. Although we are separated by only two years of experience in life, those experiences are quite a bit different. It’s often been hard for me to describe to my family the honest details about my trips to Burning Man, not only because of the adult nature of a lot of what I’ve experienced, but because of the extreme crapyness of the way we were brought up to communicate with each other. This brings a bit of irony due to the fact that I love to write so much.

My sister called me up the other day and asked me, meekly, about my vacation, and how it was, and what did I do. I was somewhat at a loss for words when describing any of my experiences at Burning Man to anyone, let alone to a family member whose life revolves around finishing her masters’ degree in abstract math. Add together her learning disability and my extreme lack of eloquence when it comes to spoken communication and all she knows right now is how I went camping in the desert with some friends.

So here, without much ado, is my heartfelt explanation of what I’ve been up to for the last two weeks and what I’ve sort of done three times prior.

From the Front Lines: Burning Man 2009

Dear Candace,

You called me up yesterday trying to pry some golden bit of information from me in order to see how my vacation went for these last two weeks. Well first and foremost I want you to know that I had, perhaps, one of the best trips I’ve ever had, and I’m someone who has gone on too many trips to count. You once told me that it was sad that the best thing that I’ve ever participated in was my trips to the black rock desert, I hope that this writing will change your mind, as I wasn’t exactly clear on what I experienced.

When people ask me what Burning Man is, I always find myself at a loss for words to explain it properly, because it is so many damn things all at once. I’ve told mom that I was simply going to an art and culture festival out in the desert. This is like saying math consists of counting and numbers. We both know that this is such a broad statement that it is almost false.

To be precise, burning man is what ends a week long experiment in so many different things. An entire city is built and exists, in the Nevada desert, for a week every labor day. This city is affectionately called Black Rock City, after a mountain range near by that is volcanic, and black, in appearance. It’s held at the bottom of a dry lake bed which had, since the last ice age, evaporated, and left an alkaline flat that is the largest, flattest place on the planet, some thirty miles long and at its widest up to ten miles wide. It’s an amazing backdrop to what has become a city I’ve come to call my second home. It is, during this week, the third largest city in Nevada.

The city itself is something of a marvel of what an efficient planed community can become. I’m sure you’ve seen the poster in my apartment that I got in 2007 of the city, a circle ¾’s full. The city holds, at its current size, around 50,000 residents, which fluctuates every year but has floated around there for a while. Burning man, as an event, itself is over twenty years old, moving to the black rock desert, and has been growing every year since.

The burning of the man, which is a 40ish foot structure, is just one event at the end of the week of thousands that occur over the course of the week. The events that do occur are made by the people who come to live in black rock city. This brings me to one of the key, central ideas that burning man has instilled in me and the others who attend; Participation.

Participation, as opposed to spectation, is probably the most central theme to this event. I didn’t really understand this going to the event, the first or second times, but by the third and definitely after this trip, it’s like all the little pieces make sense to me now. It’s hard to translate the concept clearly for someone who hasn’t participated before, but I’ll do my best.

Many people will go to Burning Man a few times, hit the parties that go on there and get bored of it and never return. I feel supremely bad for those that go there, get so fucking close to “IT,” and leave never getting “IT.” Most of the people who are like this are what are lovingly called tourists. They come to see the spectacle of it all, tour the sights, but, like a good, preprogrammed little drone of society, they don’t get it.

When you participate, when you build something with your own two hands, regardless of what it is, you do what few others in this life ever do. You lead. You tell people, hey, I have this zany idea, come check it out. Play with it. Maybe my crazy idea can inspire your crazy ideas and something really good can come out of it.

The first part of participation in Burning Man is survival. As easy as it is for most people to just buy their way into survival, its much less easy for others. There are a lot of people who go to burning man in a large, luxury RV, with satellite TV’s and tons of stupid amenities. While these things are nice, and I’ll probably roll up one day in one myself, those who haven’t gone their first time with nothing but a tent, a cooler, and some instructions on how to survive in the desert have really done themselves a massive disservice. Understanding how difficult it is to survive on your own with a minimum of things put into context how insanely good we have it as Americans. Things like indoor plumbing and refrigeration, not to mention the easy accessibility to goods take on a almost sacred meaning when you’ve been deprived of them for only a week. Its only when scarcity is in abundance that abundance is truly valued.

