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Trying to get on an earlier sleep schedule just means a day of punishment, I think. I thought if I went to bed at 12:30 I’d be able to wake up at 8:30 without too much fuss. But I know myself better…when used to crashing at 2am, my brain simply will not quit at midnight. Well, I tried. I’m just going to have to be sleepy in the morning.

I’ve been meaning to post anyway for ages. I wanted to write about Burning Man, which was so built up for me over the course of the last ten years that the reality could be nothing but deflating, despite the fact that I got to go flying around in a little plane and saw one of my favorite pieces of art ever there and stayed up past dawn on consecutive nights and roamed around in the desert–my car is still coated with playa-dust on the inside. Black Rock City is a lovely place, if a little obsessed with itself.

The thought of describing the art that I liked is daunting. I’m going to give it a shot, though. I’m afraid of boring myself with it, because it takes a lot of words to describe. Feel free to skip this entry if it bores you, too.

So one of the first things I saw, the first night I arrived, was a 100-foot wooden tower built to look like an oil derrick. You couldn’t miss it; it was well outside the main city horseshoe, but it was gigantic. Also at its base were huge metal worshipers…maybe 30 feet tall? industrial-style (gears and chains and so forth were the building materials) human beings in contorted postures of ecstatic worship. The sculptures had fire pulsing inside at various chakra points, and there were levers and buttons that onlookers could fiddle with to produce giant fireball-gouts of flame from out one fellow’s head and another woman’s gut. One woman’s chest pulsed with flame like an apocalyptic heartbeat.

If you join the line at the base of the tower, you are eventually allowed to climb it and survey the whole of Black Rock City from the top. This was a surreal event for me, as I had arrived in the desert mere hours ago, and to see the city from above was more or less to look down on a giant, hyper video arcade. At night, people and bicycles are decorated with glowing, flashing, and pulsing colored lights so that the art cars roaming the desert sans headlights don’t run them over. Most of the big art installations and all of the on-playa dance clubs also had considerable multicolored wattage pouring forth. The city itself is like a circle with one side rubbed out from 10:00 to 2:00, maybe two miles in diameter? and art is scattered throughout the city and far beyond it, so that you can travel a mile or two out into the open playa to visit more remote installations (this faux-derrick was only about a third out, compared to some of the farther-away installations.)

So anyway. From the top, you can look down on those frenzied worshipers and the much smaller flesh people milling among them, and see the panorama of the crazy city, and feel mild vertigo. Very nice. I climbed down and went on looking at other things in the city up close.

Now, like most wooden art in BRC, this derrick was slated to burn at the end of the week, the night before the Man burned. That day, though, there was an intense white-out dust storm (yet another apocolyptic experience that was maybe the best of all) that had delayed their preparations for that event, so the burn was delayed until after the Man burned on Saturday. I’m happy about that, because the Man would have been an awful anticlimax if I’d seen this first.

(Actually, the Man was already an anticlimax on its own. I wasn’t expecting much from it…and it didn’t let me down. Funny that the thing that started this whole crazy event is sort of an afterthought now. (and I think that would have been true even if he hadn’t been pre-burned this year.))

So after the Man burned on Saturday night, I and a few friends biked over to the derrick to see the show. The side facing the city was bound to be crowded, so we biked over to the far side of it. The Rangers had established a wide perimeter around the thing, and we were right at the edge of the cleared area. No one was behind us, and to either side were people widely spaced. I understand that being on the city side of this event was a vastly different and far more crowded experience.

Now, all day I had been hearing rumors about this event. They were using some ridiculous amount of rocket fuel to not just light it on fire, but to really explode it. The perimeter they had set up around the thing was so big I couldn’t see or hear the people opposite me on the circle, yet my friend (who has experience treating burn victims) didn’t trust even this generous distance and was even farther back from the edge than Mez & I, who were right up on it, talking to the Ranger who was on guard against folks suicidally rushing into the circle. From where we were, the figures of the metal worshipers were clearly visible, though less than hand-sized (a la “I’m skvishing your head”) and the tower was still of considerable size, field-of-vision-wise.

Nothing in Black Rock City starts on time. It was quiet where we were, and as the minutes flowed nonchalantly by with nothing happening, there was a growing sense of peaceful expectation. Half an hour or an hour passed from the time the thing was supposed to go. Finally, we saw a vehicle (a moped?) drive into the circle, and out the other side. Dim figures were visible moving quickly away from the structures in the center, out to the edge of the circle. Everybody stopped talking. And we waited.

