The Wish : Night
It started with The Turbine in 2007… Read the rest of this entry »
“Which is more musical; a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?” John Cage
Welcome to Moop
One of the many delightful new ideas brought to us via Burner Culture is that of moop – “matter out of place”. Meaning predominantly litter and detritus, but also things inappropriately placed. One of the 10 Burner principles is “Leave no trace”, and is designed to make us wasteful westerners think twice about how we interact with the environment.
Afrika Burn (and far more so its parent Burning Man) is not a simple back-to-nature event, despite a strong stream of green awareness and survivalist minimalism. It is more than that, and incorporates at times almost impossibly complex structures bordering on madness, and requiring truckloads of materials and months of preparation. The central piece of Tankwa Town, The Wish by the Upsetters, for example, is an 8 M high spherical installation of hoops within hoops, meticulously designed, transported and assembled for the pleasure of all. Read the rest of this entry »
I have been reflecting on Afrika Burn 2008, with 2 articles, a general synopsis called “AB08 scorecard” and a cheeky cultural crit called “Soop – Sound (Waves) Out Of Place“. But now I want to get to the heart of the experience, from the point of view of the theme camp that our community set up, Sanctuary. Read the rest of this entry »
Update:
Also see
We are back from the burn! Just thinking that causes the dust to rise.
Next Monday 27th October 2008, we are inviting anyone to Syncroblog with us; to participate see this post.
But to get the ball rolling, here is my initial scorecard for AB 08. Bear in mind this view is personal, and I did not visit all the camps and attractions I would have liked: Read the rest of this entry »
Calling all … all blogging burners, survivalist aesthetes, desert rats, sacred activists, uberjollers, gonzo journalists, hippies reincarnate, diehard libertarians, cultural creatives, nieue afrikaanians, glocal emergents, even just voyers, lurkers and wannabes.
Going out on Monday 26 October 2008, participate in a post-AB08 synbcroblog. Reflect collectively on our experience in words and images.
For those who haven’t done so, a syncroblog is a peer-to-peer similtaneous blog posting, in which you contribute your offering together with links from all other participants to theirs. This way we can host in our usual online space but still be linked to each other. Once your post URL is ready, submit it to me here via a comment and I will compile the list of participants. You can then copy and paste it into your own blog post.
So on Monday 26th (1 week after the event), first thing am, I will create the list and post it here. Copy it and edit your offering, and the syncroblog is away. It’s a great way to get an overview, and for lazy press hacks to purloin plenty of excellant material concerning local Burner Culture. But, in a gifting economy, plagiarism is impossible, right?
I’ve been blogging for 15 months now, and thought it time to review. As I approach 30,000 hits, a few memes are a’buzzin.
Firstly, I really want to thank each and everyone who has contributed and made this a meaningful conversation.
I remember struggling to come up with a title for the proposed blog. I chose “soundandsilence” initially because it related to music and to contemplation. But as things went, I wrote less about sound and more about light and imagemaking, not to mention much theological musing. I guess it might have been named lightanddarkness just as easily.
Anyway, here is a summary of what has gone on with some things I have learned.
My top 5 postings: Read the rest of this entry »
“I praise the dance, for it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community” [Augustine]
“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” [Deuteronomy 6:5]
“Theres joy, joy, joy in repetition” [Prince, Graffiti Bridge]
This post forms part of the synchroblog “Moving towards worship”, and is part 1 in my series “Myths for our time.”
For some time I have been asking about the shape of things to come. I have wondered about models of community as well as of worship. And in the last month, myself and other venturers have been engaged in various activities, firstly the Afrika Burns festival in the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa, and secondly two NIA (Neuromuscular Integrative Action) movement sessions.
So, in the wake of some exciting, practical experimentation, (and to a lesser extent as the “season” of Christmas looms), I would like to offer a reflection on Festivity.
Celebration, are you quite mad?
