Most won't readily read, in a linear fashion, all of these tape-recorded ghosts; I'll add hyper-hops within this host.

I intend to layer additional ramblings (bodies of texts invoking a figure/ground shift) over this initial text...

|plumes|bipolar|naked|frenzy|fuzzy|squeals|indigo|hap|

Universal oppression of life and the attempt to ... circumvent by means of belonging,... belongings ... desert winds ...the radio-station searches for frequency ... traveling ... consequently in part, the making of art is about ... in lieu of belonging ... a different kind of belonging ...creativity, not regression ... surrounded or circumvented, circumscribed... by signature hillscapes ... crackled ... phase back loop ... the middle of nowhere ... so is somewhere in nowhere, are they displaced? Is the middle of nowhere always somewhere ... is nowhere in terms of a constellation, surrounding constellation, a fearful constellation, of somewhere ... the media camp ... encircling plumes of smoke are a substitute for ... clouds in the sky ... overhead in a beautiful, blue vignette ... hill sides ... blue polyethylene, the favored shelter-material ... you would think that ... a transient community... independence and self-reliance would indicate ... new structures ... what extent are the social mores ... constructed ... flags and banners ... before erect vertical elements to create ... mobile amplified sounds, dogs, distressed kitties, coming from art cars ... one with a rotating air-scoop on top ... the sound travels far and its direction is unmistakable ... so far people seem to arrive in groups of three, four, five, six or more, thereby bringing with them the existing structures ... compelled to reaffirm ... some truly hideous attempts at signs of creativity, hipness ... somehow the most elegant and minimal structures are the most compelling ... here where any structure seems inconsequential ... still waiting for the community radio station to come on air. Someone has climbed a makeshift TV tower. Presumably that's the transmission tower ... sounds of recorded dogs .... sound is truly the dominant medium out here ... notions of the captive audience and .... art cars, here's one that's all silver with a pair of gigantic dorsal fins ... is the audience this captive, a captive audience ... some people are Black Rock rangers ... any fluids spilled are immediately sucked into the crackled surface of the playa ... absorption ... absorption ... much of the focus is on display... various toys and hip cultural artifacts, pink flamingos (emptied of meaning at least once,) ... when really the sense of structure, a structured sense of habitation .... of a flat, contained desolate plain, ends up being the ... the white and black long triangular banners atop eight-foot silver poles have a certain resonance, as it is yellow and black ... how much can you take with you, how much of what was can you resurrect ... some areas are capable of creating more dust when traversed over than others. Your car can become cloaked in a white-clinging film of gypsum, I guess ... I was worried about my possibly clogged air filter ... having inadvertently left my CB radio on, I'm worried that that communication device would in fact drain my car battery ... Change of speed ... the patterns on the playa floor are intriguing, the way the surface is cracked within each circumscribed division there exists subsequent smaller crackle, crazed or formations . It would be nice if that picture was amplified in this temporary community ... binoculars would be interesting to bring here ... catered in that part of the playa, which is the most dry and compact, the part that generates the least dust, the least obfuscation. You truly can't see behind you when you're driving through the playa, there's just a white cloud following you ... twins, I'd like to see twins here. Perhaps existing communities just get so large that any kind of social interaction and meaningful connection is impossible so you have to recreate some smaller aspect or aspects of that larger community somewhere else and that somewhere else is always a problem ... these little radio controlled cars are interesting, zipping along at an apparent distant horizon... that exact scale ... when is the physical structure, appearance of a community similar to its symbolic infrastructure. What does that mean when it finally reflects completely? Does it then become transportable? When transported, does that the surrounding is physical or structure, does that mean that that necessarily must mirror its origin? There's a sense at night that you're not just seeing some stars as you might usually see but you're seeing every single star, all the stars. There's terror implicit in that. Is it because social structures inevitably get large and inept and improbable... Is that why a sense of power is imparted to those who refuse to extend their social connections. Those who ... who don't necessarily want to see it extended indiscriminately. Is that desire related to the inevitability of a larger social structure ... The desert plumes ... but after a time they raise vertically... plumes. They're less distinct than the more recent plumes ...and vertically symmetrical, as though they're mirrored on either side of the horizon. The bicycle is surely the most non-obtrusive form of transportation in and around the camp, even more so than walking,... a mirage or floating effect of