I don’t really remember noticing the smoke start to rise, but it covered the base of the tower. Then it covered the bottom third of the tower, and the twisted worshipers disappeared into it. The cloud rose inexorably until it was covering the tower, and I realized it was getting bigger side to side too–then I realized it wasn’t necessarily getting bigger, it was just coming toward us. In a moment the stars were consumed in the creeping greyness and we were engulfed in a cloud of uncomfortably chemical-smelling smoke, and I thought nervously of my friend sitting 50 feet behind me, and wondered if I wasn’t making a stupid choice by trusting the perimeter set by strangers whose credentials I hadn’t bothered to familiarize myself with. What if they were incompetent? What if this smoke was flammable and they hadn’t counted on the wind? But I sat where I was, resigned to dying at Burning Man for my stupidity, being *pretty* sure I was going to survive but entertaining notions of how many people would die if the flames came out this far.

The smoke cleared in about a minute, and we saw the tower again, motionless, intact.

Here’s an experience I’ve had a few times: I invite a friend out to see a play with me, a friend who doesn’t go to a lot of theatre. The play is mediocre or bad. I am apologetic about dragging my friend out to see it, but they demur–in fact, they thought it was great! They really enjoyed it!

This is disappointing to me, and I’m only just starting to be able to articulate to myself why. I am not disappointed in my non-theatre-going friends’ taste. But because I have been lifted to the heights of my soul by theatre, been dashed on the rocks of reality by theatre, been awestruck, altered, asked to change my whole way of seeing the world by theatre, it’s disappointing to me that this mediocre or competently done bit of drivel is all my friend has ever been led to expect from theatre.

It’s like, you know, when there’s this utterly magical place you know about, with an amazing view of the ocean that’ll rock you to the core of your being. And there’s someone really special you want to share it with, and you plan the day for weeks, and finally–finally! the day comes, and you drive or walk or fly to the place–and it’s socked-in fog. You can’t see five feet. And your special friend looks around, and inhales, and nods, and smiles, and says, “This is great!” And they’re not just being polite, they really mean it, they like it a lot.

But it’s not the thing you wanted to show them. And no matter how much you explain about how great the other thing is, they can’t possibly understand without seeing it. And you’re still alone in the vast beauty of the thing you wanted so badly to share, even though they think they’re with you. And it’s frustrating.

So, I don’t know. I could write something bitter about how so much theatre today is crap that it’s no wonder nobody goes any more blah blah blah, but I hate that shit. That’s all of art, right? A hundred failures for every success, and it’s kind of more beautiful that way, and even the worst failures aren’t worthless.

I just wish…I don’t know…I wish that everyone would go see, that hundred-and-first time, instead of giving up around sixty-three. But when I take my friend, and they are pleased by number two, I know they’re going to give up soon unless they get lucky and see #101 early, out of order. Because my friends are smart! They won’t be satisfied with mediocrity for super long. And I can talk until the roof of my mouth dries out, but there’s no reason for them to have any faith in more magic existing than they’ve already witnessed. So there’s a little bit of desperation in me when I take people to plays, because I want so badly for them to be taken and lifted, and I feel like I only have so many chances before they start wanting to do other stuff.

But maybe I am being snobby and arrogant. Maybe I don’t have an exclusive, and maybe, they really, they genuinely were moved by that play we just saw that I didn’t think much of. Isn’t it a little righteous of me to think that I’ve seen something they haven’t, that they couldn’t possibly understand until they see it themselves?

But I do, I do feel that way sometimes. I don’t know if I’m right. But I feel that way sometimes.

-Alissa

next day update: Yeah, so my good friend Dave says, and is right: All this time I’m asking if I’m arrogant to think I’m seeing something other people haven’t. But of course, when they like the play, they are seeing something that I’m not. Of course! And I am humbled to be exposed as so egocentric. :p Thanks for the reality check…it’s true. And so from now on I must remember to ask “what is it? what did you see?” and get knocked out of my box.