Having been immersed in creativity, freedom of expression, dance and music, almost might we say, baptised anew into Celebration, I am compelled to consider the role of this in my and our life. Naturally, I also reflect up the nature of life and of G-d. So I have some questions:
I offer these questions from the POV of one who was raised in a Modern, Western, Eurocentric culture in South Africa, and one who has been on a lifelong journey to seek out the truth, a 15 year soujourn through the conventional church, a 10 year period on the via negativa, and in the last year, a freedom to ask and live whatever the hell question I wanted to of anyone, the cosmos, and G-d him-herself.
More importantly perhaps is the fact that I am not a natural party animal, nor am I that hedonistic. I have inherited my mothers Apollonic spirit, preferring the mountaintop, simplicity and asceticism to the ways of my father: he was an arch-Dionysian given to self-gratification, joviality and revelry. But it is his spirit that now calls me down into the valley, towards the sounds of mirth, partying and sheer enjoyment.
So I am happy to say that I have some ideas, I have some vision about all this. But I wanted to frame these questions to give a context for where I am coming from now.
A Festive G-d
I’ll get to the point: We serve a Festive G-d, and as made in G-ds image, we are “Homo festivus”. It is part of our nature to celebrate, indeed we are called, coaxed and wooed to do so. I am indebted to John Morehead for introducing me to the term Homo Festivus, as well as many of these notions, and he and others have long been involved in this debate.
Now I am not going to say “Thou shalt celebrate”, because that undermines the free hearted giving that is part and parcel of loving response. Only a loving, thankful response can be sustained, and provide the fuel for authentic festivity.
In reality, we don’t always feel like celebrating. We may NEVER feel like it. We may be so caught in despair that we cannot see any reason for joy. I have felt despair. I have lived in loss for many years. I will live in loss in the future, and will feel despair again. But while, by grace, I glimpse the glory of this freedom, I want to live it, share it, write it, and move it, for THIS is a my foretaste of eternity … being one with the Creator, one with each other, one with creation.
Dancing and VJing at Camp Vuvuzela at Afrika Burns was a new experience for me. There was no sense in which “I, performer”, or even “I, reveller”, was present. “I” performed, sure, putting visuals to the DJ’s psytrance/electro offerings; but I never saw that DJ, nothing was announced, and everything just happened … this was the Anarchy of Love. It was for me a confirmation of Advaita – radical non-duality – or put another way, its was the joy of the ego being lost in Oneness. There was no me-you, or us-them. Those that lose their soul shall find it, reports the Gospel.
I’ve been brought up with a view that “Oneness” is an exclusive concept, defined by the orthodoxy of Christendom. This is based on the dualistic view of a future separation of the saved and the unsaved. So, Oneness is OK if it’s Orthodox Christian Oneness, otherwise it’s a pantheistic eastern notion incompatible with the bible, Christ, and salvation.
In case you misunderstand my embrace of Festive Culture, it is not without its dangers. To be consumed by the offerings of the ego – hedonistic self gratification, sexual conquest, shame at ourselves, or debilitating introspection – means that we are imprisoned slaves and, not true members of the Festive Race. I still can’t quite get my head around how this man said this, given his role in the propogation of many of the destructive dualisms that haunt us to this day, but … to further quote Augustine,
“Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life, who is not obsessed by lust for people and things and the demon of isolation in his own ego.”
Are we having a good time, yet?
Homo Sapiens, “Knowing” Man, has an inkling that he should rejoice, but is confounded by ego, sin, and systems of injustice that oppress this instinct. How he expresses this instinct to celebrate has in many cases, been substantially reduced.
Our institutions have let us down. I’m not asking for a Cultural Revolution, I am saying wherever meaning has been lost, we need to refind and reinvent it. For example, primally, we know that the drum calls us to enter in. But layer upon layer of manners, sophistications, domestications, civilisations and barriers have rendered our sense of the Festive quite inane.