Radical self reliance, then, is a second key topic when it comes to what Burning Man is. By radically self reliant, its ment that you understand *exactly* what it is and means to rely on yourself for your own survival, and, not only survive, but thrive decently in one of the harshest environments on the planet. The playa, which the desert is called due to its beach like atmosphere, is a bed of highly alkaline dirt left over from the previous lake that used to be there. Nothing can grow in the soil, and there are high winds which gust upwards of 60 on a bad day, dust storms (remember when we went to go see the shuttle land at white sands, and all there was what dirt in the air? It’s like that) which can last all day, and temperatures which I’ve experienced peaking out at 115 degrees. Surviving in this climate takes extra precautions, like learning to keep your camp together when extreme winds hit, how to keep cool, and how to keep our skin from turning to the consistency of paper.

Being radically self reliant isn’t enough, however. Bringing excess, i.e., more than you would need is also a crucial idea when it comes to the event. Being able to provide for your camp isn’t enough; one also needs to be able to help his neighbor in both terms of stupid crap like alcohol, but also in terms of ability. This leads us to another idea which was introduced to both of us at a young age going to catholic school and later to church, that being of giving.

The economy of burning man is a Gifting economy. This is another crucial idea which I didn’t really give a shit about until I came to black rock city. Being able to give to your neighbors *without* the expectation of return, is a key concept that is completely lost in our modern world. We all are told there is no free lunch. I disagree with this. There sometimes is, but we can not expect it, and further, we should be the one’s giving it if its there. Giving with out the expectation of return is a funky idea. It often falls flat on its face; the recipient of the gift will usually not value it, or even worse, take it for granted.

There is a unique synergy that occurs, however, when you combine the scarcity of resources that living in black rock city creates and the idea of a gifting economy. The value of anything given in such a situation increases exponentially to the gift. Simply sharing a drink or a sticker suddenly becomes a very unique experience. I think this is a hard concept for Americans, in particular, to grasp, as we have relatively instant access to most things that we need. Our society is unbelievably wasteful which we just don’t see.

Alright, so, there, we have some core concepts. But just how was my experience? WTF did I do? Well, it’s like this. This has been not just a hard year, but, one of those years in which I’ve personally grown unlike any other in my life. It began with a broken heart and a bit of a crisis inside myself. This took the better part of the year for me to deal with and sort out. You and your husband and mom have been riding my ass about getting back into school, but unfortunately, this last year made me stop and re evaluate where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. Thank god, I came out on top, stronger than ever. Like, unbelievably solid, better than I’ve ever been in my life. Just as that ended, the situation with mom loosing her house hit, and again, like you, my life was put on hold as I dealt with another crisis.

I mention this on purpose, because Burning Man, and my participation in Black Rock City, is a year long event. My experience with the prior three burns gave me the ability to organize and lead and take care of two people who’ve never been and include two extra camp mates at the last minute. We built a dome (a 20 foot shade structure) in my friend Cetta’s back yard, and I got together my equipment and loaded up the trailer and headed out. Of the three prior burns I’ve gone to, this was decisively my best, funest, and most eye opening. Like every burn, there were the usual indulgences and craziness. There were naked people (gasp) people on drugs, people sober, artists, tourists, first timers who didn’t know what the fuck was up, cranky fucks who complain about the whole thing, art, and, unbelievable moments that really cant even been described.

I have to be honest, however, I wasn’t feeling like going this year but knew once I got out there I’d have a blast. I really only had one thing that I felt like I had to do, and that was to put a picture of me and a certain someone inside the Temple. The temple isn’t a temple, say, to god, or to man, or to some kind of pagan beast. It’s just…a temple. A sacred space. It’s a place that most people end up putting something of significance into because at the end of the week, much like the man, it is burned, and the fire takes away whatever you choose to put into it. This was my favorite temple that I’ve experienced and the hardest for me to deal with.

