EP 50 Naomi Most

Episode 50 with Naomi Most is out now! Meet Naomi Most who relates her early, unscripted solo adventures—such as her first trip in a Jetta that broke down—to her later involvement in more organized camps like the "Human Car Wash" and the experimental performance art scene at Thunderdome. Central to their discussion is the concept of serendipity, where Naomi explains how the festival’s environment fosters intuitive discovery and unique human connections that are difficult to replicate in default society. Beyond the desert, the dialogue explores Naomi’s family history as the granddaughter of a pioneer in mathematics and her critique of the modern "supposedly fun bureaucracy" that has emerged as the event evolved. Her story reflects on the artistic lineage of San Francisco’s underground scenes and the enduring value of living a life open to the unexpected.

https://www.nonchalance.com/latitude.html

https://www.nonchalance.com/jejune.html

Please visit https://shadowoftheman.buzzsprout.com/ for all of the details and links.

Email shadowofthemanpodcast@gmail.com if you want to be a guest or if you have any concerns about the show.

Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, it REALLY helps the show to even appear in search results.

Transcript

Before we start, I would like to ask your help to do two things. First, tell a friend or two who you think might like the show. And second, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The more reviews the show gets, the more likely it will even appear in search results. Thank you, and now on to the show. 

They make the trek out to Burning Man for a week and a day. After a lot of work, oh, there's a lot of play. Party party drama, drama, drama. b****, b****, b****. Year after year, they come back to scratch that itch. They all say their lives have been changed. After many years, lives have been rearranged. That changes what this show is all about. You'll see the impact. of burning up and out. So sit back, relax, and cancel all your plans. These are the stories about the shadow of the man.

Hello and welcome to the Shadow of the Man Show. I'm your host, Andy. Not again. Daddy Andy. Today our guest is Naomi Mo. Welcome Naomi.

Hi. Thank you. Another guest there, too. Who's that?

Yeah, my kitten is making an appearance.

Well, my cat, one of the three, uh, Bella, is usually at the door just meowing, meowing, meowing. She's like, I'm the co-host, you know.

Mhm.

But I don't know. I've left her out there.

Yep. This one is just the one who wants to She wants to dip her paw into the aquarium that's sitting by my side.

Oh,

she has a very fine looking fountain. She can drink from the fountain. Expensive. you know,

pet fountain or whatever. No, she wants the fish water. That's

course

nothing nothing finer than the fish water according to NA. So

So how did you first get involved with the whole Bernie man world? When did you first uh go out to the play? Uh

okay. Um so in my middle age, my my sense of time is getting terrible. Um so I moved out to San Francisco in 2005 and then I believe it was The next year I got summoned out to the playa um from a very unlikely source. It was my my mother's friend and my first employer actually um guy named Dick Milberg and he was at the um human car wash camp. Um

yeah and um I didn't really know anything about Burning Man at the time. I was living uh in I first lived in the Mission and then I was living in a warehouse in Oakland called the Vulcan. And um he told my mom it might be good for me.

Huh? Like Yeah.

Yeah. No, nothing, you know, nothing sussy or untoward about it. And I just went, "All right, I like new things." And I drove myself out there in my Jetta Wolfsburg uh stick shift and totally ruined that car. Ended up having to drive out of there limping into Reno because like something had gone wrong in the car and had this a whole adventure for a week being stuck in Reno, but that's another story.

So, they suggested you go to Burning Man and you just went off by yourself or

That's me.

They didn't try to like set you up. You're like, "Yeah, you should really go to Burning Man and here's some friends, you know, I'll hook you up with or nothing like that."

