I'm down in my spirits lately; flipping through my iPhotos on the caltrain and wondering what happened. Looking back on good friends, good times. Ren Fayre. Realizing that was a long time ago, almost two years. Nostalgia is a gloss, I know, but still. Even though I'm well aware that my inner monologye is often rife with angst and pathos, this latest turn feels somehow different, more severe.

I look back on what my life used to be like; 20 or 30 hours of work a week and almost limitless hours for creativity and fun, realize I'm profoundly tired of fighting.

But I'm not loving either. That doesn't seem to happen to old me, captain of inertia, newly hewn heart of stone and all that jazz. My limbic system is quiet; my blood sluggish. I couldn't get baccinalian if I tried it seems. Running low on the old outlandish swagger. I am tired/I am weary/I could sleep for thousand years.

This worries me. Will I become one of those tight and nervously bound creatures; the kind who sieze up and shy away when you tickle at their root? I used to be more brazen and thirsty when it came to seeking pleasure, but as of late knotty tension has become my albatross.

In the grander scheme of things there's plenty of hope. I still get excited with the wheeling and dealing; would that I could write more openly about all that, but suffice to say you'll know all about it soon. I still get a thrill from solidarity, still enjoy goofing off. The world is still arousing, just in a more whistful and less full-bodied way.

I miss the old network, the old support, the old goals and magic. Childhood's end, and I miss my Peter Pan jive. But something big is still going to happen, and I don't trust the course of human events to work themselves out. I hope we can win, and I hope if we do I have the presence of mind to start playing again.

What would Allen Ginsburg do? Breathe deep. That's a good place to start.

Swirling malcontented winds of impotence; it's hard to watch the ship go down. Like having your testicles in a a cold vice. First a shinking and then a crushing. There's a proven correlation between winning and testosterone, something to do with vigor and vitality. I'm a little bit hollow lately; not beaten by any stretch, but empty of a great many things. Nobody likes loosing, feeling like a looser.

Everyone wants a piece of something. I'm not sure what it is that people think we've got here. I seem to have lost some of my bearings -- don't know what I want anymore. What to believe. And where the hell is this going? Can you tell I'm confused? Need to go up on a mountain or something, get my shit sorted out.

But there's no time for mountain climbing at the moment. We're getting into a big push for music for america. Time to dig deep and find some inner veins of fortitude for the next two weeks. Then strike a more equitable balance in life. I'd like to have fun again. You can't beat fun; but it's a lot easier said than done.

Feel like a dick after laying into two of my friends over long but silently held differences of opinion. It's in my genes to argue, to try and drive the knife home. You should see family get togethers on my mom's side. However, this isn't conducive to respect or understanding or growth or progress and I aught to knock it off. I aught to be able to discuss things rationally with people and try to draw them out rather than beat them down. I aught to be able to listen and learn as well.

My own stress level, general loneliness and frustrations... they don't help to curb the roll you get on when you're attacking someone. It's an ugly little power trip; I hope apologies will put things in order. I also hope the topics I breached will remain alive as well.

Upcoming Gigitry: Future of Music/Noisepop panel.

While I'm in the business of promoting friends' sites out there, here's one that might turn real interesting real soon: changeforamerica.com. I don't know what the plan is organizationally, but I think it would be cool if a whole plethora of "foramerica" sites and organizations started popping up.

I got to see Joe up close at the Digital Democracy Teach-In, which I want to write about. I have too little focus at the moment to create quality content, so I'll spare you my pithy ramblings. The short and sweet is that the tech community has a ways to come yet politically, and that the political community has a ways to come yet technically, but the two are moving closer together. This is good. While I get frustrated from time to time I also think what's going on is really exciting, and it's only the beginning too.

I believe that the intersection of network technologies and politics will be part of the Next Big Thing for humanity, because it presents us with a the first radically different way to organize ourselves since the invention of metropolises and mass media made facist nationalism possible. It could still go all wrong -- which would really be a 1984 situation -- but I think the odds are that enough people involved in decision making and tool building are non-evil to prevent dystopia. My only worry is that it won't go right quickly enough.

This is my new favorite read: The Ghastly Mess LiveJournal. I've been hoping Nick would publish himself, and apparently he's been at it for a while. He's blending the tools of the early 21st century with the style of the late 19th; check it out.

Pushing my memes in San Diego. Some of them are catching. It's exciting. A lot of good stuff.

Word. Seattle is nice; full of classy brick buildings and pretty women. I cracked the front page of The Daily Kos with the graph I reproduced for an upcoming MfA issue card. Our ad went up on links.net. One more concert tonight -- Del! -- and then I've got Saturday to sleep and then down to San Diego for the Digital Democracy Teach-In. Should be fun. Franz and I are going to tag team it to make a splash.

This will be my second weekend working in a row, and the rest of February is only going to be more intense it seems. I probably miss you, so tell me how you're doing.

