Rainbow Serpent Cherry Popped

Hello again. I am back from my first Rainbow Serpent Festival and am having a little trouble adjusting to reality. I'm also having trouble getting used to the fact that 2008 was my first Rainbow. It was a perfect party and I felt completely at home immediately. Bit of a trek getting there given that we flew down and had to bus it into the site with all of our gear, but once there and set up it was just brilliant... and it felt especially like being home given the amount of people The Dreaded One and I knew. We set up in a predominantly Sydney area with loads of people we hadn't seen in ages. Word had gotten out that we closed our shop and so many people expressed sadness... quite moving.

Still, it was all about good times and dancing, and bloody hell did we dance. I've now gone my full journey from clubbing to doofing to learning to let go and dance sober in the daylight to realising that daytime dancing is what really does it for me. Nothing beats getting out of bed after a full night's sleep and joining the dancefloor mayhem when the sun is coming up and dancing all day long. The crazies are all out and it's a total, wonderful, happy freakshow.

And okay, so the being sober bit goes out the window, but so do inhibitions and hangups and thoughts of the real world. Everyone is just there to dance and laugh, and I will never be happier than when I'm stomping with my big dumb grin on my face.

These are a couple of random images. I'll post more in coming posts. The dancefloor was pretty rammed the whole time with an ebb and flow between stages, but the Market stage was a cack. Water trucks and mist pipes sent everyone even more silly.

I sat on my sunnies and was briefly obsessed with the eye patch effect, until I bought a pair of totally not-me sun glasses that I got very attached to. So much so that at one point, lying in a hammock with The Dreaded One, I started flapping about and checking my Pants Of Many Pockets and declaring, "Where are my new glasses? I'm going to be very pissed if I've lost my new glasses." The Dreaded One shook her head in awe and told me that they were on my face. So me.

More party pics later. So much fun.

Insert The Name Of The Person You Love Feature & Review

Not sure why I haven't tried this before, but here's my latest feature as it appears on the cover of Interval in Drum. Click to enlarge and read.

Saw this show tonight. See comments for a brief late night review.

Random Road Trip Part 1: The Dancefloor Warrior

Hello. I appear to be back. And I appear to have messed up this photo bit quite nicely. How unlike me. I'm hoping that if you click on them they will magically go big.


Anyway, here a few random shots of the first stage of our random road trip.

The horse playing the guitar is a very funny man called Dave (Daheen). He produces some very cool tracks... all quite political in an eco way but very dancefloor friendly and he keeps the mood up by putting on a different mask for each track. Very silly, very fun. There's also a shot of the mushroom headed mothwomen who were probably fairies and not moths. Either way, they were strangely sexy, as almost all doof chicks are. They were also a lot of fun.

There's a shot of The Dreaded One and me at some seaside port after Exodus, a dancefloor shot of the party (the psytrance stage was not the main one but it went off the most and by far had the most energy and colour... although this particular shot was taken when that dancefloor was not at its fullest).

And there is me sitting up high on a rock at Boonoo Boonoo Falls. I'm not sure why I look so concerned while in such an idyllic place... but then again that's the kind of person I am. Perhaps I was thinking that the view from up there was so pretty it hurts. Or perhaps I was just concerned about how much my ankle hurt after dancing so much. I think I stumbled into a bit of a dip in the ground and pulled a muscle. It hurt like buggery but I kept on dancing because I am a dancefloor warrior. It is only now returning to normal size, I have almost full mobility and the pain has almost gone. Just in time for Rainbow Serpent. We leave for that in a couple of days.

Anyway, hello.

House Of The Holy Afro

Just got back from seeing this. I am still smiling. More camp than I was expecting, every bit as tribal and stirring as I was expecting. If you are in Sydney, please go and see it. It will make your soul happy. Being human is about dancing and having fun. Will try to write more about these sublime harmonies and kick-arse dance moves tomorrow.

Also, I pick up my new glasses tomorrow. My eyesight is not as perfect as it once was. They are sexy specs though.

And road trip is booked in... except some of it is air trip. Exodus next weekend, then Rainbow Serpent in Victoria. Happy? Hell yeah.

PS, Read comments for a few more details. It's Thursday now, and I'm outa here. Will be getting festy for the next week or so.

The Sounds Outside

Here, outside,
There is the electric shriek
Of cicadas humming.
Dry rattle of palm leaves,
Buzz and whir of leaf blower.

Here, outside,
The sounds of emptiness.
I miss the music,
I miss the Bells of Barcelona,
And the call to prayer in Istanbul.

Murakami Makes Me Grumpy

I am officially, 100% on holidays. This fact came to me again and again throughout the day, like the ocean waves pounding against a windswept shoreline. I would be caught up in some mindless activity, some mere chore, some absent manouvre of manual dexterity which, together with all the other deeds performed throughout the day enable me to put - as they say - a roof over my head - when another wave of pleasure welled up and hurled itself upon the desolate beach of my innermost thoughts and I would offer in return a frail smile, like a gift that the tentative giver is quite unsure will stir within the receiver quite the desired emotions. Perhaps the gift will be mis-interpreted and some imagined slight be born, like the seed of a small frond destined to be a great and mighty oak tree...

Okay okay. Horrible, isn't it. I've been reading some Murakami and he makes me cranky. Why does he write the shit out of everything? Check this from a story about the wind: "Outside in the absence of sound, the trees - Himalayan cedars and chestnuts, mostly - squirmed like dogs with an uncontrollable itch. Swatches of cloud cover slipped across the sky out out of sight like shifty-eyed secret agents, while on the verandah across the way several shirts wrapped themselves around a plastic clothesline and were clinging frantically, like abandoned orphans."

Is he taking the piss? What the fuck is all of that? Three similes in one short paragraph about the wind is way too many. And as if the squirming dog-trees and shifty-eyed secret agent clouds weren't bad enough, that orphan thing doesn't even make sense. If the orphan is clinging surely it has not yet been successfully abandoned. I see a future orphan clinging to its parent's leg which makes it a not-quite orphan caught up in the messy business of being abandoned. It's quite simply not yet an orphan... bah!

So anyway, I'm on holidays. Plan to catch up on a bit of reading. Should be nice... like a Murakami simile is not.