Author: Dale

How to do it

Posted on by Dale

Here’s how you do it.

  1. Go to http://votesmart.org/.  Ignore all the stuff at the top. Go to the bottom, the dark blue area, and find the white search box. Input your ZIP+4 and submit.
    1. (You may also want to register your own account here.)
  2. If you don’t know your ZIP+4 ZIP code, go here to find it.
  3. Here you will find all your elected officials, up and down the food chain.  Start at the Congress level.
  4. It’s no good looking for your Congresscritter’s email.  None of them have that any more.  Instead, they have ‘webmail,’ which allows them to restrict your input. F*ers.  Anyway, snag that webmail address.
    1. Do not look at the legislation your knuckledragging, Teahadist, dickweasel has voted for.  It will only ruin your sunny disposition.
  5. Open your Contacts list.  Create a new group.  Call it Elected Officials or Dickheads or something that you can remember.
  6. Create a new contact for the Congresscritter.  Paste in the webmail address under ‘home page’ or whatever your contact software has.  Don’t put it under email—it’s not an email address and will just make your mail program vomit.
  7. Do this for all your elected officials.
    1. State level officials may have actual email addresses.  Those you add as email, of course.
  8. Go to http://www.opencongress.org and register.
    1. It’s just as well to put VoteSmart and OpenCongress in as contacts in your Elected Officials group, along with your username and password.  Keep it all in one place.
  9. Now, whenever you read about proposed legislation that you think you’d like to influence one way or the other, open up your contacts and fire away.  It doesn’t do to be vituperative, but I have long since stopped trying to be anything but blunt in dealing with these people.

And that’s how you do it.

Do it.

Drawing the Circle: a ritual meditation on ‘community’

Posted on by Dale

Every summer, I would go to the eastern entrance to the campus, and I would begin to draw the circle.

Walking to the front arch, I would stand there with the great lawn at my back, facing where the sun would rise, and consider the element of air: the mind | intellect | breath | inspiration | creative breakthroughs | beginnings.  I would invoke all these attributes for the children who were heading my way.

I would walk to the north side of the campus and consider the element of earth: concreteness | stability | the body.  The fact that I was facing the student health center added another invocation: Please don’t let us have any broken bones this summer.  (It rarely worked.)

Around to the west side, facing down the broad avenue that would soon bring families who were entrusting their children to us, with my back to the fountain, I considered the element of water: love | hope | fear | dreams | change | ebb | flow | gateway.

On the south side, with the Fine Arts building behind me, I would consider the element of fire: energy  | passion | determination | transformation | peak experiences.

Finally, I made my return to the front entrance and finished my meditation.  The circle was now drawn.

This was the Magic Square.  And into it we invited 700 of Georgia’s brightest, most talented, funniest high school students.  For six weeks they lived out all the attributes of the elements—and more—and created a community, one that ebbed and flowed and transformed them into something more, something that would remain with them for the rest of their lives.

And then we sent them home.  We exiled them.  We broke the circle and dissolved the Magic Square and broke their hearts.

One summer, on the last day, after most students had gone, a viola player who had formed an attachment to me found me as I walked across campus.  With tears streaming down her face, she asked, “Will we ever have this again?”

“Yes,” I told her, but I didn’t want to lie to her.  “Yes, it’s possible, but it’s very hard—and you have to make it happen.”

—————

created at an InterPlay “performance jam,” Dec 8, 2014

 

3 Old Men: mapping the field of ritual, redux, part 6

Posted on by Dale

: Ritual action :

[original post here]

What kinds of actions are performed as part of the rite, for example, sitting, bowing, dancing, lighting fires (!), touching, avoiding, gazing, walking?  In what order to they occur?  … What are the central gestures?  … What actions are not ascribed meaning?  What actions are regarded as especially meaningful and therefore symbolic?  What actions are regarded as efficacious rather than symbolic?  What meanings, causes, or goals do participants attribute to their actions? … Which actions are repeated?  What gestures mark transitions?  What are the recurrent postures?  What qualities of action persist—quickness, slowness, verticality, hesitance, mobility, linearity, exuberance, restraint?  Are parts of the rite framed theatrically? … What parts of the body are emphasized by participants’ kinesthetic style?  … How do the social and environmental contexts influence the actions?  What actions are done with objects? …  What actions are optional, required?

