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Goddamn I'm beat. My head is throbbing in the way that means I'm dehydrated, but I've been drinking so much water all goddamn day and I just can't force any more down. Water is getting nauseating. I'm absolutely and completely exhausted. It's about 10pm, and half of me is trying to pry myself out of the WryBreadBox to go participate in some of this very transitory experience, but my head and body are demanding that I relax in my bed, listen to a few of the other pirate radio stations, and sleep for at least a bit. That's another element out here besides the crazy heat: the inevitable sleep deprivation. Gespacho didn't sleep at all last night, and he looks like he's about to go insane. He's just barely coherent. He can't communicate at all at the moment. I think he's in hammock now, thank god. Talking to a few people it seems this brand of exhaustion is common. One person said she didn't feel like herself at all, and couldn't figure out what the problem was. As far as Black Rock City goes, lots of things are being built, but nothing's really open for business, at least not in the day. Walking down the roads has the feel of walking through a street fair or a carnival being built, with lots of goofy things competing for nothing but your attention. Everyone's got their camp, which is their booth. And you work so damned hard on it that you don't give a shit about what anyone else is doing, at least not yet. I've hardly ventured out of CyberBuss camp, as there are so so so many things needing to be done. The radio station needs constant attention, which is lucky for me as it keeps me out of the sun hammering support stakes into the playa. It's a cush job, but relentless. Some of the radio that's going out over Radio Free WryBread ("in conjunction with Radio Free CyberBuss") is in my opinion absolutely stellar. This morning we had a little morning talk radio, with Gespacho, Cyber Sam and Justin having an on-air wake-and-bake in the buss, lazily rapping back and forth so well it made me bubble over with joy. And whenever I hear our signal outside our camp I get that same feeling. I feel like an underground Rupert Murdoch, with my radio station, website, CDs, books. If there was ever a place to exhibit them, this is it. At this moment I'm listening to a station broadcasting jungle music. Outside my van are lots of hoots and howls, but nothing too loud. I could easily sleep in this amount of noise. The CyberCamp just tapped a keg though, so who knows how long the quiet will last. But I think everyone's exhausted. This weather and timeschedule and experience in general is incredibly trying on body and soul. It's a factor that's hard to imagine from hearing all the Burning Mann brouhaha for so many years. I'd heard people mention the importance of "shade structures", but I couldn't have imagined just how right they were. If I were here without the CyberBuss, with just my Van Glorious, I'd have to find a CyberBuss Camp to lounge around in. I'm learning lots about shade structures. Not all fabrics are created equal for the role, as some aren't quite opaque, and a little sun is enough to generate a lot of heat. And for the framework of the structure, make a dome out of PVC tubing. It bends without kinking. Who'd a thunk. Funny, every time I manage to force myself to pound some water, I feel much better about 10 minutes later. But then I gradually lapse back into this bleak lassitude. At least today. I just ate a fabulous CyberBuss Camp meal, maybe that's what's making me feel better. That's another thing I'm noticing about the desert: food has a tremendous impact on my moods. My biology is in a shambles. Uh oh: some guy is on a megaphone right now, walking past me, blaring "Where is all the noise! Isn't this Center Camp!" Omens are telling me things are going to get much more insane around here, this being Center Camp. Things are still mellow. At night things pick up, but only in pockets. There's a party here, a drum jam there, but it's mostly dead after midnight. The most night fun I've had so far has been my midnight bike ride on the open playa. Well, I'm going to lie down "for a second". It'd be nice to wake up at sunrise, but I'm sure I'll sleep till 10am, when I'll be roasted out of bed. I'll kid myself that I'll be able to snatch a nap, but that's a big yeah right: between the noise, work and especially the heat there's no sleeping to be had in the day. And my van's all messy with wire spaghetti from the radio station, and playa dust on and in everything. It's not as bad as I expected as far as quantity, but it's plenty annoying having this super dry chalky dust on everything. It takes the comfort out of my comfy van seats real quick. So I don't have a place to take solo rejuvenating chill outs. And the skin on my feet is perpetually dried out. My kingdom for some moisturizing lotion that's not filled with 50 ingredients not found in nature. Well, I should probably send this entry to wrybread, but then I'd have to get out the satellite phone and deal with all the electronic quirks which are inevitable, and some etc that I couldn't possibly predict, and I'm so comfortable and feel like lying down with my book and listen to pirate radio and other noises. Who knows. I'm getting just a little spooked about all my equipment in my van. In San Francisco, a nice enough guy asked me if I could give his friend a ride to Burning Mann. I said I could. This friend turned out to be an absolute maniac, who periodically broke into fits of muttering and putting his hands up "sensing the air" for some unspecified type of current. He's always declaring this and that to be sources of bad energy, and could I move it? Once my CB radio picked up a stray conversation, and this guy declared ominously "We weren't supposed to hear that. It was supposed to pass straight into our subconscious." He was a nice enough guy though, and I didn't want to take the whole long drive out here without my road toys, so I broke out my laptop, GPS, satellite phone, scanner, digital camera, etc. All the essentials of a long drive. But now he's really driving me crazy, hanging around CyberBuss camp blathering to himself and generally bothering the people who show up. He's really really irritating me. And I just found out he's a speed freak, which explains a lot, but doesn't make me feel any better about having my pricey miscellany in my usually unlocked van. What a chickenshit thing to have to worry about out here, but such is life. On a sour note (blame it on the playa), -Hugh Mann |
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