Flipside 2008 Afterburn Report
May. 28th, 2008 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
errantember"It's fun to make operative discoveries like this while staggering around 10 feet in the air on stilts you haven't worn in two years on muddy ground you can't see while trying to blow enormous fireballs inside a group of 40 fire performers in high wind blowing toward the audience."
Rather than waiting Way Too Long because I Need to Process my "Feelings," I'm just going to jump the fuck in here while the Squirrel Nut Zippers are still playing and get it done.
This year totally rocked in a most mellow way. The new sound policy resulted in a completely unfamiliar environment in which a slew of fantastic dance theme camps each had their own unique and isolated sonic environment. I can't even count the number of fabulous sound camps I crashed at various points in the event. The change from being randomly assaulted by Too Much PsyTrance at all hours to this year's setup was the biggest and most pleasant surprise.
I picked up my Poly Paradise friends from the airport around noon, but we didn't get to the event until just after dark. It looks like the delay was well-timed, as reports from my Greeter friends indicate we just missed the huge crush. After arriving I said hi to a few friends, then got my hexayurt and storage tent set up.
I *almost* didn't bring the hexayurt this year, which was almost a very, very bad choice.
Once oriented to take advantage of the prevailing wind, the yurt remained at a tolerable sleeping temperature *for* *the* *entire* *burn*. The heat was withering this year, and without the yurt, my two graveyard (2 AM - 8 AM) ranger shifts would have been The End of the World. The temperature in the yurt was consistently lower than anywhere else in the burn except the Grove and SMASH camp's air conditioned 8' hexayurts. I'm going to lengthen mine to the stretch version before Decompression to provide more storage space and group chill space.
I rangered with Needles and Ultra on my Friday morning shift. It was very quiet and mellow, and the weather was beautiful. We struck a good balance of awareness and conversation. Needles held someone's beer for about 30 seconds. We helped one disoriented participant back to camp. We thoroughly rangered the ISH tranquiloungers in preparation for heavier usage later. My second shift on Saturday morning was a bit more exciting. We didn't have enough rangers for pairs, so after helping Caucaus with a Certain Recurring Someone, we went out alone. I solved several minor issues, including a nasty piece of rebar sticking our of the top of one of the staircases and a problem with some of the safety lighting. I got to check out both the Philadelphia Experiment and Pyramid towers, both of which are excellent long-range surveillance venues, as well as being Super Groovey right at dawn. I listened in on a relevant discussion of large-scale disaster triage from a military medic before heading back to HQ. I'd like to thank everyone I worked with, as well as the Echelon volunteers for excellent support and several killer breakfasts. I feel a lot more confident about rangering at Burning Man next time I go.
Rangers -- Sober people with radios.
After failing to get![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dj_warhammer and crew to Flipside, I was worried we would be without a proper Industrial presence at the Burn. And then I ran across Circus Nefarious, right in the middle of the upper field. Not only did they have Gothic/Industrial music, they had G/I karaoke, which may be the most powerful object of desire I've ever experienced. It's completely unacceptable that I didn't make time to participate, but rest assured, "I'll be back." We absolutely need to get this happening in town somewhere, preferably Elysium on one of it's off nights. They also had clowns.
There's something wrong with clowns, but what's wrong with clowns is wrong with all of us, which is why clowns are so cool and necessary.
Especially for circus sex. The Strong Man simultaneously getting a blowjob from and ass-fucking the Contortionist doesn't count. Not without clowns.
I had several out-of-townies from Poly Paradise at Burning Man come in for the burn this year, includingdarthbecca, troyisburning,jb_27,erosissa. Having them at a local burn was great, and my only regret was not ending up spending more time with them. However, since I'm going to two other burns this year and also visiting them before and after, I think I can make it up later.
