I’ve been distant lately, I know. I went off to Vegoose and had the adventure of a lifetime and then I didn’t come back and spill it all out to you like I normally would. I know. I grew up a little during this adventure, I got some perspective I needed and I learned a lesson. Not the way I would have wanted to, but when do you ever learn a lesson the way you want to? That would almost defeat the purpose don’t you think? You can’t learn something you already know, or can you? Really, it’s not that bad, I’m being dramatic, but this isn’t about me, it’s about you. I’m just trying to look at the globe of truth from all sides.
Vegoose was incredible, the musical line-up unparalleled, organization smooth and efficient, the scene the best ever, the costumes the best ever, it was all-great, and in direct inverse to proportion to how great it was is how bad the one tragic flaw stings. One flaw from some angles is a flaw, and from other angles is really the source of the lesson. The seed crystal is you will. If you can try to imagine what a time we had, how great we all looked in our costumes, how amazing all the bands were, you might begin to imagine how great the pictures I had to post up here for you all were. then you could begin to understand how much of a blow it was to lose my camera the last day of the festival. SHIT!
I know I know! I’ve been through all sorts of crazy adventures with my camera, some more belligerent than Vegoose, and through them all I kept it with me. I’ve had that thing for years, and yet I lost it just when I needed to, or hated to the most. Oh, spitefully witty universe of tricks! A hallowed eve’s for sure! I see that now, now that I’ve talked myself into it.
It was somewhere between leaving the festival grounds after Widespread and heading over to the String Cheese Incident Late Night show at the Orleans Arena that it must have happened. I didn’t realize it until after the cheese show when it wasn’t in the car where I figured I had left it. As I was scanning back over my last memory with the camera, trying to track it down amidst all the fun, I remembered the last time I had it.
On our way out of the festival there was a row of portta-potties next to each other for about the length of a football field. The excitement in the air was like electricity as everyone left the Festival to head to the strip for the Late Night shows after what had already been an unbelievable three days. Knowing some of the best was still yet to come made for a sort of delirium that had everyone in a fit. The last memory I have with camera is as we were walking past the row of porta-potties I was changing the batteries when someone had a call to greatness and jumped up on the roof of the first porta-potties in the row. Drunk and determined the whole crowd watched the guy start running across the top of the porta-potties at full speed, all the way down. I remember wishing my camera had been ready so I could have taken that guy’s pictures to show you. That’s my last memory. As he ran more and more people noticed him and cheered louder and louder as he went further and further with only a few close calls. It was great. This man’s journey is only one little example of what a great set up the whole situation was, and a perfect example of how much I wanted to share it with you. Somewhere between watching that guy and getting everyone back into the car I must have set it down and it disappeared into the abyss… damn damn damn. I hope whoever finds it does a lot with it, and gets a kick out of all those funny photos. What else can I do, right?
When I realized what had happened, which was the next day since String Cheese played till 5:30 in the morning, I began my process of learning the lesson. It really bummed me out, hard, not so much to lose the camera, but lose the pictures! Oh you should have seen the heady organic giving tree costume with us passing out leaves of wisdom to everyone. And the pictures of the bands, and the sunsets, and the ferris wheel, and the chapel, and all the costumes, the strip, the giant pumpkin head! ARRRRR! There were so many priceless photos and I wanted so bad to do, more than anything, was show them to Grandma! Damn! I feel like I let her down. This, I see now, was the source of my pain. I was attached to the camera, true, but more than that I was attached to sharing with Grandma, and you too BLOG public. You’ve been on my mind too much. It was web-gold and I knew it the whole time and it wasn’t until I didn’t have any of it that I really had to practice surrender.
Once I surrendered the sweetness of the whole experience got a whole lot more vivid. I didn’t have it, I didn’t worry about it, and the real time experience in direct proportion to what a bummer it was I wouldn’t be able to share. I guess it really is true. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Each day it sunk in a little more and a little more what had been lost, what had been gained, what had been going on. I see now that in many ways BLOG’s have killed the written word. Blogging becomes an expectation, not so much to nail all the grammar, but just to get it out there, ramble it off whatever, no need to edit, just tell the story. It’s great and all, but I’m ready spend all my writing time writing my best. It’s better that way. I was too caught up trying to document and artificially capture life instead of experiencing life fully as is, and then devoting myself to a written craft that is equally as full, as possible. I understand now why journalists always take a photographer with them. It is too hard to try and absorb something with words and with potential photo angles at the same time. Taking photos makes your Presence lazy. Not lazy really, but fractured and confused. A picture is worth a thousand words, so if I took enough I didn’t have to worry about the writing as much, right? This was the lesson to learn. This is the lesson I am still learning.
I don’t know when I’ll get a camera again, and the time has come for me to curb the daily ramble portion of this blog. I will take a lesson from Brooks on this one. In the evolution of blogging as an accent to self-realization, less is more. We must be careful not to get too attached to our tools and lose sight of the essence. Words are power. Fewer of the right words are even more powerful.
The goal I am working on right now is the silencing of the mind. It’s not about having a whole bunch of half-ass angles; it’s about having one really good angle that is like a laser beam. I don’t want ten voices speaking in there at once; I want one steady voice that’s my best voice. It’s that voice I hear when I get my mind real still. Like the surface of the level of a lake, take the time to be calm. I want to write with a single focal point for communication and play. One I to one You. Do you see?
I wasn’t even going to write this BLOG but I need to, I want you to know what happened. I feel like I owe you something, you see? I don’t even know who you are really. You’re an idea, you see, and that’s not healthy for me right now. It’s just that every time I sit down to try and write you all about what happened in Vegoose I get bummed out all over that I don’t have the photos to show you, I get a little discouraged for a moment, and then I put it off a little longer. Hopefully I’ve gotten enough of the point across and we can go from here, which is where I am. Here in a good place. A nice, quiet, still good place, back here on the farm.
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