Nomadic Festival
Last year my old roommate was one of the organisers for the second Nomadic Festival. This
year I've teamed up with him and together with help of friends and associates across
the nation, we're putting together a third Nomadic Festival tour. For more information
about this projects, check out the Nomadic
Festival website.
Black Light Theatre
A project taken up to eventually give to someone else. When I was in Prague I saw this
amazing kind of theatre called Black Light Theatre that appears to be unique to the
Czech Republic. It involves lighting the stage with black lights. This creates two
effects: 1) anything with flourescent colours glows brightly and 2) anything black
is completely invisible. So they have the normal actors on stage wearing bright
colours and other people who are wearing entire black outfits. The people in black
make simply move props with their hands, but since they cannot be seen, the props
appear to be flying around the stage. It's my goal to get people in America doing the
same kind of theatre (particuliarly people in the rave scene). As of now I've built
a small black light puppet theatre to experiment. I'll probably go around with
Nomadic Festival perfecting a black light puppet show and in the fall begin working
on trying to build a full size theatre (or more likely, using someone elses theatre
with my lights).
PixelVision Wall
My friend Jesse showed me this device he had built from instructions off the
Internet (somewhere on Hyperreal, if anyone finds the original inventor, please e-mail
me). It's basically a cardboard or matteboard grid about one inch thick
with 10-15 rows and 15-20 columns. You then place a sheet or two of wax paper over
this grid and place the grid in front of your television. Each square in the grid
captures the light and averages it out so each square appears to be one colour. It
produces this grid of moving blocks of colour. It's a neat effect that is intensified
nicely under psychedelics. Anyway, I want to build a wall of nine of them.
Herbal Craft
Feeling a need to take care of myself outside of the conventional medical establishment,
I've been slowly learning the herb craft. I try to make an herbal tea once every
two weeks to help cleanse my blood. Though lately I haven't had much time to learn
or practise, I've been living vicariously through my friend Silk who is learning much
of this ancient craft.
Fire-dancing, fire-eating, fire balls
Basically anything involving playing and dancing with fire. I've now learned how
to do this type of juggling that involves two balls, each attached to a string that
you then swing aroung your body at high speeds. I built a fire set of these (I believe
someone told me they were called moire balls) and at Burning Man last year
I set them on fire for the first time. Since then I've practised with them on fire a
couple of times and am slowly getting better. I'm also learning how to make fire dance
with my fingers like I saw someone do at Rainbow once year. Lately, since many of
my friends have started to breathe and eat fire, I've been getting interested in
that too.
Drumming
Once again, friends and I did our drumming outside the Faubourg Center in New Orleans
on Lundi Gras. After last year at Halloween and Mardi Gras '96, we've finally decided
to offically call ourselves something,
Wandering Womb. Mardi Gras '97
really solidified my commitment to drumming, and more importantly, creating spaces
where people can drum and dance. It was so wonderful to have so many
people dancing and enjoying themselves. Nomadic Festival is the extension of this
and I hope to be doing a lot of drumming this summer.
Getting Becoming a Muse Published
Now that I've finally written a book, I've got to get it published. It's a long
tortureous road writing query letters. I'm hoping some publisher or agent will just
happen to be reading this and write me. However, seeing as this is mostly a fantasy
of mine, I am working on writing query letters to various publishers and trying to get
Becoming a Muse published in print.
Evolutionary Literature
Evolutionary literature is my term for literature that adapts and changes according to
various rule-based systems. As soon as I have a lot of time (read: someday when I'm
eighty; other projects have taken over), I plan to implement some
form of Evolutionary Literature on the web. I am very open to collaboration on this
project and am also open to grants (or anyone who wants to write a grant proposal for
the project). See Evolutionary Literature in the
Writings.