This was endemic of a larger fantastic situation/unexpected problem this year, which is that an awful large number of people wanted to spend time with me. I flowed with this largely by spending time with the Austin poly and CS poly crowds as a group, which was really fantastic and pushed my boundaries in group interaction in a lot of really fabulous ways. I think, though, that I may not have been the only person who found the level of overall sexual availability to be pleasingly overflowing. This kind of popularity problem is new to me, and I don't think my time management and communications skills are good enough to handle it all yet. Especially when I'm not strictly sober. Overall, *I* was very happy with the way things went, but I hope no one else ended up disappointed in how things worked out.
The biggest group interaction happened Saturday night, with a group of about 8 or 9 Austin poly folks. At first only three of use were explicitly planning a co-experience together. However, about the fourth time that we ended up at the same venue with the rest of the party *completely* without planning, there seemed to be some kind of group decision that sticking together was a Good Idea, and we did for the rest of the evening. I was really impressed by our ability to stick together despite varying states of interest and sobriety, and sexual arousal.
Maybe the sexual arousal level wasn't different. At all.
Anyway, I'm not certain exactly how many people I ended up kissing by the end of the night (three? four?) and I *certainly* have *no* *clue* how many people I fondled, rubbed, and snuggled in various provocative ways. This happy party winded it's way through Circus Nefarious, Baksheesh, Ish and Circle of Fire (where I performed briefly), before finally coming to rest in the area of the Lava Lounge and Interstellar High. We stuck together until about 3:30 AM, at which point we floated off in our own directions. The entire time I was blissing out on all the great happy sexual energy while simultaneously experiencing a certain degree of confusion and anxiety for the same reason. It was quite a night. Ironically, I ended up in the tent of yet *another* person before morning.
Fun was had by all.
Circle of Fire, in which I participated in only a peripheral way this year, totally rocked. Huge props go out to Adam, the Brothers of the Flame, and everyone else who busted ass to get the camp running. I think it was the best year ever for our infrastructure, with a well-defined performance space right next to the effigy, a sweet sound system of our own, and by far the best fuel depot and prep space we've ever had. The separation of the camping and staging areas, seen throughout Flipside this year, also worked well. I kind of got the impression that not as much actual firedancing happened there this year, but I wasn't really around enough for this to be an informed observation.
Performance wise, this both was and wasn't a big year for me. I only spun fire once outside the conclave, and that was under the influence. It was interesting, but not something I'd probably choose to do again, particularly in such a public venue. For the conclave this year, I was determined to bring stilts back to the experience. In previous years we've had as many as 6 stilters bringing the fire, but this year there were possibly two, including me. I got the new stilts, with a 4' lift, finished just days before the event. I hadn't been on stilts for over two year, and never on ones that high. On them, I was 10'2", tall enough not to be able to hold someone's hand to stand up. I forgot my flaming pole arm in the hurry to get out the door, so I had to improvise something new. I caught the spirit of New and Dangerous, so I decided to try putting together the day of the burn that I'd never done before. I decided breathing fire on stilts would be pretty fucking exciting, especially with the high wind. so I set out to create some fire cannons from extra effigy bamboo (thank you DAFT!) and non-dairy coffee creamer (thanks to Root Beer Camp, Temple of the Steaming Pot, and the Rangers!) Testing was only getting me a 50% success rate, so I made 6 cannons to hang around my neck, just to be sure. Finally, I arranged withjb_27 to hand me up my poi, just in case the cannons were a flop. Without his help, this complex piece of performance art wouldn't have been possible, and I'm very grateful for it! I'm also in debt to Timeless, who let me use his metal ladder as a staging area for Stilt Launch and Landing. Despite the lack of polish and fairly extreme risk, I was ecstatic about how my conclave performance came off, with every one of my fire cannons going off at least once. I discovered that tapping them hard before blowing out the creamer really helped. It's fun to make operative discoveries like this while staggering around 10 feet in the air on stilts you haven't worn in two years on muddy ground you can't see while trying to blow enormous fireballs inside a group of 40 fire performers in high wind blowing toward the audience. I recommend more people try it. After I'd blown my wad cannon-wise, jb_27 handed me my poi, and I spun with them on stilts for the last three minutes of the burn (lest the audience get, you know, *bored*) Gwen helped me put out the poi before the end of the conclave so I could walk out of the performance while there was still enough chaos to cover me. Considering everything I did except spin the poi was super-new, I was happy just to have gotten everything fired off and not fall on my (or someone else's) ass. The fact that several other people actually seemed to have enjoyed it was even better! I also had a perfect view of the rest of the burn from 10' off the ground.