So Claytie and I have made a working schedule, and it involves me getting up at the ridiculous hour of 7:30 am tomorrow. And, of course, I have been tossing and turning in bed for the last hour, unable to sleep. Chances of sticking to schedule: approximately 30%.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is my relationship to time, and here’s the thing: I have a bad one. Me and Time just weren’t meant to be. I mean, he’s nice and all, but I’m starting to suspect him of being emotionally abusive, and they say once you recognize the signs, you should get out, and fast. But it’s gonna take more than a little courage, and a bit of figuring out how, to break up with Time.

One thing I’ve consciously avoided all my life is worrying about what I eat. I really like to eat, and it would be a shame if ever in my life I felt guilty for chowing down on something I enjoy. This is something I make room for in my life, and I tend to be drawn to things that are good for me anyway (thanks mom) and my occasional indulgences are just lovely (and usually punish me enough later that the guilt is unnecessary, aversion-wise). But what I’ve recently realized is that I feel like I’m on a Time diet that I’m constantly blowing. And I suffer for it, every time.

It’s come to a head with this recent month of relatively unstructured life, though it started years ago. I overestimate what I’m capable of accomplishing in a given chunk of time; I constantly second-guess whatever I’m doing at the moment, because there might be a more productive way I could be spending my time; and no matter how much I do in a day, I usually feel like I haven’t done enough. And I feel guilty about it. And I long for ‘free’ time, but when I have it I stress out about the stuff I’m not accomplishing. The only times I have that feel truly free of expectations, ironically, are nights like this, when I should be sleeping but for one reason or another the brain and body just aren’t cooperating. I can’t possibly be to blame for this, and no one could reasonably expect me to be productive with this time, so whatever I do is more or less a freebie. Maybe that’s why my insomnia’s been worse lately.

I’ve all but stopped reading novels, because I can’t pick one up without the haunting feeling that there’s something more important that I ought to be doing. I’m one of those people who’s late to stuff more often than not, mostly because I consistently underestimate the amount of time it’s going to take me to leave the house. I frequently make complex and exhaustive and rigorous schedules for myself that I don’t have a chance of keeping. Sound familiar, dieters?

So…what the hell do I do about it? Expect Less just doesn’t seem like a good option. I try to ’schedule’ myself time to be spontaneous, which is rather ironic, and over and over again I let new events (social, work-related, whatever) bulldoze into my expectation-free time without much of a hesitation. I need a new way to trick myself into being guilt-free about time. If…if any of you have any ideas…

Wide awake in Westhaven,
Alissa

Okay, I’m going to act like a real blogger for a moment. Here are two things on the internet that I think are just fascinating:

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/04/my_other_interv_1.html

http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/01/

The first is a WIRED magazine interview with Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, from 2005. He’s got really perceptive things to say about the impact of a leader’s thoughts, actions, and decisions on all the other people involved, and the importance of involving relevant people in the decision-making process; the compromises you have to make (in terms of violating a *pure* consensus model) to actually get things done and decisions made; and the way to channel other people’s brilliance in the most productive way possible. He speaks humbly and gives full credit to his collaborators, but I have a glimmer of an idea that very few people in the world are capable of leading a company like Google as successfully as he does. The bulk of this interview is stuff that I can apply to leading a theatre company. (For those not immersed in a high-tech culture: the “20 percent time” that they talk about during part of the interview is the Google corporate policy of encouraging each employee to devote 20 percent of their work time to a project of their own devising, that they work on at their own pace and share with their fellows. After I first read this interview, I had a dream that night that I was running a theatre company in which all the collaborators were expected to be working on their own side projects as well. I need to think more about how to apply all the other stuff he talks about.)

The second link is a ‘modern speech’ translation of Washington’s Farewell Address (courtesy Randall Munroe of xkcd.com fame.) I include this link instead of Washington’s original address because Randall did a pretty good job of the ‘translation’, and it’s much easier to get through (though if you’re a purist you can follow the link on Randall’s blog to Washington’s original text.) It’s another example of really impressive leadership, and it’s sad that in my lifetime I don’t think I’ve seen a president who could address the problems of running the country as a whole in such a thoughtful, honest, non-condescending way. I’m a little spooked by his assertion that only religious people can be truly moral, but aside from that, this speech evinces overtones of the same things I see in Schmidt’s interview: a willingness to learn from experience, an acknowledgment that not everything is figured out yet, a deep understanding of how people work together, a deep distrust of segmentation, and a certain amount of humility about his own role in it all.

Both these articles have been haunting me for months now. Anyone with thoughts about them, call me! Let’s talk pretentiously about leadership as if we know something about it, whee!

