Synergenesis and Decompression
(Ergoat, after the San Francisco Love Parade of 2005, standing near a statue of the Revolutionary Simon Bolivar, El Libertador)
So the journey next brought me to San Francisco. Long had I dreamt of the multi-cultural haven that was to be the Bay Area. I knew the reputation of the city, and its colorful revolutionary history.
Its legend proceeded it as a Mecca for Musicians, Artists, Beatniks, Zen, Hippies, Free-Thinkers, Radicals, Diggers (dig it?), Acid, sexual freedoms, then later the Technology Boom. If cultural myths were to be believed, there weren?t too many more hip places to be space or time-wise than Haight-Ashbury during 1967?s Summer of Love. I wanted to be at the cutting edge of where art met psychedelics and created social transformation. This is where things were happening and I had to be a part of it.
Through a seemingly random chance, from a nearly forgotten past connection, fortune smiled on me and I was invited to attend a conference of Visionary Artists.
I had the good fortune to meet some famous psychedelic philosophers and artists such as Alex Grey (who does the art for the band Tool among others),
also Daniel Pinchbeck, Erik Davis, and others, while attending their workshops and lectures. There were forums on the entheogenic culture, mind states, radical self sustainable ecology, permaculture (the last two being particularly of interest to me with my efforts to enable hemp for fuel), and generally discussing ways on how to catalyze change from the sad state the world is in, to a renewed healthy Gaian Ideal. But a far more lasting impression was left by those who spoke of the psychedelic experience, the levels of study involved, the strong current of antiauthoritarianism against established traditions, be they from the East or West, and that dogma was against the grain of the free-thinking explorer towards a greater awakening. I just hadn?t come across anyone who spoke even close to this on the East Coast (except for when I spoke to myself) and it was good for my heart to hear the words coming from Artists with influence.
Ah, mingling with the other attendees and artists. A problem came up that I first noticed with a little discomfort in Vancouver which showed up again here. I had no real fix on how to present myself to my peers. I was in the midst of people in beautiful entheogen inspired costumes, and I was in my simple hempen garb.
In many ways, I did feel like a novice artist? like I had a body of work still ahead of me rather than a portfolio of past accomplishments. I felt then, and do know, that I had broken many barriers in psychedelic thought and transdimensional journeying, and was a fore-runner in that field, but I had no viable proof. There were a lot of painters who could show you a fixed image of the sublime, and made it flow, and the immediacy of experiencing the art was rapid in sensory intake. I had the disadvantage of being a writer (filmmaker/animator, to lesser extent) as my bodies of work and philosophies took longer to absorb and appreciate. So at a conference like this(where I didn?t know anyone), while people were mingling and sharing art, I couldn?t very well occupy someone?s time by sitting them down for a couple of hours to share my art and ideas. So, for the most part, I would kind of lurk, trying to be as non-threatening as possible (which, of course I wasn?t threatening or threatened), for I was sure as this scene had seen plenty of raving weirdoes (a not uncommonly seen casualty in the psychedelic game), and I didn?t want to be stigmatized as such. I did manage to hit it off just a bit with a fiery French-Canadian red-dread-headed girl quite aptly named Phoenix, at one of the workshops as were art-buddies in an Alex Grey led meditation into creating drawings activity, which was nice.
So, later, at the after-party?
it was a bit more of the same, so seeing that I was stumbling through the social dance and small-talkwardness but of good heart, some of the set-up crew graciously asked if I wanted to help lend a hand in decorating the dance hall, which I gratefully accepted.
(Can you spot Ergoat in the crowd? Hint: follow the chakras down)
It was quite surreal hanging up wall-sized matte poster-paintings of Alex Grey?s work; art that I had visualized so many times tripping in Maine; now I was face to face, involved.
The main event and climax of the evening was the Prayerformance by the Oracle Gathering? yeah, I?m supposed to be a writer and all, but when faced with such Arcane and mythic beauty? words fail. The Prayerformers held the space of initiates of a very high order. I can only describe as being witness to (and involved in, having taken the entheogenic sacrament myself) the Adytum of Archetypes that created moving transcendence of identity in an epic of serendipity with a maelstrom of ecstasy. Those familiar with occult ritual workings will have only an inkling of how multidimensional the range of feelings the undertaking produced. I felt awash in adrenaline for long after; a truly peak experience.
...
I had little time to sleep, for the next day, I was informed, there was a Burning Man after-party in the streets called Decompression going on that very afternoon. I recharged the best I could, put on my party hat (figureatively), and show up for another mind-blowing party.
One of the main Burning Man axioms is that if you show up, you aren?t there to observe, but to dive in and participate.
These were people who had been to the edges and back, and here now together to party, dance in the street and celebrate the journey.
Like that scene in the first Star Wars (and I promise I will be very sparse with Star Wars references), I felt like the farm-boyish, Jedi-to-be-initiated Luke, walking in from the barrens where I had spent my life up until then, to the multicultural, Cantina, where a diverse array of interplanetary travelers were amid intergalactic revelry.
I had been mapping synchronicities in dream-life to real life for some years leading up to this point. I usually had a foot in both worlds, usually never committing fully to one or the other except for peak experiences and scenarios. Never before had my dream-world and imaginings been presented to me with such vivacity in my waking life as they did this weekend.
And speaking of Waking Life and surreality: I saw Timothy 'Speed' Levitch, who had a prominent role in the aforemented animated movie classic about dreams and metaphysics, there, MC-ing at a soundstage.
[From Waking Life:] Speed Levitch: Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others presence.
As poignant then as ever, as I was certainly living it. Weirder still:
?We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel, starring clowns?
True, and eerie, because there I was face to face with him, living my dream, and in my pocket was, by chance? a Dostoyevsky novel! No joke.
In this Great Work of Fiction that I was apart of, I managed, somehow, to find Phoenix in the crowd, the fiery free-spirit from the night before. Like a fairy flitting by, she and I connected and danced to the syncopated psychedelic trance beat and:
Well, I guess you always remember your first Californian Kiss.