I hope someone got pictures. :)
The whole burn truly rocked this year. The new sound policy, all my great friends, and the over-the-top efforts of all of our volunteers made for one of the best and smoothest Flipside's ever. I agree with Timeless to a certain degree that the burn was much more music and somewhat less sculpture-art-centric this year, but I don't think this was necessarily a bad thing. It is possible, thought, that having this balance is less likely to convert ravers into burners, and with all the newbies we had this year, we may have missed some opportunities. Considering how much I got into the sound and music, though, it's hard to say anything negative. I also made a really good choice taking the ranger shifts that I did, because I got to learn where everything was early before things got too crazy, and because the time between 8AM and 2 PM when I usually slept was totally useless because of the heat. The hexayurt once again saved my lilly white ass.
Decompression and Transformus, here I come!
Rather than waiting Way Too Long because I Need to Process my "Feelings," I'm just going to jump the fuck in here while the Squirrel Nut Zippers are still playing and get it done.
This year totally rocked in a most mellow way. The new sound policy resulted in a completely unfamiliar environment in which a slew of fantastic dance theme camps each had their own unique and isolated sonic environment. I can't even count the number of fabulous sound camps I crashed at various points in the event. The change from being randomly assaulted by Too Much PsyTrance at all hours to this year's setup was the biggest and most pleasant surprise.
I picked up my Poly Paradise friends from the airport around noon, but we didn't get to the event until just after dark. It looks like the delay was well-timed, as reports from my Greeter friends indicate we just missed the huge crush. After arriving I said hi to a few friends, then got my hexayurt and storage tent set up.
I *almost* didn't bring the hexayurt this year, which was almost a very, very bad choice.
Once oriented to take advantage of the prevailing wind, the yurt remained at a tolerable sleeping temperature *for* *the* *entire* *burn*. The heat was withering this year, and without the yurt, my two graveyard (2 AM - 8 AM) ranger shifts would have been The End of the World. The temperature in the yurt was consistently lower than anywhere else in the burn except the Grove and SMASH camp's air conditioned 8' hexayurts. I'm going to lengthen mine to the stretch version before Decompression to provide more storage space and group chill space.
I rangered with Needles and Ultra on my Friday morning shift. It was very quiet and mellow, and the weather was beautiful. We struck a good balance of awareness and conversation. Needles held someone's beer for about 30 seconds. We helped one disoriented participant back to camp. We thoroughly rangered the ISH tranquiloungers in preparation for heavier usage later. My second shift on Saturday morning was a bit more exciting. We didn't have enough rangers for pairs, so after helping Caucaus with a Certain Recurring Someone, we went out alone. I solved several minor issues, including a nasty piece of rebar sticking our of the top of one of the staircases and a problem with some of the safety lighting. I got to check out both the Philadelphia Experiment and Pyramid towers, both of which are excellent long-range surveillance venues, as well as being Super Groovey right at dawn. I listened in on a relevant discussion of large-scale disaster triage from a military medic before heading back to HQ. I'd like to thank everyone I worked with, as well as the Echelon volunteers for excellent support and several killer breakfasts. I feel a lot more confident about rangering at Burning Man next time I go.
Rangers -- Sober people with radios.
After failing to get
dj_warhammer and crew to Flipside, I was worried we would be without a proper Industrial presence at the Burn. And then I ran across Circus Nefarious, right in the middle of the upper field. Not only did they have Gothic/Industrial music, they had G/I karaoke, which may be the most powerful object of desire I've ever experienced. It's completely unacceptable that I didn't make time to participate, but rest assured, "I'll be back." We absolutely need to get this happening in town somewhere, preferably Elysium on one of it's off nights. They also had clowns.There's something wrong with clowns, but what's wrong with clowns is wrong with all of us, which is why clowns are so cool and necessary.