:-p It’s 2:40 in the morning. I can never tell how seriously to take myself at this hour. G’night, beautiful people.
Alissa

It’s nearly 5 am, and I’ve been tossing and turning since going to bed at 12:30. I finally gave up and got up and made some tea–too much torture to listen to my roommates breathing peacefully. There’s a mosquito hawk beating itself against the monitor as I type this, which is only slightly disturbing.

Jeez! This is my third night of difficult sleep here. You would think, with all the crazy physical activity, that I would conk out every night. Tonight is the worst, though, maybe because yesterday was a day off and I didn’t break a sweat even once. I probably should have, since my body’s used to that now. In fact, that’s even one of my artist rules! Argh! That’ll show me to break ‘em.

My brain is buzzing–about the piece I’m working on, about the people at Double Edge, about home, about why I can’t seem to fall asleep, about the mosquito bites I seem to have acquired on the top of my foot that I’m trying not to scratch. I keep trying to focus on my breathing, to relax each part of my body sequentially, to breathe deeply, but nothing seems to be working. Tomorrow (today) is going to murder me. Grrr.

Hannah just walked past and gave me a sleepy quizzical look before heading off to the bathroom. On her way back, she asked if I was ok. It’s a good question–I feel good, actually, if frustrated about the whole sleeping thing. Very alert. Sigh.

While I’m here, things I forgot to mention in the last post: After training yesterday (well, Friday) morning, we headed straight for the pond and jumped in, which was wonderfully cold (the day was the hottest we’ve had yet). I worked in the garden on Wednesday or Thursday, I forget, and we mulched two plots and chatted about the native flora, and that was awfully fun. I got a little sunburn on my face that’s starting to peel now, which is decidedly unattractive. J., one of the girls here taking the intensive, is teaching me to spin poi during our breaks. Um…my feet feel like abused clubs, uncomfortable and remote from me, between the repeat-offender blisters and the soreness and the mosquito bites. The lake in Ashfield is really nice to walk around. We’re playing soccer instead of our run tomorrow morning, yay!

I’ve been watching for unusual dreams, but nothing particularly bizarre yet. I did have one dream where I was alone in a movie theatre, watching a film about a spy girl in fishnets and a shiny trenchcoat running away from the bad guys in an urban landscape. Later in the dream I was driving through a tunnel at high speeds, getting away from bad guys myself. It was very sexy.

I did have one fascinating dream the week before I came here, though. I dreamt I was in some city like New Orleans that I associate with a certain amount of mysticism. I was changing in the dressing room of a clothing store, trying something on, when a shimmery white patch appeared in the air before me. It was fuzzy, but I understood that it was a magic path that I could follow. I walked into it, straight through the wall of the dressing room, and into a room where there was a wise old woman holding a chicken bone. She directed me to continue following the path out to the end of the hallway where there was a mirror, and that I was to go through the mirror. I followed her instructions. Once through the mirror, I looked around; this world was exactly the same as the one I had left. An empty hallway, just backwards. Anticlimactic, and the shimmery path was gone.

I wandered into the next room, and encountered a somewhat grizzled man, older than me but not older than forty-five or fifty, who I didn’t trust. I also understood in the dream that he was myself, the representative of me in this mirror world, and that we should stick together. We found ourselves in what looked like the seafood section of a grocery store, with lobsters lined up on a big bed of ice. There was no one else around, and it was cold in there.

Suddenly, my counterpart started to get strangely stupid. He was staggering a little, and speaking very slowly with little sense…I think he said “loooobsssssterrrr” and then he was stooping and clutching his chest. I was worried about him, since after all he was me, and asked him what was wrong. He came staggering toward me and said that he was hatching. I asked if he was hatching something, and he said yes; then he started pushing on my stomach. I asked if it was me he was hatching, and he said yes, and so with some trepidation I looked around for a couch or somewhere comfortable on which to allow myself to split open so that something could emerge.

That’s when I woke up. Pretty obviously symbolic, eh? On the whole, I think promising, despite the vague anxiety I felt once I met my mirror-self.

It’s 5:16 now, completely light out, and it just started pouring. I’m not even a little bit sleepy, despite the warm herbal tea I’m drinking, despite the soothing rain sounds. Maybe I’ll go stretch in the space or something.

Thanks for keeping me company in the lonely dawn hours!