I I don't know. I mean, especially in my 20ies, which is which is what I was. Um I was kind of a drift, kind of a lone wolf. I'm much more community oriented, much more connected at this point. Um, but I think part of the way that I grew up was not tremendously community connected in the first place. And I had sort of a I think emotionally neglected slashstunted kind of way of moving through the world. Um,

and so I was like, okay, well, new things, new things are stimulating,

right? Um, and I had no fear. I still don't

I don't experience any sort of um I mean I think I experience like sort of rational sort of fear but it's in a very like background like the only thing I think I wouldn't do is like free climb.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? When I think of like the short list like I'm not deliberately going to go to the Congo like a like a writer I know

who went to the Congo in the 80s when he was 19 cuz he was like me but like double. I'm not that kind of fearless but Yeah,

generally I just kind of go and do things

or like what's that forget the name of it. It's an island off of Sri Lanka where the people who are like uncontacted tribe and so like if there was like some missionary guy that went there and like shot full of arrows.

Oh Jesus.

Cuz they were supposed to tell you it's like don't go there. They will kill you, you know. And he's like I'm going to go spread the the good word, you know, like

Yeah, I have to go.

Uhhuh.

Someone's got to save them. You're not that adventurous. I got to say that's pretty adventurous. Just someone like, "Oh, you should go to Burning Man. You just get to get in the car and go by yourself."

Yeah. I don't know. I'm I'm I'm a little strange in that way. And also like again, my mom's friend and my first employer.

It's just it doesn't make any sense. So I camped in that camp

and I spent one year just kind of not one year my first year at Burnman.

Where' you camp?

I'm sorry.

Where'd you camp your first year?

The Why am I blanking on the name of it? Um, the place that has came.

Oh, they see the human car wash, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry, my brain's mush.

Oh, that's okay. What exactly are they was the human car wash again? I'm trying to remember. Like

come to me like tomorrow.

Didn't they they had like a whole kind of um a setup where it's like you kind of walk through it and and then each person kind of is like holding like a spot.

It's like Yeah, it's an assembly line like sponge bath. Um, it feels very like gosh, there's an aesthetic to things at Burning Man, right? There's an there's an aesthetic that makes you feel like this is old Burning Man, middle Burning Man, or mid to late Burning Man. Do you know what I mean? In the like this feels very old to middle Burning Man in a way, you know, like

2006.

We're not talking like rifles like shooting things Burning Man, but we are talking like we want to get people clean, but we want to do in the like weirdest way possible where like old naked men are like, you know, get to like, you know, can I be crude?

Yeah, they can be as crude as you want. This is explicit.

Just like, you know, old old naked men get to like sponge bathe like, you know, cute little sparkle ponies and like basically scrub their titties around.

It's called participation, sweetie.

Yeah. I mean, everyone's super nice about it. But anyway, that's that was my first camp.

Uhhuh.

And I was 20. 6 or 27. I can't remember.

I wonder like if he had been car washed like what was like the last year would have been on the play.

Is that not there anymore?

I mean out of contact with that.

Yeah. Was that the only time you camp with him?

Hang on. I have to think back. What did I do my next year? Um God, you told me to think about this and I'm like and I still it's it's still like feels very distant. I should have

20 years ago,

but also I didn't like write in a journal then and things like that.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

I didn't either.

Those things are so important. They're so I now know in retrospect those things are so important. I keep a

journal. Usually like for me like how I kind of remember things is like especially when it's like burning me like what year was that? You know, like I I actually like go back and look through like my my photos on my phone,

you know? of like like oh

that's that's a way of journaling. I actually took a screenshot of our conversation like you and me talking right now. Okay.

And because I have like

especially since the pandemic and like everything that happened was through a freaking Zoom call.

So I have this like folder full of images that I can look through and go, "Oh yeah, that was that conversation with some people I know in Vermont or whatever." You know,

I have that as like a visual diary.

So I still do that.

So Did you only camp with the human car wash that one time?

Yeah, because like the next I guess the next year and the next year after that, so 2007 and 8 I ah I started meeting the Thunderdome kids.

Oh, really?

I met some of the Thunderdome people via Cupid.

No, I did not. Um I sort of just camped solo.

Uhhuh.

I didn't I didn't know what I was supposed to do.

I didn't Yeah. I didn't I didn't want or care seemed to care for the trappings of of big camp or whatever. So, I just sort of squatted, let's say. I don't I don't know. What do they call it? Solo camping. This free camping.

Yeah. Open camping. Yeah.

Next year supposed to do really. I mean, like everybody has their own kind of path and journey.