anything moving in a fluid manner, so the bicycle and its passenger seem to be more of an image than a substantial being. Art or cultural objects can be means of initiating a subsequent conversation or a conversation unto itself. At what point does too much something become nothing? When does it bottom out? Finally, are people assigned positions of responsibility/power primarily so they are not inclined to reinvent the system, that they now more a part of? It would be interesting to have a series of sequential aerial photographs showing how the community gradually grew, in what pattern ... Of course, any photograph assumes the center ... You photograph these dust plumes, these symmetrical dust plumes, on high contrast film and then turn them vertically; they resemble optical soundtracks a lot, it would be interesting to see what they sounded like ... Finally, it's the belief that these vehicles are capable, after a period of time,... from their place of origin ... great sound ... the structure requires a certain commitment, a renewal ... squarish vehicles ... vectors... I just knew that somehow I would be subjected to a reenactment of the panic I felt when I lost my first car on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean ... . buzzed by a fighter jet ... see what structural configurations/variations you could come up with for these sheets of blue polyethylene ... good studio project ... significance of the tent poles ... like 18 inch metal pegs ... and then tall hollow bamboo poles placed overtop ... nice fluorescent, flags, fluorescent orange with one black square and one black circle ... there's a hamburger stand, McSatans ... millions of souls served, free cigarette with every burger ... There's a fair amount of drumming and drummers, none of it very sustained or polyrhymic... Radio Free Burning Man 99.5 ... guest disc jockeys, 25-minute time slots ... a lot of stuffed animals to be set alight ... Friday now, according to the radio station, the population stands at about 600, not too many ... generators here. I saw an air-conditioned tent ... the wind really picks up at night, a lot of the structures are blown down. It would be interesting to have a kite with battery-powered flashers on it to put up at night. Some rocketry ... The drumming would be interesting if it was used as a way of establishing links across the space. If there were people scattered around the playa answering ... Wheeled my bicycle out to the media camp. It's just far enough out to be a bit of an exertion. I rode through, said hello. Rode back. I was so thirsty when I got back I opened the bottles I had of the frozen water, and drank all the cold water that had melted; there's was just this core of ice in the middle.... vehicles arriving now, midday ... there seems to be a large converted bus in the center of camp which seems to be the official Burning Man bus complete with a satellite receiver. It's all painted up... Cold water ties ... People are orbiting vehicles around the camp .... motorcycles ... Implicit in any decision where to finally set up camp would have to be a sense of the overall structure as a whole, which of course varies as time goes on, the center remaining most constant. It would be more interesting if the camp was bipolar, if it had two centers. ... campers would resemble sort of magnetic fields which could alternate, one center being north, one being south, etc. ... well, the Black Rock Gazette just arrived. Here's an ad from the Empire High School Girls Basketball team in Gerlach (They're selling ice. Their slogan is, Today's ice, it's more than just frozen water.) Interesting little bird, sort of swallow-like with long bills and long wings out looking for things to eat on the ground. They mistook my firecracker remnants for things to eat. Surprising number of insects out here that I've never seen before. Flat green, kind of beetle-like insect. Strange ... The Black Rock Gazette defines this community a temporary, intentional community/liberated autonomous zone. The biggest challenge: Ice lasts five days. Once again, I really wish I'd bought that folding drum kit ... Another fighter jet ... I wonder if you could make an extremely long flag made of various national/corporate flags or parts thereof spliced together. There's a new Ennio Morricone double CD set out, Once upon a time in the West. ... Electric orange. There's two more fighter planes ... some hand-held cruise missiles, that would be quite a spectacle. I like this radio station. It's a really nice, considered yet varied sort of music selection. It would be nice, though, instead of having the same host and a new guest, the same host and a new guest, the same host and a new guest, if there was a guest which in turn becomes the new host and so on ... tremendous exercise in understanding. I've inadvertently discovered the double-jointed tent-pole ... the supposed content is really in the center... the camp has really expanded, now. It seems to expand around clusters ... Clouded over, really heavy cloud cover. You can see the rain falling in the distant hills. The camp has changed. There's more of a guarded sense to it now... Direction to search in... to avoid this problem, you can use the technique called, deliberate error. For instance, if you purposely aim for a spot somewhat to the right of your location, you'll know when you approach, that the destination must be to the left... It will be