So much questions…

One thing I found fascinating was the way we arrived at Alchemy with having gone through the ritual only once, and yet it was cemented, fully formed—and it was still allowed to grow in a very organic way.

For example, no one determined that after donning body paint each Old Man would wait to enter the labyrinth until the Man before him had reached and left the center, yet that became our standard action.

There was no prescribed method of painting oneself; everyone did as they felt best (especially as it got colder!). Personally, I think we looked best as a group when we covered our entire torsos.

Our solutions to initiating a walk to the next station evolved, and I remember the first time we did that, Joe just naturally walked from the west to the east, not stopping at the north entrance where the paint was. It seemed right, and so that’s what that part of the ritual became. It also worked when Wolf showed up with a fully worked out protocol for those who wanted to be relieved by another Old Man—thank goodness, since I was the first one to succumb, to dehydration I think.

The opening of the ritual I think was nearly perfect. I think our decision to strip and paint ourselves was the right one. Not only did it play off the infamous “drop-trou” atmosphere of Burns, it underlined the ritual transformation of campers into Old Men: we shed our daily garb; exposed our bodies and marked them with the other-worldly white of the body paint; took the journey into the labyrinth, stopping in the center for whatever private moment we each made there and then emerging to our station; donned our skirts and took up our staffs; and there we stood, newly born as officiants.

(And then of course, the reverse process: stripping off the skirt, retracing our steps into the labyrinth, and emerging to reassume our daily personae.)

As for the “qualities” of these actions, it seemed to me that we all invested our time as Old Men with seriousness and grace. For our participants, there was room for laughter, for talking, for serious meditation and blessing, for shenanigans; throughout, the Old Men were protective and alert.

The question I had of making the installation of the labyrinth a ritual—still unresolved. That might be a good excuse to get together next spring out at Craig’s and explore. For one thing, Old Men Who Aren’t Dale should be able to construct the labyrinth without me. More work is required there.

Craig has talked about developing a “walkabout” ritual, really the original concept for 3 Old Men: us in our skirts and staffs walking through the Burn. I think it would be very easy to institute: effect the transformation, then line up and head down the road to the Promenade and up to the Effigy. What would we do once we go there? More work is required.

We also need to develop a more betterer “acolyte” role, one that Christine created on the spot. Perhaps the idea of a carnival barker is not particularly apt, but we need to work on ways to invite the rubes passersby into the experience. More work is required.

Anything else? It’s tough analyzing an ineffable experience.

Ambition

Posted on by Dale

You may recall that one of my Lichtenbergian goals this year was to institute a system of “waste books,” i.e., notebooks that would serve as repositories of random stuff that could later be transferred to wherever they needed to go, e.g., blogpost, letter, other notebook.

You may also recall that I subscribed to the Field Notes “Colors” notebooks, which has been really cool since every quarter I get a new set of notebooks, each a new geek-o-rific design. It’s actually a creative impetus each time, since one tends to think, “Ah, a set of notebooks with a cherry (wood!) veneer cover! I shall use those to journal my Burner experiences!” And so forth.

I’ve had a great year with my Field Notes: planning 3 Old Men for Burning Man/Alchemy; morning pages; waste books; keeping my re-orchestration of Christmas Carol on track; text and notes for John Tibbetts’ song; prepping for SUN TRUE FIRE, which was sidetracked by Seven Dreams of Falling, which has its own notebook. I planned my son’s wedding ceremony in the Arts notebook, and started a labyrinth design project in the Sciences notebook. It’s been fun.

However, I am distressed at the most recent offering, their 25th release. Each release has a name—Shelterwood, Arts & Sciences, Unexposed—and they’ve named this one Ambition. It’s stunning, beautiful, and absolutely daunting.

Love the colors. Love the gilded edges you guys! Love the gold staples.

But then you open them.

AMBITION. You see what they’re about. From left to right, we have a 56-week date book, a ledger book, and a memo book.

This is serious stuff. Planning. Budgeting. Making something happen. Something big. Something important. Something consequential. They didn’t gild those edges for your paltry, quotidian concerns.

What am I supposed to do with these?? They mock me. They’re going into the archival wooden box where I will not have to look at them. I will be able to sleep at night. All will be well.

Trees by Microsoft (a public service announcement)

Posted on by Dale

This year, for the first time ever in the history of ever, we switched to artificial trees.  That’s right, trees, plural, as in more than one Christmas tree.  We take our Decoratoring™ pretty darn seriously around here, Skippy.