Especially for circus sex. The Strong Man simultaneously getting a blowjob from and ass-fucking the Contortionist doesn't count. Not without clowns.
I had several out-of-townies from Poly Paradise at Burning Man come in for the burn this year, including
darthbecca, troyisburning,jb_27,erosissa. Having them at a local burn was great, and my only regret was not ending up spending more time with them. However, since I'm going to two other burns this year and also visiting them before and after, I think I can make it up later.This was endemic of a larger fantastic situation/unexpected problem this year, which is that an awful large number of people wanted to spend time with me. I flowed with this largely by spending time with the Austin poly and CS poly crowds as a group, which was really fantastic and pushed my boundaries in group interaction in a lot of really fabulous ways. I think, though, that I may not have been the only person who found the level of overall sexual availability to be pleasingly overflowing. This kind of popularity problem is new to me, and I don't think my time management and communications skills are good enough to handle it all yet. Especially when I'm not strictly sober. Overall, *I* was very happy with the way things went, but I hope no one else ended up disappointed in how things worked out.
The biggest group interaction happened Saturday night, with a group of about 8 or 9 Austin poly folks. At first only three of use were explicitly planning a co-experience together. However, about the fourth time that we ended up at the same venue with the rest of the party *completely* without planning, there seemed to be some kind of group decision that sticking together was a Good Idea, and we did for the rest of the evening. I was really impressed by our ability to stick together despite varying states of interest and sobriety, and sexual arousal.
Maybe the sexual arousal level wasn't different. At all.
Anyway, I'm not certain exactly how many people I ended up kissing by the end of the night (three? four?) and I *certainly* have *no* *clue* how many people I fondled, rubbed, and snuggled in various provocative ways. This happy party winded it's way through Circus Nefarious, Baksheesh, Ish and Circle of Fire (where I performed briefly), before finally coming to rest in the area of the Lava Lounge and Interstellar High. We stuck together until about 3:30 AM, at which point we floated off in our own directions. The entire time I was blissing out on all the great happy sexual energy while simultaneously experiencing a certain degree of confusion and anxiety for the same reason. It was quite a night. Ironically, I ended up in the tent of yet *another* person before morning.
Fun was had by all.
Circle of Fire, in which I participated in only a peripheral way this year, totally rocked. Huge props go out to Adam, the Brothers of the Flame, and everyone else who busted ass to get the camp running. I think it was the best year ever for our infrastructure, with a well-defined performance space right next to the effigy, a sweet sound system of our own, and by far the best fuel depot and prep space we've ever had. The separation of the camping and staging areas, seen throughout Flipside this year, also worked well. I kind of got the impression that not as much actual firedancing happened there this year, but I wasn't really around enough for this to be an informed observation.