The temple was built by a group of artists from Austin, Texas this year and was amazing to be inside. People brought art, pictures, and stories of people they loved and lost and needed to let go. I used it for this purpose. I took me four trips to the temple (it was about a mile and a half walk one way to get to it) before I was able to put to rest what I needed to.

After I did so, I felt a strange kind of release. It’s amazing how we hold on to the hard things in life, so often, and allow it to define us, often in the most negative of ways. I feel intensely sad for anyone who can’t let go, and allow a small fire to simmer inside them their entire lives.

Of course, there were a great many things to do out there. So many, in fact, that it would be impossible if I went on ten trips to the same event to experience all of them. There are the more urban things, like bars which will fill your cup for free, to go to, or the stupid things, like the flaming enema (gives you a little flame thrower action when you sit down on a special chair.) there were art installations like “soma” by the flaming lotus girls, a group of women who are welders and sculptors from the bay area. There are the art cars, which are vehicles that have been changed in some way that become a sort of traveling party.

There are tons of workshops out there, on anything from learning to hug yourself better, to adult themed, to how to generate green electricity, to cooking. It’s like finding some of the coolest, most interesting things out there and bringing all the nutty, productive, creative people into a pietre dish and seeing what happens.

I think one of the unexpected and best parts of my experience with the burn is bringing people who wouldn’t have, otherwise, been able to go, out there. This is for two reasons. The first is because I get the opportunity to teach and lead and organize people in a way that I would never get to. It’s kind of selfish but it hass really taught me how to, in a sense, herd cats. I find it to be one of the most important skills I’ve ever been able to develop. I’ve learned more about teamwork and getting things done that I ever could have in some kind of corporate job where people are being paid to do as I say. Getting them to do as I say with out them *having* to do it is something you can never learn in a corporate environment.

Secondly, and most importantly, its opened up these people to something new that I don’t think they would have imagined had they not gone. They get to participate in something that is mind opening and pretty fucking cool at the same time. By mind opening, they get to see what others are capable of doing, and in a sense get to measure themselves against a pretty high bar in some cases that I don’t think they would have known was out there. I know that in my case it has made me want to aim way higher than I thought was possible before. This is very much true for the year ahead of me, as I’ve set some bars that I didn’t think I could hit, but, now I’ve got the gumption to try.

I hope this has given you a taste of my experience this year in black rock city and at burning man. There are a lot of experiences that I had that are too abstract to talk about, like, a conversation I had with the clouds, getting on my knees for a shot at kitty camp, watching a father beat on his daughters boyfriend with a whip, drinking a bit much, the “love seat” which shocks you when you sit on it, and scores of other experiences like cleaning up the moop left behind by camps that were near us. These are secondary to the above things which I think I came to realize solidly this year.

I don’t expect you to ever go, but I hope one day you’ll be open enough to let me take you and your husband there, and experience the unbelievably amazing things I have in the black rock desert.

Your loving brother,

-L.

2. Uncertainty Principle

I had been traveling extensively for the previous six months before my departure to Detroit. I had gone on road trips all over the west; Los Angeles to a warehouse party. Denver three times to Club Beta to hear a variety of DJ’s play. Las Vegas just for some tomfoolery. Indio, CA, to attend the Coachella music festival, and San Fransisco to participate in the Bay to Breakers marathon/march. Any weekend that I thought I could get away from this state, this city, I have. Getting away from this place, and the situations I have found myself in here, has in a lot of ways changed the person who I once was. I would detest coming back to boring old Albuquerque, a small city in a large, empty state, boring, dull on every occasion. This was a mistake by myself that I will not make again.