The short reason is that our new daughter-in-law is highly allergic to conifers, which must have made growing up in the Pacific Northwest a pain.  For the record, my lovely first wife is of the opinion that I too must have some similar allergy, since I tend to become all sniffly during the holiday season.

So we bought a couple of trees, which I did not assemble because — ironically — I was not feeling well, and so my noble son did it for me.

Therefore, when I went to Decoratorate™ the tree in the living room, it took me a while to realize that apparently these trees were designed by Microsoft, because who else would neglect to include a way to mount and plug in a tree topper???

I called the 24/7 toll-free number, where a nonplussed underling gave me a “ticket number” and tossed the puzzler up the chain.

Liz called back the next day and confirmed that, indeed, there was no built-in way to put your family’s traditional tree topper on these artificial trees.  One must run another extension cord to the top, she said, and then confirmed that, no, that didn’t solve the problem since there was no stem on which to perch the tree topper.

Viz:

Fortunately for civilization as we know it, the top is open-ended, and so I set about resolving the issue.  (I had already accomplished all of this by the time Liz called back, so it was depressing but gratifying to know that a) I had assessed the situation correctly; and b) there was no official solution, other than to encourage me cheerfully to blog about my solution.)

Tree toppers for artificial trees designed by Microsoft

  1. Find a piece of doweling that fits into your tree top.  Mine was 1/2-inch wood.
  2. Measure how much of the dowel needs to stick up into your tree topper and mark it.
  3. Measure down another 6″ and cut your dowel.
  4. Cut a 3″ piece of smaller doweling.  Mine was 1/8-inch aluminum.  I suppose you could use wood, but why risk it snapping?
  5. Drill a hole to accommodate your small dowel through your larger dowel, at the mark you made for the topper.
  6. Insert the smaller dowel and hot glue that sucker.
  7. Paint it whatever color works.  Mine is flat black.1
  8. Stick it in the top of the tree.
  9. Surmount it with your topper.

Viz:

Closeup:

In situ:

Et finis:

Pro tip: Check the lights on the topper before you install it.

I could probably market this thing, right?  Maybe with an extension cord built in?

—————

1 Flat black is the color I painted the ORANGE SOCCER CONES THAT THE COUNTY PLACED IN THE HISTORIC COURTROOM FOR MY SON’S WEDDING SO WE DIDN’T TRIP OVER DATA PORTS IN THE FLOOR.

3 Old Men: mapping the field of ritual, redux, part 5

Posted on by Dale

: Ritual sound & language :

[original post here]

What is the role of silence in the rite? … Do the people consider it important to talk about the rite, avoid talk about it, or to talk during it?  Are there parts of the rite for which they find it difficult or impossible to articulate verbalizable meanings? … How important is language to the performance of the rite?  What styles of language appear in it — incantation, poetry, narrative, rhetoric, creeds, invective, dialogue?  In what tones of voice do people speak?  … To what extent is the language formulaic or repetitious? … How much of the language is spontaneous, how much is planned?

The ritual itself, the transformation of Old Men, was done in silence, and I think it was good that way. I don’t know what others were doing, but I was soaking in the energy and trying to return it to my fellow Old Men and to the space. I think also that the visual of the Old Men performing their ritual in silence—as if we’d been doing this for years instead of for the second time in our lives—was quite compelling and beautiful.

(Think about that last bit, guys: we’d literally done the ritual only once before, at the runthrough out at Craig’s in September. We had no official way of making assignments or changes—and yet we did. More than one burner was astonished to find that we were Alchemy virgins, and a lot of their impression came from watching the solidity of the ritual. It looked ancient.)

Of course language was important to the agons—we had to engage the participant with the blessings/struggle. As far as I know, we didn’t actually codify the language there, although I don’t think anyone strayed very far from, “May I bless you?” / ”Will you bless me?” / “I offer you a struggle.” It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

And then language became critical for the experience: either our improvised blessing or theirs, and the choice of the struggle. Silence played its role as well: I never explained the struggle to the participant, just pushed into the space and did what felt right. Question for discussion: did anyone else develop specific language/actions for their versions of each agon?

As for talking about the rite, many people did and thought it was important to do so. I agree. I like to hear what people brought to the experience and what they got out of it. I think Craig’s instincts are correct that we should eventually provide a “decompression” space, perhaps with food and/or music.