I know. But it feels like so much now in this kind of like like late Burning Man era when Burning Man stops. Who knows? Um, but it feels like no one would even consider going to Burn Man for the first time without joining up with the camp. Like if I hear advice and whatnot.

Yeah. Especially if you like you see like on social media and stuff nowadays, you know, it's just like it's all these people especially in the certain times of year like in like July, June, July, people they just posting these like pictures like, "Hey, look at me." You know, it's like I want I'm looking for a camp and I'm nice, you know, like hey there sparkly people. It's always the start the same way. And I'm like,

yeah,

it's almost like a dating app kind of thing.

It sound good, you know? I'm like,

but I don't know.

It's probably if I had it to do over again, I probably would have tried to do that more, but I was just so

That was a different year.

I know the the second year I came with a person from the Vulcan and we were going to like my my my housemate, my flatmate

um from the Vulcan. I don't know if you know about the Vulcan. It's this huge art

it's this huge art warehouse in Oakland that is like quasi legal. Um, yeah, that's always in this, it's been continuously habitated for like, I don't know, 40 or 50 or 60 years or something like that, but it's always under threat. It's one of those kind of places.

Oh, yeah.

So, I was sharing the place with three other people. It's like really big warehouse space. And I had like I was able to set up drums and like kombucha making, you know, vessels. And I was really into raw food at the time. So, I was like um dehydrating my own own food to bring to the play and give away as gifts.

Wow.

That was my 2007.

I'm just making notes because uh h I record like months in advance and so then like when I put out the the episode notes it's it's sometimes like like many months later I'm just like what what do we talk about?

Fair enough. Um, yeah. And a bunch of people in my warehouse were the type that would just kind of like pack up a vehicle and just be like, "Yo, get in. We're going to mutant fest,

you know." Um, and there was there's like there were a couple of units in that warehouse that were just for circus. I actually moved there so I could do trapeze because there was in the unit next to me, someone was teaching trapeze with like a trapeze actually hung in the warehouse and things. So, it was a

How long did you live at the Vulcan?

Three years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, you went with the So 2007 you went with a friend from Volcan. You just did like open camping and

Yeah. So what we did was we we went in Ren's vehicle and along the way we found um a billboard that had fallen off of its um fallen off its what do you call it? Frame or whatever. So this gigantic piece of plastic. And so we gathered up a couple of bits cuz we didn't neither of us had a plan about Burning Man. So we got to Burning Man and I think somewhere around like I forget it was like eight and F or something. like that. We set up a

teepee

with this. We made a giant teepee with this um billboard.

That's what I did in 2007.

Did Where'd you find the billboard? I mean, did you find like in the weeks and months lately leading up to Burning Man or was like your

No, it was literally on the way to Bernie.

Yeah.

Wow.

And found out in the midst of trying to camp in this silly thing that um vinyl is really uncomfortable to sleep inside at Burning Man

during the day like Yeah, like no ventilation vinyl structure that is like not particularly great. So what I ended up doing is like uh I I had my tent. We had had our tents like packed with us.

We just decided to do this experimental thing because hey Burning Man, right?

Okay.

Um so we have this tepee as our like you know camp structure, right? And then we camp next to it. So

Oh, okay. Okay.

And still no no shade structure. No kitchen, no nothing. Just

Yeah.

Just doing it rough and sometimes just like passing out in the middle of the day and other in the big camps on

Yeah, that's I don't know the kids nowadays it's like they don't know how good they have it but yeah I mean for many years like years I mean I think like the my first year my brother and I our camp was essentially just like his Volkswagen GTI with a tarp off of it and we had had like those little like low-rise like beach chairs

like hanging out under this tarp and then we just had like one little dome tent that we just kind of squeezed in and that was it.

Styrofoam coolers like in the trunk and then like the second year we're like we're going to bring a truck. We're like yeah and we made this campus setup and everything

and then

yeah but then for it was weird because like went for like many many years and we never put one thought into like oh yeah we should have like a kitchen Yeah.

And we should have like, you know, where the place where we sleep, you know.