The Isness
There is nothing that inspires me to dance, move and create, like the idea that G-d is present, present in all of creation. This panentheist vision – All is IN G-d, and G-d is IN all – is what drives me to give my body, energetically and wholeheartedly, to the moment, the community, to the Ground of Being. No E’s, no acid, no grass, no mushrooms, no drunken stupor, just a deep appreciation for being alive. No ulterior motive, no one to conquer, to impress, to rebel against, to convert, a simple isness, is a pround act of worship.
And in my brief introduction to NIA, I am inspired to combine robust bodily expression, an exploration of the healing arts, moving in community, freedom to express any kind of gesture my imagination might produce, and a profound sense of Festive worship as G-d intented it to be.
Other participants
Part of the Afrika Burns synchroblog, (for all participants see below).
A friend of mine who lives between San Francisco and Durban first told me about Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert about 10 years ago. It sounded fascinating, but a little beyond my mien. Too dirty, too hedonistic, too hot, too freaky, too fiery; maybe these were my thoughts. But Steve’s recommendations have on a number of occasions proved to be significant dwell points on my journey (big up for Matthew Fox, Jay Bakker and Easy Star All Stars for starters).
When I first heard that BM was incarnating as Afrika Burns, I sensed an opportunity. Together with a few others, I started to investigate the culture. We went to a planning session for one of the “themed camps” and met several decidedly alternative people who were ecologically aware, spiritually seeking, largely vegetarian, and holistically creative.
All this has gone hand in hand with my own exploration of various aspects of spiritual life, largely reflected on this blog, see for example Ecclesia as Sacred Tribe, in which I have come to my own thoughts about what constitutes being a Jesus-follower and a human in this time of change. Read it if you want, for background.
So when I studied the Core principles(communal effort, participation, civic responsibility, immediacy, decommodification, gifting, leave no trace, radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression), I thought, Hmm – I can embrace that. The Liturgist in me went into overdrive; I saw all sorts of possibilities. Long story short; I dumped the plans and went with the flow. A wise move.
Because the flow was dusty, hot, festive and loud. Anything too contemplative was bound to be drowned. Besides, my greatest desire was to connect and build trust. Opportunities for expressed worship would come in their time. This was a time to celebrate.
Friday
5 dusty hours out of Cape Town, we rolled off the R355 into Stonehenge “Farm”, a lunar landscape of rock and sand, pans and bults(rocky hills) and a huge sky. We were greeted by a hostess with a clipboard and a pamphleteer festooned with nowt but a scarf. We headed into the “temporary autonomous zone” Tankwa Town and found a spot near “4ish street” at the edge of the scrub. A howling gale and 6 inches of sand before bedrock made tent erection a major challenge. In the end we tied the guy ropes to the wheels of our vehicle.
At sunset we attended a Mayan Sundown Ritual. Besides the incessant wind, a wine bottle clutching, howling/growling participant all but drowned out the subtleties of the offerings. Inclusion was being put to the test. But we did manage to dance to djembe rhythms for about 10 minutes.
That evening we mosied on down to “partycipation”, hosted by the friends we had met 3 weeks earlier. A Bedouin-style community tent gave some shelter against the elements, and the resident DJ battled with dust but managed to put out some fine trance tracks. I did an AVJ Twinstar VJ set against a VW combi, and the sheer volume of dust was apparent for all to see in the projectors glare. We filmed and projected the full moon and energetic dancing; people loved it. But after an hour I was beat back by the elements, gills stuffed full with sand, (not to mention my new Sony Vaio).
Afterwards we went across the plain to “Camp Vuvuzela” (Vuvuzela- soccer trumpet) who were doing a balkan-mediteranean set. There were hundreds stomping up dust to the beats and the most incredible atmosphere. Burners spewed flame into the night sky; a 3M high “white man” danced with lasers in front and moon behind. Bedtime: between 2 and 4.