The Detroit electronic music festival, called DEMF my many of the attendees, has been in operation since may of 2000. The first four years of the festival, held in downtown Detroit’s Hart plaza overlooking the Detroit river and facing southward towards Canada, were free and brought in upwards of 1.7 million people for the first three years of the event. Staffing problems, management changes, and lawsuits, however, led the event off course. In 2003 there was a drop in attendance by more than half down to 630,000 along with a name change to Movement. In 2004, it dropped even further as it was the first year that the event organizers began charging to get into the festival, 25$ for a full day pass. Attendance dropped again to 150,000, and still struggled to break even in costs. 2006 saw the worst attendance numbers of the festival, barley seeing 41,000 people paying to get in. It was estimated that in 2009 upwards of 80,000 people were in attendance but this has not been substantiated yet.

2009 saw 57 acts spread over four stages inside of hart plaza, with the addition of a truck with a small sound system featuring a few drum n’ bass acts that were not advertised. In contrast almost 90 acts played on five stages in 2008, and 48 acts in 2006, which was also the worst year in terms of attendance. Because all four stages run congruently with each other it is quite impossible to hear every act play their live set, and one often has to choose between acts that they love and down time where none of the acts is worth their time. This happened several times during my experience at this years festival, much to my dismay, and to my group’s. Most dj’s sets lasted around an hour and a half to two hours in the early part of the day and up to three hours for headliners on the main stage in the evening.

The main stage (conveniently called the Vitamin Water Main Stage, thanks to vitamin water being a major corporate sponsor of the event along with Red Bull) sat within the large amphitheater built into Hart Plaza, which also sported the best sounding system. This amphitheater gave the event a much needed epic feel to the entire production. There was plenty of space to dance on any tier of the Amphitheater which meant that almost everyone had space to do anything with the exception of peak times in the evening when navigating up and down the stairs did get a bit tricky at times. A large LCD screen just below the DJ booth thankfully gave the name of each dj that was up so that there was no question who was going at any time.

A second stage (the Made in Detroit stage) sat underneath the entrance to the event and to the right of the main stage, which I have to admit gave a very omnious feel that I really did like. Unfortunately the sound from this stage was not nearly as good as any of the other stages and the strange shape to the space and concrete walls only worsened the fact. Getting in and out of this stage required either finding one of the very well hidden routes that fed directly into the space from the periphery of Hart plaza, or going straight down near the main entrance to the main stage.

Two other stages sat to the left and right of the main stage. The Beatport stage sat to the far left and had its sound system turned away from the venue across the river towards Canada. On the second night as we left back to our hotels via the people mover/train Detroit has, I noticed a major street tunnel entrance moved traffic directly under this stage. The engineering must have been really solid because I never once felt or heard traffic flowing below us.

The fourth stage, the Red Bull Music Academy stage, sat a ways away from the other three. It was right next to a step pyramid structure in the plaza that kind of acted as an above ground seating/amphitheater structure which kind of divided itself from the other stages. This would prove to be my favorite venue for the duration of the trip, as all of the acts that I thought stood out and were the best ended up performing at this stage.

Between all of these stages was organized both a food court and the typical festival shopping mall experience. Vendors sold shirts, stickers, countercultralish wares found at most festival venues. Food was a bit pricey considering the price to get in. Cheep beers (bud light) cost 7$, which I thought completely ridiculous especially when better beers at coachella in California were a dollar less and had 30% more for your dollar. Red Bulls were 5$ and mixed drinks at the hard to find bars were 11$. An overall rip off that made us eventually sneak in our own alcohol that we purchased on a venture into downtown on the second day. I bought a 2$ orange on the first day there but that was only because up to that point I had only eaten bloody Mary’s in the airport along with a few nachos. Food ended up being my biggest single expense for this entire trip, which isn’t saying much. The best deals were found outside of the festival in Greek Town and small sandwich shops around town, when you could find them. Overall my experience with keeping myself feed, hydrated, and buzzed was super negative and if i ever go back will have to come up with a solution for. Even renting a car with someone in my group and driving a few miles down the road to a store would have ended up proving a better deal than the prices we ended up paying.