Yeah. Communal shade structure. What's that

structure?

Um, oh, I remember it's called Poly Poly Paradise. That was the name of the place that had the human car wash. Poly Paradise.

Oh, Poly Paradise. Okay. Yeah.

I knew it would just pop into my head.

Uhhuh.

But that was just for that one year, right? 2006.

Correct.

So then You said you went to Thunder Death Guild Thunderdome and then you met up met

I didn't camp. I never camped there. I'm just trying to piece together like why did I come back? What what made it

Yeah. Why?

How did I find my way through all this? Um there was a year where I was um so I'm I'm I'm a singer and I was thinking, "Oh, Thunderdome." And the next year I came back I wanted to do something and I found a guy with a karaoke cart and I asked him if he had um We Don't Need Another Hero by Tina Turner and he had

and so I like we carted our way over to the Thunderdome and I was singing We Don't Need Another Hero

and they're like over

it was fantastic. They were like you should come back at a specific time and I came back later and on my on route to going back later I stopped by Oh, right. Okay. So this is 2008 that the this all happens. It's starting to like flood back into my head.

8.

Um, yeah. And so they I think it's like 7 or 8 p.m. or something like that that Marissa, who runs Thunderdome, is like, "You need you need to come back."

U Marissa's a turns out to be a friend of my father, by the way, from the opera.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Just, you know, one of those random things.

Um,

yeah. No, she actually was um episode 2

eight 27. Yeah, she was just on just on the show. Well,

she's super cool.

Oh, yeah. She's awesome.

So, she's the one who tells me to come back a certain time. Um, and I don't remember what day it is, but I think it's it's getting on to I don't know, like 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. or something like that. Sun is low in the sky and I'm leaving my tent to go do this thing and I don't I just look like I don't know, just like a plyified human being. But I stop. Oh, there's a white out. This white out happens on route to the thing and I duck into a place that looks like a gypsy caravan, like one of like a stereotypical kind of gypsy caravan kind of place. Just like take shelter from what's going on.

Mhm.

And the this woman is like, "You seem like you're on your way to something." And I'm like, "Yeah." And I tell her what I'm about to do. And she's like, "Oh, we can make you look better than that." And she like takes out a wig and puts puts this like Well, actually, what is it? It's not quite a wig, but it's like um a big old tangle of cassette of magnetic cassette tape that we can make look like a wig. Okay. Uh and she puts that on my head. She's like, "Yeah, yeah, I think we can do something here."

Wow.

And then like, you know, adds like another costume piece or something like that. So, I walk out of there, like the white out starts to recede like just on time, right? And I'm actually not so far from from the Thunderdome and I'm like striding through and I've got this like long flowing mane of magnetic tape coming off my head. Um And I feel very Mad Maxi at that point. And I kind of stride up there. The karaoke guy's in place. And it turns out they're trying. They're like opening the battles for today. And they like have me walk in there. Somebody videotaped this. I still have it. It's a terrible phone recording from 2008.

But um I I got to I got to open Thunderdome Proceedings one night by singing We Don't Need Another Hero Dressed Insane. Um

Wow.

Yeah. That's awesome. So that was So that was 2008. That was I don't I don't even remember what else happened that year. That was the thing that happened that year.

Wow. That was 2008. So have you been going like all these years?

No. Um I left the Vulcan because I got pregnant and moved in with the father of my childh

and that was two 2010. Yeah, that was all of 2010. So my my son was born in 2010. Okay.

Uh and um simultaneously in 2009 to 20 2010 I started actually finding community in a way that I hadn't really found before. I mean I was fairly new to the Bay Area but also I was new to the concept of like finding your people and actually like um go like having a clubhouse I guess and

you know we all take you we all take out the trash together and those sorts of like community activities. So the thing that happened to me is that I found Noisebridge which is a hacker space in the mission and that was in 2009 and uh I also joined up with um Pirate Cat Radio. That was it was also 2009. A lot happened that year.

Um

Pirate Cat Radio.

Mhm. Pirate Radio was a pirate radio station operating on 87.9 FM at that time operated by the guy named Monkey out of Los Angeles.

