Burning Man 15: Being Blue

It was a very busy time for us. Since most of us were new, we hadn't really had time to adjust to how little dusk there really is, nor to how quickly it gets COLD out there. In fact, that's continued to be my problem--I almost freeze to death every year.

So, there we were, styling Jeff's hair. Well, Dan was attempting to style my hair, which we'd decided was going to be some sort of double helix, blue, with various light devices in it. Other members of the camp were re-running cords, cooking dinner, getting coffee, and setting up audio equipment. The amount of organized chaos was incredible, even if you take into account I was looking at everything upside down, since my hair was long enough that you had to have gravity assist in spiking it.

Which we found out shortly just wouldn't work. Luckily, dinner was prepared, and Carrie had some experience working with large amounts of grease (or whatever had looked like a good idea back in Oklahoma) for my hair. This also freed Dan up to fabricate a sort of crown out of baling wire (I'm serious), with two prongs to sort of support the arms of the helixes.

This actually worked, especially after Carrie sprayed the whole mess with bright blue temporary dye. I thought it would work better than it did--next time, I'll go the whole route. In my defense, I was transporting a bunch of drugs, and we cut a pretty strange figure as it was.

Then, the final touches: half a dozen light sticks that turned out to be more of a hassle than they were worth, and then the piece de resistance: the Boyscouts scrounged a few feet of el wire.

EL wire, for those of you not in the know, stands for Electro Luminescent wire, and it kicks ass. It's kind of like neon, only it's a wire, see? EL Wire? It's also not too hard to power, you can run it through various sequencers and boards, and decent amounts of it run off of a 9v battery. It was my first experience with the stuff, and I loved it. I'm still not much in the way of sequencing the stuff, but I love it anyway.

The only problem, for those of you trying some sort of Chromosomal-Hair Sculpture with lit protein crossmembers (pick me apart on that-it's been 15 years since I've had any sort of biology class), is that el wire drivers make a quiet, but completely audible beeping noise. When they're on. It was maddening--and the acid I took later didn't help much. It was almost sunup before I realized that it only beeped when the lights were on, but by then I had other problems on my hands.

Anyway, once I was blue, I ate half a dozen hits of acid and began to help set up for the night's show. It was only then that I realized all my warm clothing was of the pullover type, and with a 2 foot blue tower of blinking hair on my head, I was sort of stuck barechested, overnight. Then the show started, and I was pressed into service as a greeter.