Because I was dealing with a migraine for the first day of the trip and starting to develop some sever jet lag from partying in San Fransisco the weekend before, I did not end up making it to any of the many after parties, which is where a ton of dj’s who weren’t booked for DEMF were playing. From what I could tell from my friends experiences only one or two of the after hours parties ended up being enjoyable for them. Many of the events were not as good as they had hoped, or filled with very weird vibes. The one night i did try to venture out, I ended up walking over to an event that was being held inside a Hotel down the street from ours. As soon as I got there some of the angriest, hardest techno was being belted out at about 4am, and it had the effect of driving me away quickly. I was told later that the vibes inside that venue were extremely sketchy even for a hotel, and i’m glad I listened to my instinct and turned around and left back to the hotel for some much needed rest.

From the Front Lines: The Detroit Electronic Music Festival, pt 1
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-Willam Butler Yeats

Destinations are often a surprise to the destined.
-Neil Gaiman

From the Front Lines: The Detroit Electronic Music Festival

A tale of two coasts

I have spent my life exploring the western half of the United States. Growing up in New Mexico, and traveling every year across the mountains of Arizona and deserts of California to the west coast, I have never known anything but small rural towns, massive, open spaces, incredible growth, and bustling mega cities that didn’t exist fifty years ago. I am a child of the west. The west always offers a new day, a new hope for something better and bigger, a idealized life that anyone could win through hard work or luck. This is what my country has offered me for my entire life. Purple Mountains, endless beaches, epic skies, safety, security, and hope.

Music, always took up the assumptive cloak of speaking towards that bright future we are all guaranteed, that pursuit of happiness that was laid before us with every desert sunrise, every new toy or idea or beat that accompanied it. Its an inevitable march forward towards the brighter tomorrow, escaping the dark past and the things that haunted it.

Traveling to the eastern half of this country came as both a culture shock and eye opener as to what this entire country is all about. Of course I’d seen it all on TV and in movies about the situation parts of this country has been in for the past thirty or forty years, but you don’t really get to understand it until you’ve actually been there, just how desperate and depressing of a place many of the cities of the east have fallen into. A false bravado, still trying to charm the remaining unlucky and unmotivated fills the air, covers the stink and decay rotting away underneath.

Music, then, became something i could have never realized it was speaking. Techno beats that once were heard by these ears in places dark, middle of the night and shrouded by mist, leading us to somewhere new, somewhere just below the bright level of reality to a slightly skewed version, telling our collective tail of hardship that is the price to pay for our sunny, better tomorrow, became the tail of the collective woe, the realization that we have become dependent on the machine, abdicating our creative rights for a paycheck, sucking the masters dick for just a little bit more money until we have to pay the rent, get our next fix, gamble away our future.

The music wasn’t a tail of joy anymore, rather, its become a tail of woe. Of decay. Of the false face on the rotting interior, the truth that in many places in this country like many places across this planet, people sold their humanity and in return got the fake front of a better tomorrow. Instead of speaking towards a beat that leads us in a new direction, revitalizing the core thing that is within all of us that makes each day better than the last, its speaking the same, tired beat that many musical genres have repeated; the realization that we have conformed to the machine, that we have yielded our hearts to the mechanical dryness because our hearts were to heavy a thing to burden our minds with any more. Instead of embracing the fact that our hearts burn with as much pain as they do with joy, we lobotomized the pain away and told our minds that the joy was in the repetition, the machine.

On Friday I made it out to Hunab Hookah for a little bit to catch some of The Acids and Basses electro jam, with guest F/M from Santa Fe.  Trippy, Ambient and experimental, quite enjoyable to just sit back and listen to.  F/M consisted of two technicians, Martin Back and Frank Rolla, a lute, two macbooks and a contraption which I will name the “random paddle”, a large standing instrument with many wooden paddles jutting from it, and small motors which randomly would cause a hammer mallet to play one of these paddles.  Think Japanese ambient, with some folk rock intertwined.  Acids and Basses, making use of 512 Software’s (located right here in Albuquerque) Audio Sequencing software, Numerology, makes ambient soundscapes great for film or just cooling out to.  It’s that kind of music that you don’t hear in your head until you hear it being played, and then you realize it’s always there, you just might not know how to channel it out.  An enjoyable night, followed by one sad bit of news; it is my understanding that Hunab Hookah will be closing at the end of July.  I never got to spend too much time at Hunab outside of Throwing Spark_Gap there for awhile, but I did enjoy the place when I was there.  It’s very hard to make a Hookah Lounge last in Albuquerque, I would imagine.