interesting to see how the camp breaks up, whether it's a mass exodus, whether some people choose to stay on ... exponentially, there appears to be the beginnings of a storm looming... avenues have formed here and there. I seem to be sitting on the edge of one. Tents parked on both sides, some flyers of kites use this avenue to launch their kites... Just how many hairy, naked flute players can there be? ... Some people stake out these elaborate structures with short bungie cords between tarps and poles. It seems a very good idea. I wonder if there's an ideal social density, the atmosphere of the camp has changed radically. It's grown exponentially. It could be several thousand by now, and there isn't that same openness that was here when the camp was smaller. Terrific storm yesterday, you could see it coming from the south. This blinding cloud of dust swirled up. Sprinkles of rain, and then boom, the sun was out again... A major storm that just blew in and blew out. And there was this massive rainbow. Last night we seem to have got a lot of the rain that should have accompanied that storm earlier in the day.... They're in their twenties, mostly early twenties, I think... It's a different kind of attitude, it's not a communal attitude. Kind of a cacophony, anarchistic cacophony. There's all kinds of music being played simultaneously. Different performances happening at the same time, all overlapping each other. There isn't a sense of mutual cooperation. I was talking with some people from California and that seems to be a peculiar change, at least in the Bay Area. There isn't that sense of, even there there isn't a sense, of openness and friendliness and camaraderie that used to exist. And I think they're probably disillusioned by that. They remember those times and probably still latches on to that now desire for openness, but the younger generation has little chance of any real expectations or consequences. The young tend to take advantage of or react to, that openness... I think I just saw a guy in a big orange jumpsuit rip off a camp a couple of doors up. Very casual. But he may have belonged there. This has become a lot more than ... Way off in the desert to the south is like a subset or a sub camp that seems to be a little rave gathering, massive structures... amplified tape loops and so forth. The Burning Man, the structure itself, is isolated, sort of roped off off in one area way off the east, I guess that is. If it was centrally located, if it remained the focus... If the archetype was always visible and central... I think last night the camp seemed to be thriving on a kind of frenzy that matched its growth. People were just pouring in and setting up camp... Very, very, very few people arrive by themselves. Often, particularly among the younger set, seemed to arrive in cohesive sub-sets ... Interesting, particularly during the storm, there was a lot of sort of youthful, I guess, enthusiasm. Daring The storm to come on... Any activity or event to which people subject themselves, ends up being insignificant in terms of the larger socioeconomic structures,... maybe. More attention should be paid to investment in social economy rather than focusing on evolutionary capitalism. I just started to read The Beak of the Finch and it talks about how Darwin really never experienced any evolution... where he...Good Morning... There's the guy in the orange jumpsuit again. Perhaps he did belong there. It was odd. You'd see him wandering up the avenue here taking special interest in all the various structures, and then he went over to this camp and started peering in the windows of the trucks parked there. Took a little knapsack and wandered off across the playa, and then he came back wearing a sweater overtop of the orange jumpsuit and then took a camera. It didn't really seem like he was really familiar or actually taking pictures of anything. It was just an appropriate staged exit... Now, for me, at least, it's worth it just to come here and see the expanse of desert and being able to see this much environment in one sitting from one position... BLM: Bureau of Land Management property... and anyone could come here at any time with out any charge. It would be interesting coming here alone or in a small group... The storm took down the Margarita bar last night. It looked like an interesting place. I was going to go there last night but it was closed... You can hear the thumping techno sounds first thing in the morning. I don't know whether they're coming from the distant camp or somewhere closer. Some more clouds today, but it doesn't look like they're going to stay ... The most common expression here is, Woo-who-who-who-ah-hah-hah-hah- oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Kinds of various tribal chants... of transformation,.. frenzied suspension... techno,... beat, the sound of amplified applause: The sharing of my enthusiasm is mandatory... I love this sun, it's great ...the storm yesterday just leveled almost everything except for the most sleek, aerodynamic of tent structures... Saw this little rocket car, with a couple of men in their late 50s, 60s. Low, it's maybe a foot long, 8 inches high. I don't know how it works but it seems to be radio controlled. They had trouble getting it to work last night but the previous night I saw it zip around the periphery... Just sort of growing red little rocket. It had this real strange low-pitched vibrating