Uh he was and still is, I suppose, somewhat legendary. Uh I think he is now f***** off to Berlin. Uh but anyway, he uh he kind of had this sort of I don't know cult of cult of pirate cat around him. Um I don't know how much we want to go into it, but that was like I was part of something, you know, I found the concept of being part of something. And so for a few years in a row, Especially while I was raising my young son and things like that, I I really I grew this attachment to Noisebridge and to like pirate radio and, you know, being a homegrown San Franciscan by that point, you know.

Okay. And is uh Noisebridge and and Pirate Cat Radio are is any like affiliation with Burning Man or is it just kind of similar?

No, I'm kind of There's there's crossover, you know, there's people who from from Noisebridge go to Burning Man.

There's um you know, it's just in that sort of like endless continuum of like artists, freaks, hackers, and makers, and

um you know, the sorts of people who aren't content to just go to a bar and have a job and try to just do the normal stuff in life.

Yeah. Yeah. Work hard, play hard. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so yeah, no, I mentioned that because you're like, well, did you keep on going to Burning Man? I'm like, well, I I sort of started growing growing in my connection to this other stuff.

Mhm.

Um, and then I went back in 2014 or 15. 2015, I think that feels right.

Okay.

Um, and the reason I did is because I became partnered with a guy uh who was accustomed to going Birdie Man and who was accustomed to going also to Firefly over

Is it in Vermont? I know it's a thing regional, but it's in Vermont. Yeah.

Is it? Okay. I've never been obviously.

Yeah. Me neither. Yeah.

Um Yeah. Looks cool.

Yeah.

So my my partner was way in Safire Spinning at the time. Um like Burning Man was, you know, he had much more of that sense of like, oh, you know, we'll go with a camp. We'll um And by then it made more sense to me.

Mhm.

Yeah. Like why why would you want to like, you know, connect up with a group of people even if you don't necessarily know all the people in that group? I don't I'm I'm a late bloomer. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you.

But you're adventurous.

Yeah. So what did he like go to Burning Man first and then went to Firefly or did he come from Firefly and then went to Burning Man?

No. I don't know. Um,

was he from

No, he's not. So, I'm not I'm not still with him. We were together for seven years.

Uh, so we got together I think in 2014,

something like that. Um, yeah, there's he may have told me at some point. I just don't remember that particular

detail.

Yeah. No, I'm just curious. No, because I I spent a lot of time in Vermont. That's where I went to college and met my my wife and

my hopefully like My my son, it's funny because you said your son's born in 2010. My son was born in 2008, you know, so he's

actually supposed to be finishing up his college applications this week, you know, but uh

nice.

Yeah, time flies. Time flies. Yeah.

Um

yeah, so 2015 you went back to Black Rock and

did you part as a camp or did you do the open camping thing again?

No. No, no more open camp. Open camping from from that point onwards because by because at that point I had access to the the Boston network, the Boston tribe that imports itself almost as a continuous stream out of Boston over to San Francisco. Um a lot of the people who cut their teeth on Firefly actually um I think he went to Burning sorry he went to Firefly before Burning Man. I think that's the answer to your question.

Okay.

Um a so a lot of these kids are um you know if not MIT like MI adjacent schools and they

um they get get real into making some kind of tech art or things like that. Um they might get into fire spinning. They you know they might have a connection with some like small industrial community over there. Um and they get siphoned almost like we used to joke about it. Um there's like this siphon that like brings them over to SF and they all move together in this clump and they get houses together and so the Boston community stays fairly strong around here in SF. So when I got together with this particular partner of mine, I had access to this like extended network of former Bostononians.

Um and then we all went together as a crew as bring a pheromone. That was 20 2015 I think. Yeah.