Then, last night, I re-opened Spark_Gap at The Agency, with the intention of continuing its tradition of live electronic jamming and IDM.  Well, it was half there.  We opened the night with a set by I Heart Teo ,  A young DJ from L.A. who has made his way out here, who dropped an hour set of heavy electro, and did very litterally blow me away. Myself and Clint had set up our rigs on stage, and were waiting for some of the other players to come, which unfortunately didn’t happen - and so Spark_gap turned essentially into an hour and a half long set from myself with backup by Clint.  It was fun, but it wasn’t what I had planned.  I had to have something to give people who came out (about 11 of them, including the ever vigilant Adric, to whom I am eternally grateful), so I thought that it made the most sense to just throw a set.  There was a little jumping around, which was good, but it certainly wasn’t an improv electro night.

So, what would I do differently?  Well, I think I won’t have a stage next time.  I don’t think it’s fitting for spark_gap to have a tall stage, unless I have some featured artists - which is the other thing I’ll do differently.  I don’t think I can keep the improv jam thing going right now.  If I can’t get a consistent number of players out to play (and I’m totally understanding of that, Saturday is also not a good night for something like this), I can’t really do an open jam.  So, I think I plan to have one DJ, one featured act, and perhaps anyone who wants to jam, in the next Spark_gap, and play it up as a dance party with some improv jamming.  I’ll have to see how it all plays out, I’m still learning with this thing, but I want to keep it going.

I also have to say thanks to Trace for coming out and throwing visuals for the night.  He very literally helped me to make the night 100% better.  Without visuals I really would have felt deeply failed at this outing, but having the bouncing lights on the giant white wall of The Agency really helped out.  Seriously man, thank you.

So, that, as they say, is that.  I wasn’t entirely happy with last night, I will say that, but the moral of the story is to look at what you’re doing and figure out what you need to do differently.  I’m seeing some of that, so I’m going to work on it, and as with anything, I’m going to take whatever help I can get for it, because I simply can’t do all this stuff on my own.

I just got back from the Agency’s Record Swap, and I had a lot of fun at it. It was nice to walk in and see quite a few people at tables with their big boxes and stacks of vinyl set up, as well as record players, books, and various other wares for sale. Raven Chacon of SickSickSick distribution was there, with his mass of noise and experimental music in tow, as well as my friend Adric and his many boxes of vinyl. I walked away with about 15 new records, and I know I need to go down there next time with my own stuff to sell.

Which, speaking of which, this is a great venue for bands to come sell their music. Because it’s not the flea market, people are actively searching for music, so your chances of selling are much better. I encourage musicians to consider coming out for the next swap, which will be the 2nd sunday of every month.

Hey everyone,

Spark_gap, the live IDM A/V jam, is moving to a new venue as of July 19th. We will now call The Agency, at 111 4th st. SW in Downtown, our new home.

Spark_gap still invites electronic musicians and visualists of all walks to come showcase their work in an open-jam, improv atmosphere with other like-minded folks. We provide the PA and Projector - you bring the beats, noise, video, laptops, drum machines or whatever else you got, and plug in. Keep an open mind and jam with others, find new music and have fun.

Spark_gap will take place on July 19th at The Agency. Doors are at 8:30pm. Players wishing to perform should plan on showing up at 8pm for load in/etc.

The event is all ages, and is $5. Various beverages (non-alcoholic) will be available.

I ask you sincerely to support this event and the music it promotes. Thank you!

I saw the fems finally for the first time at the palo soleri (or as i like to call it, the planet of the apes reality venue) last summer, and they just rocked some shit. anyways, came across this link to their myspace that has their cover of gnarls barkleys crazy on it. pretty good, in fems fashion.

link