Music was always welcome. Will’s Bach suites were amazing, and of course after sundown we always had Incendia for company. I do wonder how, if we added drumming, bells, or flute laying as a regular thing, that would work with Incendia going full blast.

3 Old Men: mapping the field of ritual, redux, part 4

Posted on by Dale

 : Ritual identity :

[original post here]

What ritual roles and offices are operative—teacher, master, elder, priest, shaman, diviner, healer, musician?  How does the rite transform ordinary appearances and role definitions?  Which roles extend beyond the ritual arena, and which are confined to it? … Who initiates, plans, and sustains the rite?  Who is excluded by the rite?  Who is the audience, and how does it participate?  … What feelings do people have while they are performing the rite?  After the rite?  At what moments are mystical or other kinds of religious experience heightened?  Is one expected to have such feelings or experiences? … Does the rite include meditation, possession, psychotropics, or other consciousness-altering elements?  … What room is there for eccentricity, deviance, innovation, and personal experiment? … Are masks, costumes, or face paint used as ways of precipitating a transformation of identity?

Again, I think there are two rituals going on in our camp: the ritual we perform to become Old Men, and then the ritual experienced by those who walk the labyrinth. I’ll try to keep them straight as I move through this section.

I don’t know how others felt, but I for sure felt as if I were elder, priest, and occasionally a shaman while I was in our ritual. The transformation from Alchemy camper into Old Man never failed to ring true for me. I felt not necessarily exposed, but opening to the onlookers: “This is my body,” if you will. “I mark it, I draw attention to it, I show you the way in, and now I become an Old Man who can assist you. Follow.”

While officiating, I felt very calm—outside time—while at the same time alert to the participants and their choices. I found myself reviewing the original list of traits: solemnity, compassion, serenity, wisdom, openness, and groundedness, and trying to embody and project those to onlookers and participants.

Someone commented that they noticed that I smiled much of the time. Truthfully, it was a conscious decision on my part to return all the positive energy that I was absorbing to the environment. Alchemy and 3 Old Men made me very happy, and I wanted to give that back.

It is interesting that in the original post I was still dithering about the body paint and the nudity. I was fairly sure that it was what we needed, but at that point the troupe was all my theory and no real practice. Needless to say, it was amazing to perform and to watch. I’ll have more thoughts about this element in a couple of days when I talk about ritual action.

I am very curious as to what people’s feelings were when they walked the labyrinth. That’s one thing I want us to do better in the future: collect responses, either through interviews or with some kind of book people could write in.

Was there room for “eccentricity, deviance, innovation, and personal experiment”? You betcha. I think that’s one of the strengths of 3 Old Men, that we opened the labyrinth for others to build their own experiences. It never bothered me to see people romping through it, or stepping over the ropes to be ‘clever’ in ‘finding the way out.’ Everyone brought what they needed and took what they needed.

As I said in the original post:

I expect to see people walking the labyrinth in silence and prayer; singing and dancing; giggling and inattentive; naked; stoned and lost; smirking and cynical; hurriedly.  I expect drummers and other musicians to join us.  I expect people to be puzzled or put off by the offer of an agon; I expect some to accept it gratefully, with tears, with joy.  I expect to be quizzed—”What is this about?  How do I do it?”  I expect to be ignored.  I expect to have others expect me to be something more than I have offered.

And I expect to be transformed by all of it, to learn more about my identity as an Old Man.

And so it was.

A Rant

Posted on by Dale

See, if I were working on the symphony like I was supposed to be, I wouldn’t run into triggers like this one:

Okay, people, let’s see if I can calmly deconstruct this:

  1. We will leave aside the inevitable misspelling, but really, nutjobs, can you never get it right?  Sometimes I wonder if you’re not all really Poes.  (I do wonder, often, whether the websites who generate this kind of bullshit are actually fronts for our corporate overlords to sow disinformation to keep the peasants riled up?)
  2. Walmart employees were not protesting having to work on Thanksgiving.  Walmart protesters were protesting their lack of a living wage.  The Walmart business model consists of paying unskilled people less-than-poverty-level wages by shorting them on wages, hours, and benefits.  The documentation of the cost to taxpayers—in terms of food assistance and Medicaid assistance—is all over the internet: Walmart workers don’t make enough to live on.
  3. Neither do many of our troops. (See also.)
  4. And above all and always, the worship of the military, surest sign of fascism.  Oh, yes you do: discounting a very real problem by comparing it to Our Boys, the Valiant, our Holy Warriors, whose daily job must be Valued Above All Others—and if anyone doesn’t Value spending trillions on wars that got us nothing but a ruined economy and an unstable region, they are Vermin Not Worthy to Lick the Boots etc etc he said and drank rapidly a glass of water.   But Walmart workers?  Who work for a huge and hugely profitable corporation in America?  They can go suck it because they are not Worthy.