On Friday MfA is having an event in Seattle with Del the Funkee Homosapien aka Deltron3030. I'm going to do the on-stage song and dance for the organization. Oh man. Pumped. Gotta prep.

I was at Burning Man in 2003. It was great. You should go. I can't in 2004 because it's at the same time as the Republican National Convention in NYC and I will have more important things to do, but count me in for 2005.

This audio record is a massively incomplete account of only a few moments. I offer it here for what it's worth and nothing more. Some textual context is provided. At some point I'll also transcribe my paper journal, which was more a list of bullet points not to forget than anything else.

Recycle Camp
On Thursday I was starting to loose my cool. I had to find something to do. More participation in addition to just reading some of my performance art. I also needed physical exercise, so I hit up recycle camp. They crush beer and soda cans with a bike contraption. We took turns feeding in cans to be crushed; getting crushed cans in burlap sacks.

The camp was run by old hands, but there were a bunch of up and comers and youngters there too. It was a real good scene, and I was very happy to find it. Sparky was probably the best; he got a call on Friday that his wife was pregnant. There's a moment for you.

Interview One: I interviewed a 14-year-old making his second trip out about how he liked everything. You can hear them doing their hawking in the break here. For the latter half, I'm the one riding the bike.

Interview Two: An interview with a 12 year old. I feel like he was more on my level than the kid before.

Interview Three: Sugar Bunny runs this fuckin' recycle camp, agressive and wild and topless the whole time. Her and the rest of the people in charge were loud, agressive and drunk most of the time. It was too much for some of the more mellow people; but I got big kicks out of it.

Saturday Night
This was the main event, and I downed a quart of psychadelic mushroom smoothy and hopped on the back of the Wunami Villiage Bus to roll out to the man. It was a transcendent experience and utterly uplifting and positive. Don't listen to these things unless you're comfortable listening to what comes out of my mouth when I'm very high on mind-bending drugs. Some of it is interesting and I'll explain it all the best I can.

1 - Peaking: Prefaced with a little quip from my guide Robin. This is some audio from the very far out part, I think just before the Burn got started. There's an incredible convergance as the whole city gathers at the Man. People bring in portable soundsystems, there's mass fire-dancing, etc. The first big statement is "I'm a middlegrounder," which is a title that Robin's friend Nickoli gave me. He's one of those far out dudes who will talk to you about the Indego Children, I rocked a stars and stripes bandana most of the time, but we got along well. I like that title quite a lot. I'm a middlegrounder. I straddle gaps.

I knew I was going to try and work for MfA after this, so my mind was on big things; my self-appointed mission to save the country from ruin. Hence, "the flag is good for many things, one of them is burning." On Sunday night there's another big burn, the temple burn, and I wrote a series of resolutions along these lines, wrapped them in my American Flag bandana, and tossed it into the spiritual inferno.

Also from this part is my sense that "this is the future." Burning Man is very much a pirate utopia. The second part here is after the revel of the burn and I'm sitting down near this large ring of half-buried lights (think "running" christmas lights, but about the size of your fist and anchored with concrete) that had previously set up a perimiter around the Man. "Fire is where choreography ends" is a little art moment that struck me when I was watching the flames from the Burn create dust devils from the air being pulled in to feed the fire.

2 - Fun/Plateau: I was really wrestling with my role in things a lot here, and so I went around to a lot of different scenes, trying to find the right fit, trying to find "my people." I had a great time -- that bluegrass art car was a smoking good time, but the dude driving it kept giving me skunk-eye; jealously protecting his woman I think. A lot of my experience was dealing with sexual frustration. It's a hot place there, and I wasn't ready for it in a lot of ways.

I never did really find a social scene that I fit into, but I sure got some ideas about what I'm all about out of the process.

Full Circle and Complete The Joke were kind of my own little comic one-liners I used with myself.

3 - Cleanup: One thing that bothered me was the amount of trash left over from spectators at the Burn. It was really kindof gross, and I started picking things up. Problem is, there are no trash cans, so whatever I picked up now became my problem. I couldn't just ditch the trash, so I started strategically collecting stuff and making a little found-object puppet. I got a strip of a feather boa and a bunch of fragrant wax from a giant candle someone set up, created "Charlene, my MOOP date."

MOOP stands for Matter Out Of Place; playa-slang for litter. I would tell people, "yeah, I picked her up." I'm a witty mofo. It was a good exercise for me; creative and responsible and unsexy. After I took her home to our camps trash, I spent a lot of time standing on the smoldering remnants of the man. It was warm and kind of somber, and the people there were good. A lot of ex-firefighters and military types.

Final Thoughts: In my tent getting ready to go to sleep on Sunday night. Kinda wraps it all up.

Maybe more someday soon. Peace.

Working hard. Tomorrow I'm off to Seattle, then down to San Diego for the O'Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-In. This may turn out to be the year that the participation meme tipped. If so, I'll be proud to say I was a part of it.