sound as it zipped along, glowing red at night. It was real interesting. I thinking of transcribing these notes into a single web page; images that could be changed. Then you'd have the same text flow around it ... I wonder if by continually mentioning the word/concept: community whether that actually prevents such a thing from occurring. Maybe community is like the consciousness or the remembrance of a dream. It serves some function in being ... explicated in a subconscious way but there's no real reason to have a conscious ... or reenactment/realization of it... All the furnishings and the various personal trappings are a poor man's substitute for an RV... So many different sound sources simultaneously. Leading me to wonder what would happen if only the originator of recorded music or designated players were permitted to play that music. Pretty much like home pages. It sort of eliminates large, to some extent, eliminates the large commercial enterprises and the monopolization of ideas ... Wired magazine ... last year, I proposed to write an article about the Burning Man festival and they couldn't see the connection. I think the connection between the kind of attitudes and ideas they present and what was happening here, assuming they know what it was about,... but I think the connection is the arrangement, growing, fluid growth of structures and placements and the links between them ... seems pretty much synonymous with hypertext links and a growing body of documents and pages and sites that are interconnected in various ways... Camp sites fill-up fast... There's another plane... Saw some, I guess, unusual characters. There's a guy I saw last night wearing leather chaps and carrying a long leather whip and fringe elements in search of unity, I guess. There's a guy with a fuzzy pink Mohawk and a matching fuzzy pink g-string... African-American lady was well rubbed down with the white clay of the playa. That was more of a culturally astute thing, I assume. Bongo drum wedged under her crotch... There's a few of the pierced genitalia crowd. Those little loops must get hot in the sun.. A couple of teepees... a parasail vehicle,.. another guy being pulled .. it looks like a regular parachute but he was being pulled along and hoisted up into the sky by means of a moving truck and long line running to him... It's Sunday and they're still arriving. Not quite as many, I would guess. But they're still trickling in. Surf music. The music was the wave. Now the radio station has devolved into guest dee-jays. It would be interesting to have one event that would probably have to be a cataclysmic event like a Telsa coil that would knock out all the internal combustion engines and all the generators.... It's the least attractive people that have their bodies covered with tattoos and various markings and adornments and piercings... Is that about being pushed even farther to the periphery? At least there's something definite, some definite... Another sudden downpour accompanied by primal whoops, punctuated by squeals of pain as the rain turned to hail. Not too keen on the mud. Hopefully it will soak into the playa soon. Well the actual burning of the Burning Man oooh, nice hawk,... was a very long, climactic, dramatic build-up of people gradually forming a large circle around the Burning Man... forced to the perimeter of the circle by the little rocket car ... green lasers shining across the desert towards the Burning Man. There's a general build-up of exuberance and vengeance, almost. They have a mob mentality with all the flaming torches and fireworks. Baby burn. So it seems to be more about,... and the Burning Man structure itself, is unmistakably similar to the high voltage power towers here. So it suggests that the Burning Man itself is to be a symbol wrapped up with technology and the new world order and its destruction somehow providing deliverance for ecological tribal issues, not quite the same idea, I think, as a jubilee or an old man sorrow, which would be more subdued: A sort of a recounting of the past as opposed to almost a kind of a vengeful swelling of focused antagonism towards a technological symbol... One of the coolest things I saw was a woman painted entirely in deep indigo blue pigment zipping around the desert on a motorcycle. Somehow that was interesting. The drumming is a little much after a while. I mean it's there when you go to sleep and it's there when you get up in the morning. It can be very electronic or it can be manual, I guess. It kind of gets to you after a while... there was a sign saying Drum Free Zone. As the camp got larger, the clarity and sort of initial astonishment of seeing any kind of structure on this barren wasteland rapidly deteriorated into more noise than signal. Became more haphazard... of a feeling of a rave. It would be a very interesting place (proving ground) to take a class of students interested in performance art. Most of the event is of an auditory nature. I saw a few people walking around with directional microphones and tape recorders. Rich source of sound all happening simultaneously. And the sound kind of bounces off the hills. Longhorn cattle on the side of the road. I saw quail standing in the middle. Lots of bunny rabbits, cottontail rabbits. Life has become a source of constant irritation. That is the function of techno, to drive back the irritation. To flatten and yet raise the levels, including the despair.