I will now refrain from commenting on America’s sick addiction to consumerism.

Classic Lichtenbergianism

Posted on by Dale

So I have two options this morning: pound out another 3 Old Men post, or implement an idea I stole from another composer to solve the “reboot” problem in the fourth movement of Symphony No. 1.

If you guessed “None of them, Katie,” you are our daily winner!

The timer went off on my phone, which meant I had to go downstairs, remove the sheets from the dryer, and get them on the guest bed so they “won’t be wrinkled.”

::beat::

Anyway, as I was preparing to finish getting the top sheet on, I was struck by the morning light.

Bedscapes

1

2

3

4

5

So there’s that hour gone.

I suppose I should head back over to the Symphony now…

3 Old Men: mapping the field of ritual, redux, part 3

Posted on by Dale

I’m revisiting my explication of 3 Old Men in terms of Ronald Grimes’ Beginnings in Ritual Studies.

: Ritual time :

[original post here]

At what time of day does the ritual occur—night, dawn, dusk, midday?  What other concurrent activities happen that might supplement or compete with it?  … At what season?  Does it always happen at this time? Is it a one-time affair or a recurring one? … How does ritual time coincide or conflict with ordinary times, for instance work time or sleeping time? … What is the duration of the rite?  Does it have phases, interludes, or breaks?  How long is necessary to prepare for it?  … What elements are repeated within the duration of the rite?  Does the rite taper off or end abruptly? … What role does age play in the content and officiating of the rite?

The Great Ritual, i.e., Burning Man/Alchemy/wherever, determines when the 3 Old Men emerge from the mists and perform their ritual.

As I posted earlier, we had decided on dawn, sunset, an hour after sunset, and midnight as the four times we would perform the ritual—but the exigencies of weather convinced us to dump the dawn and add noon instead right off the bat.

The fact that I misunderstood the chart I used to determine sunset each day (neglecting to account for DST) meant that we had submitted a schedule to the central committee that had us out there at sunset and an hour before. (At our very first performance of the ritual, it seemed to me that it was very much daylight; nothing like taking your clothes off in front of a steady stream of traffic arriving at the burn.)

But we stuck with it, just in case someone out there had downloaded the schedule and came looking for us. It worked, although I think next time we will go with the actual sunset and an hour afterwards. We look awesome by the flickering of the tiki torches.

I’m also fine with our canceling ritual performances when it’s too freaking cold to smear liquid kaolin over our naked bodies, although that last performance with the blankets/shawls was great too. We could legitimately make actual shawls/serapes to wear if it’s chilly.

As for supplementary or competing activities… Well, that’s what makes it a burn, ne-ç’est pas?

I like the fact that we were available most of the time to assist those walking the labyrinth even when we aren’t out there in full regalia. I like how people felt comfortable sitting and chatting. I think our canopies could be better deployed as a decompression area.

In the original post, I talked about the Great Ritual of Burning Man vs. the small ritual of the labyrinth. I think the same concept can be applied to 3 Old Men itself: the Great Ritual of the officiants vs. the open labyrinth the rest of the time. Four times a day, the Old Men would take their places at the entrances to the labyrinth and offer the agons to participants. Otherwise, the labyrinth lay open for exploration and meditation. I think this worked. I do want to continue to recruit Old Men so that we can offer more/longer sessions. I think it would be great if we were “open,” so to speak, the entire time Incendia was up and running, for example.

I think we ended up manning our posts about 30 minutes each time. It seemed adequate; more officiants would allow us to tag team and keep going.

As for “age” as a determinant for participation, I really like the fact that all of us were over 45 at least. For me, the entire experience was a profound meditation on being an Old Man and how powerful that was. I don’t know how I would feel if a young man (say, the kid who stripped and painted himself) asked if he could camp with us or officiate.