Performance wise, this both was and wasn't a big year for me. I only spun fire once outside the conclave, and that was under the influence. It was interesting, but not something I'd probably choose to do again, particularly in such a public venue. For the conclave this year, I was determined to bring stilts back to the experience. In previous years we've had as many as 6 stilters bringing the fire, but this year there were possibly two, including me. I got the new stilts, with a 4' lift, finished just days before the event. I hadn't been on stilts for over two year, and never on ones that high. On them, I was 10'2", tall enough not to be able to hold someone's hand to stand up. I forgot my flaming pole arm in the hurry to get out the door, so I had to improvise something new. I caught the spirit of New and Dangerous, so I decided to try putting together the day of the burn that I'd never done before. I decided breathing fire on stilts would be pretty fucking exciting, especially with the high wind. so I set out to create some fire cannons from extra effigy bamboo (thank you DAFT!) and non-dairy coffee creamer (thanks to Root Beer Camp, Temple of the Steaming Pot, and the Rangers!) Testing was only getting me a 50% success rate, so I made 6 cannons to hang around my neck, just to be sure. Finally, I arranged with
jb_27 to hand me up my poi, just in case the cannons were a flop. Without his help, this complex piece of performance art wouldn't have been possible, and I'm very grateful for it! I'm also in debt to Timeless, who let me use his metal ladder as a staging area for Stilt Launch and Landing. Despite the lack of polish and fairly extreme risk, I was ecstatic about how my conclave performance came off, with every one of my fire cannons going off at least once. I discovered that tapping them hard before blowing out the creamer really helped. It's fun to make operative discoveries like this while staggering around 10 feet in the air on stilts you haven't worn in two years on muddy ground you can't see while trying to blow enormous fireballs inside a group of 40 fire performers in high wind blowing toward the audience. I recommend more people try it. After I'd blown my wad cannon-wise, jb_27 handed me my poi, and I spun with them on stilts for the last three minutes of the burn (lest the audience get, you know, *bored*) Gwen helped me put out the poi before the end of the conclave so I could walk out of the performance while there was still enough chaos to cover me. Considering everything I did except spin the poi was super-new, I was happy just to have gotten everything fired off and not fall on my (or someone else's) ass. The fact that several other people actually seemed to have enjoyed it was even better! I also had a perfect view of the rest of the burn from 10' off the ground. I hope someone got pictures. :)
The whole burn truly rocked this year. The new sound policy, all my great friends, and the over-the-top efforts of all of our volunteers made for one of the best and smoothest Flipside's ever. I agree with Timeless to a certain degree that the burn was much more music and somewhat less sculpture-art-centric this year, but I don't think this was necessarily a bad thing. It is possible, thought, that having this balance is less likely to convert ravers into burners, and with all the newbies we had this year, we may have missed some opportunities. Considering how much I got into the sound and music, though, it's hard to say anything negative. I also made a really good choice taking the ranger shifts that I did, because I got to learn where everything was early before things got too crazy, and because the time between 8AM and 2 PM when I usually slept was totally useless because of the heat. The hexayurt once again saved my lilly white ass.
Decompression and Transformus, here I come!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 01:46 am (UTC)Believe it or not, I just ran into Reesa and Andrea on my way home from the Farmer's Market at the Triangle. I gave Reesa a motorcycle helmet hug and thanked her for Eposias.
Austin is smaller than College Station wants to be.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 01:57 am (UTC)Hexayurt!
Date: 2008-05-29 01:52 am (UTC)Yes, I'm still weeping because I couldn't make it. Oh to be involved, inebriated, and oversexed in the ways that only a burn can offer. Transformus, though...
Re: Hexayurt!
Date: 2008-05-29 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 06:05 pm (UTC)All the loud camps were in "sound town." It was great. I slept like a dead man every night.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 04:22 am (UTC)I found myself fascinated all weekend by the interactions that flowed between people... I almost said sexual interactions but really it was so much more.
I think what was the best for me was seeing people (including myself) relax and be HAPPY about touching one, two, three... more people; seeing the glitter and the glow as merely accessories to how beautiful each person was on their own.
Mm, poly bliss.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 02:58 pm (UTC)I really like that hexayurt idea. I wonder how well it would work to put several of them together.
I didn't get pictures of you on stilts, but I did get video. I took almost 5 minutes of footage of fire dancers before the burn. I haven't uploaded it because I didn't know if I needed to get permission from everyone to do so (plus, one person is naked in it). I got several pics of various other spinner/dancers that I will be posting in my journal later.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 08:35 pm (UTC)It's usually fairly easy to get permission regarding the conclave, because everyone spinning knows people will be taking pictures and video. Some would say it's not even necessary for large group performances (there's been some debate on this on the main Burning Man list) but it's better to be safe. The way I handle it is to ask when taking, then also put up a little note on the website telling people I'm happy to take down pictures that someone isn't comfortable having online.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 08:44 pm (UTC)BTW, I friended you. I thought I had done it long ago, but...
stilt fire
Date: 2008-06-06 11:13 pm (UTC)Re: stilt fire
Date: 2008-06-06 11:34 pm (UTC)I can only get more fabulous from here. Hopefully my flesh will survive!