[MD] MOQ/BOC

[John Carl]

Krimel,

You caught me off guard with this one.  Thank YOU.

I went to Burning man once, where the patterns you describe ( the creation
of streets, sharing and nudity) all have evolved into an annual event, and
it's interesting to consider the many similarities, even though years and
years and a continent away.    One wonders if we took a group of stock
brokers and cops, and stuck them in some muddy situation with no real social
guidelines, if they'd start shedding clothes.  Or do you have to have a
pre-existing hippy, drugs and fun mentality in order for these patterns to
exhibit themselves?

I wonder if I could get some kind of scientific grant, to study naked girls
and puppies and music and drugs.    If you could put the request together
for me, I'd be eternally grateful.

John



On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Krimel <Krimel at krimel.com> wrote:

> Hi Dan,
> More years ago than I can count exactly, I went to a rock festival. It was
> in those post Woodstock years when many of us felt empty and incomplete
> because we had missed one of the defining moments of our generation. Some
> would end up lying in our waning years,  concocting outrageous tales of our
> back stage exploit with dead rock idols. But I am a horrible liar.
>
> It started when a buddy of mine saw a poster advertising a festival called
> "The Celebration of Life." It was to be in Louisiana and would feature
> people like Joe Cocker, Chuck Berry and The Animals. Bunches of bands like
> Pink Floyd and the Allman Brothers were supposed to show but didn't.
>
> At this remove I can't say why adult authority didn't step in but four of
> us
> barely out of high school scrounged up enough cash, loaded our camping gear
> into the trunk of a '61 Impala and headed out for our first road trip. I
> was
> shocked at the Florida/Alabama border where Interstate 10 abruptly turned
> into two lane blacktop. I think George Wallace was still governor at the
> time and perhaps federal highway construction was not a priority.
>
> The four of us were looking forward to getting to Louisiana because the
> legal drinking age at least for beer and wine was 18. We spent a night
> jammed into a cheap hotel drinking Boonesfarm Apple. As it turned out the
> concert promoters had done less that a stellar job of organizing and
> eventually it seemed like 50,000 of us got diverted off of the state's
> highways and onto a network of dirt roads that ran across the top of a
> system of levies.
>
> We spent to next night on top of the levies meeting hippies and stoners
> from
> Tulsa and New York. By the middle of the second day it became questionable
> as to whether there really would be a "Celebration of Life" at least in the
> musical sense. There was a bit of frustration of course but pretty soon
> people began to celebrate in ways of their own. We were parked near a small
> stream or maybe a pond... it's been awhile... At any rate someone got the
> bright idea of rolling around in the mud until completely covered in the
> stuff. Pretty soon a whole species of mud people emerged from the ooze.
> After a skinny dip in the pond and a roll in the slime, they walked around
> the levy tops wearing nothing but mud.
>
> Trapped as we were off the beaten path people shared their food and wine
> and
> substances and although there were none of the usual trappings of
> civilization a kind of pleasant social order emerged. If you had a bottle
> of
> wine and someone asked for a hit you gave them a hit. Perhaps it was the
> sound of Neil Young's After the Gold Rush album streaming out of the back
> of
> microbuses but it changed my ideas about the nature of the social order.
> Here people were being kind to one another without the formal force of law
> and order. Many of the traditional social conventions remained while others
> were discarded or treated as optional; clothing for example.
>
> At some point the State of Louisiana supplies a host of state troopers and
> cops from far flung parishes to supervise. There wasn't really much they
> could do but try to keep the peace and there was already plenty of that.
> Any
> attempt to enforce "laws" that were being treated as optional by the
> community would have been disastrous, time consuming and ultimately futile.
>
> I think it was on the third morning I was sitting on the hood of the Impala
> listening to Neil's falsetto... "Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor
> coming."
>
> There was a Louisiana state trooper with dark aviator glasses and blue
> Smokey hat sitting on a horse near me with his arms crossed. He was a big
> man and his saddle creaked that leather sound when he or the horse moved.
>
> "Sayin' something about a queen..."
>
> It was hot, summer hot, Mississippi delta muggy hot, but we were in a shady
> patch and it was still morning and we had the midday sun head of us. After
> a
> while a girl walked by with two black and white puppies on leashes. The
> pups
> bounced along the dirt road with their tiny tongue moving in time with
> their
> breath and adorable pink wet noses sniffing the air.
>
> "There was a fanfare blowin' to the sun. That floated on the breeze..."
>
> The girl was beautiful. Dark hair pull back in a bun, wearing only a pair
> of
> black panties. Her breasts bounced before her in perfect harmony with the
> puppies. Round and liquid they swayed and rippled, nipples catching the
> breeze. It was a symphony of sound and color and movement that sings to me
> from the edge of a bayou, distant in space and time.
>
> "There was a band playin' in my head. And I felt like getting high"
>
> The troop watched her pass, the aviators concealed his emotion at this
> flagrant violation of Louisiana state law. But as she passed he tipped his
> hat and I distinctly heard him tell her, "If you got it. Flaunt it, I say."
>
> "There were children crying and colors flying, all around the chosen
> ones..."
>
> Eventually there actually was music at the festival. The anarchy continued
> and midway through the event, streets formed in the makeshift "city."
> Troopers idled their time away at intersections marked by card board signs
> proclaiming the meeting of "Smack Street" and "Cocaine Lane." On the last
> night we were there someone was advertising a future street festival in LA.
> They passed out postcards in the crowd. On the post cards there was a
> drawing of a sun with a small orange barrel pasted in to add color. Turned
> out the barrels were orange sunshine, a powerful close cousin to Purple
> Haze, but without a song of their own...
>
> "All in a dream, all in a dream..."
>
> I still think of those black and white puppies and those perfect breasts
> from time to time. Noses and upright nipples catching the breeze in harmony
> with the crazy rhythm of jello beneath those nipples and the wide V of
> those
> black panties shrinking in the distance as she passed with that trooper's
> wisdom hanging in the air. "If you got it, Flaunt it, I say..."
>
> "Flyin' mother nature's silver seed. To a new home in the sun..."
>
> Beyond noses and nipples and my eternal gratitude that she was not one of
> those mud people, there is no-point to any of this.
> There is no-reason for it.
> I have no-thing to flaunt.
>
> And so, I did...
>
> Which, I suppose, brings to mind another bit of Louisiana folk wisdom that
> applies equally  to nipples and Zen-esque MoQ posts: "If you can't lick 'em
> join 'em, I say."
>
> Thank You,
> Krimel
>
>
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