Bring a pheromone camp is a small camp of former Boston mostly who um the thetick is that we're going to smell your armpits so that we can tell. Well, and we're going to give you like a like an armpit smelling taste profile, you know, like a wine smelling

like a wine tasting kind of profile. It got like things like musky, spicy, you know. Um they built um they built this like special contraption where like you hold your arm out like this, so you're behind this wall. You put your arm through a hole. So there's kind of like a armpit smelling g********* thing. going on and so people can come along and like smell and rate armpits and then just be on their merry way. So then you get this like stack of papers to describe, you know, cuz you don't want to pollute the the findings with how you look,

right? You want a very pure characterization of your armpit smell. So that was can't bring a pheromone.

Wow. It's like kind of like an armpit somalier, right? Like

Yes.

like notes. Yeah.

And then we had armpit based dating games. at certain times of the day.

Yeah. Just like

because you

just the smell. What are you talking about?

There's like three armpits. Which one do you prefer, you know, but it's like it's like a blind date. We're going to pair you with somebody and you have to go on that this date with the person whose smell you liked the most.

So, the three candidates are behind like a wall and there's like a hole and then the person would have to go and smell

Yep.

one.

Wow.

And of course, it's, you know, the middle of the day at Burning Man, so everyone's making quite a bit of, you know, product temple.

Oh, that's actually pretty funny.

It was good. It was popular camp. We got placed, I think, at like 8 and D for like three years in a row. It was a good spot. There was pancakes near us. We were pretty small. It was a good time.

Oh. Well, hopefully they had some good uh New England for maple syrup if they had pancakes. Boston kind of, you know, fake stuff.

Uh probably fake stuff. Yep. It's funny what I remember. I remember being next to Scarbox or really close to Scarbox. Scarbox is the dance dance dance camp. Am I Maybe I'm getting that wrong.

I think it was Starbucks. I still have their sticker on something that I own.

Um, it looks like the Starbucks logo except, you know, slightly modified. And they normally had like daylight dance parties as I recall. Who knows? I don't know if they're still

they're still doing those, but that's what we got placed next to like two or three years in a row.

Okay.

Yeah, this is definitely the era like I I missed Let's see. I think my I last was on the play in 2011 and then I went back in 2014, right? Yeah.

So, it was a good 13-year gap,

but nothing of consequence. happened in that time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. And then the last year that I went was 2018. And actually that year we didn't go with Bring a Pheromone. We went with um um were they calling themselves Maderel by that point? I can't remember. A group of artists also from from Boston that do very large um often like high grant receiving um metal fire like on fire type of art like a lot of welding, a lot of um you know midplay plyia placement type of fire art.

Kind of like flaming lotus girls or iron monkeys kind of

in that vein. Yeah. Like one of them was Scriptorum. I think Scriptorum they were doing that the year I was there or sorry the year we were camped with them which was 2018.

And are they Boston based or

Yes. No, they're well they're here based a lot of them are from that area. or uh some of them are actually from Oregon now that I think about it

cuz I think Boston isn't that I think it's one of the places where they they like they send some containers out right and so it's like a bunch of people so that like when you said that there's just like a

there's like a pipeline

like yeah pipeline at first I was imagining it's like oh yeah it's a container and they're all just like funneled here you know but it's like I didn't realize it's like they actually move out here and stay together like as a group almost number of people I met at Burning Man who then ended up living in the Bay Area via Burning Man from Boston is like way out of proportion. Um there's an artist named Rich DDT for example, Boston guy. Met him at Burning Man in I don't know 20 16 or 17 or something like that

and he moved from like he he went to Burning Man and then just from there decided to move to San Francisco and like never went back.

Um and that's not the only time I've met somebody who who had done that cuz

kind of common story that Yeah.

Yeah. Because I think that a lot of these people know so many people already who've landed here by the same route. It's like well I'm not starting over. It makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's funny because like years ago almost everybody who went to Bernie man was came from San Francisco or like Reno or you know just it's kind of like local area and then as time went by like more people from you know now We got to the playa. I mean I mean it's amazing. You hear just like all these different languages these people from like all over the world and

that's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what people ask me. It's like how is Burning Man changed? I'm just like it's like I mean it's not you know a I'm dating myself but it's not a Beniton ad, you know. It's not like you know

I know what you're talking about.

But uh yeah I mean it's it's it's amazing. You just meet people from like everywhere and just all kinds of languages and all sorts of influences. I mean,

that's cool.