Saturday am
Maybe it’s in the genes: my brother, my brother-in-law and I decided to do a skyclad saunter around the binnekring (inside circle). That’s a slo-mo “streak” of about 20-25 minutes, with hats and shoes on of course. It was unashamed promenading, pre-fall Adam style; and we were met with nothing but admiration and support, and many a comment about having used enough sunblock. Half way along we heard a yell behind saying “Wait, wait, wait for moi” and were joined by a REAL (and female) nudist, our Eve, for the rest of the walk. She seemed to think we were the real thing, little did she suspect how much the imposter we were playing.
So having reclothed we took in the sites : a flock of balloons tethered to the ground, major construction on 4 story high burn works, a scorpion sculpture made of old car tyres, a blender powered by a bicycle for make-your-own smoothies, a fully functional snailmail post office. A series of dust devils started passing through, some sucking the contents of entire villages high into the sky. I just had to; and successfully got into the path of 2 and lived to tell the dusty tale.
At the hot point of the day, 3 pm, we had a sweat lodge in our tent, a blank canvas for meditation and cleansing. We received a word, too: “Freely give and you will be clean on the inside and the outside.” This was followed by the luxury of a shower gifted us by our highly evolved neighbours (4 families with about 12 kids). Later afternoon was spent chilling at partycipation and playing djembes and once more being gifted with icepacks to the face and neck.
Sunset was one of the most amazing co-incidences I have witnessed, and for which I praise the Creator. A group of dancers and drummers gathered around the fine “Sand pendulum” installation to watch the sundown. Not 5 minutes later, directly behind and due east, a huge full moon rose. People turned and fell to their knees. We all had a good howl, and saw one of the most beautiful moons I have even witnessed. We blessed babes in arms and a profound sense of Awe prevailed.
Saturday ce soir
Finally, it was time to give my new portable VJ screen a run. We headed for Camp Vuvuzela, and got set up. The vibe was quite electro/psytrance this time, but still the feeling of goodwill and celebration predominated. But as we got the projections going, the highpoint of festivity was upon us: partytime with luminous hoola hoops and sumptuous dancers. The whirling, the riot of colour, the primal energy, was palpable.
The only announcement of the entire weekend, (such was the sheer positive anarchy of the event), was that the main burn was postponed due to high winds, but a less dangerous immolation was going to happen at 12 midnight. So we packed up a mess of metal, plastic and dust and headed out west across the vlaktes (flat ground) to “Temple”. About 200 people stood expectantly around while “officials” kept order.
In a somewhat South African way, there were chants of “burn! burn! burn!” which I found distasteful – it seemed like sheer reactionary pyromania rather than reflective spirituality. The organisers had asked us to be reverent, but some people didn’t seem to take this admonition seriously. You can take the rugby nation into the wilderness but you can’t take the rugby spirit of bliksem-ming (vigorously deconstructing whatever comes to hand) out of the nation, it seems.
The temple burn was far slower than I had imagined it – it was not an instant fireworks-like thrill, but an opportunity to collectively gaze at the flames over about an hour. We missed the other burns, and the one I would have loved to see in addition to the man, was the “Turbine” by the Upsetters, possibly the most impressive work on display.
I reflected upon Christendom’s use of fire in times past, and felt a deep revulsion at its cruelty, its fear of the primal, its repression of festivity and creativity, and its arrogance. A time of repentance, for me, as a part of the ecclesia.
Sunday
Sunday morning we packed up but not before doing a lot of gifting. I placed my “Middle of it All” CD on sleeper’s pillows, and handed it out to those I had connected with over the previous days while my brother handed out postcards of his art … commerce-free, unmediated transactions of giving.
As we drove back towards civilisation, we listened to the Shamen’s “Axis Mutatis” and Stephen Micus’ “Desert Poems”, and began to reflect on how we had been transformed in our various ways, by the inaugural Afrika Burns.
Afrika Burns Synchroblog participants:
Other writings of note:
 | annewhitaker on Pattern-based Worship: Sacred … |
 | mel on The scandal of Bishop Carlton… |
 | Nic Paton on The scandal of Bishop Carlton… |
| Nic Paton on “Wild man wise man… |
| Nic Paton on “Wild man wise man… |