I mean, back then it's like you would have a bunch of essentially like white people from San Francisco who would like dress up in like, you know, sars and like whatever cuz like I think they wanted to have like some more culture, you know, it's not more than just,

you know, mayonnaise.

No, the funny thing is

actually really is

so side sideline from the Burning Man topic into a topic that I that I, you know, love and enjoy, which is like, you know, there's a lot of people who identify with their Irish ancestry or Italian ancestry or whatever.

And there's so much they could people can draw from.

Oh, yeah.

Like, ah, I just wish I had something like every all these other cultures feel so like,

you know, feel so much more interesting or so much more spiritual or whatever. And it's like, just look at your own ancestors. They were probably doing something that you might respect.

Well, what do these people culture is? They're just like, well, I'm just an American

quote just an American. Well, it's difficult, isn't it? It's uh when you say American culture, it's really difficult to know.

I mean, if you look at the news, everyone's like America means, you know, red, white, blue, and corn dogs and corn.

We do enough of that at Bernie, man. We did. There's, you know, there's certainly that we've got that represented.

Oh, yeah.

But we're also a nation of immigrants.

So, Tell me your story. So you said you're Irish. I remember

because you just recently went to Ireland. Was it your grandmother? Like tell me like her story.

Um okay. So my grandmother uh was born in Crla in uh north the northwest part of Ireland in um Donigal.

Um

the what should I'm trying to figure out what's the size of of story to tell you here. Um a couple of about a month ago is when I went to Ireland. Um, and the reason why I was going there is to give a little opening speech for the dedication of a data center in Lechre County.

Um, Lech County is like a small town in the middle of Donagal. Um, and uh, so letter there's a letter Kenny data center like a what is it? Atlantic univers Atlantic Technical University. Uh, and the reason they're dedicating a data center to her is because in World War II, my grandmother was a mathematician. She gradu she had just graduated and they were looking for uh women to help calculate ballistic tables

for World War II. This was sever several years before the end of the war. She got recruited into this spot because able-bodied men, including, you know, men who'd gotten a degree in something fancy, also had to go to the front lines or do something a little bit more physical.

So, they opened that up to women. They're like, "Ah, let's give them a shot." And um the The crazier thing was was that at the time um I don't know if you know anything about the history of computing but there were several different efforts going on around the world. One of them being in Philadelphia which is where my grandmother was um to build the first uh electronic computer that was able to calculate things um without human intervention or at least without um a human sitting there manually calculating the thing. I mean it turned out that you needed a lot of manual intervention uh so much so that ended up recruiting those ladies that they had hired their their their job title was computer by the way. Uh that so my grandmother literally was her job was computer. She was a computer in World War II. They hired her era of like the punch cards and like

we're not there yet.

Oh before that. Wow.

Oh well before that. We're we're talking in a in a time when pro the word programming had no no real meaning.

Like so a person was a computer. So they were trying to build an electronic computer to replace human computers, right?

So in Philadelphia um the guy who had become my grandfather, he and a partner uh started working on a prototype in the Moors school attached to University of Pennsylvania. Uh and meanwhile these ladies were basically they were pulled aside for a special super secret. They weren't allowed to talk about it to anything anybody type of project. Uh and they handed them hiring diagrams of this thing. They weren't allowed to meet the inventors. They weren't allowed to know what it was. They they were like, "This thing calculates numbers, figure out how it does that."

Uh, yep. And so they, it was the job of these six women um which now you can read about in multiple books. The best one is called um Proving Ground

by Kathy Klyman. It's one I would most recommend. But um these six women had to basically figure out how to program the first electronic computer. um without looking at it ever. Well, they got to look at it later, but they had to work it out just from wiring diagrams. Yeah.

How do you spell Kathy Kleman?

Uh Kathy with a K and then Clayman is K L E I M. I have it on my shelf somewhere, but I think that's right.

Yeah. I mean, wasn't there I don't think I saw this movie, but there was a movie a couple years ago was a hidden figures. Yep.

Is that uh similar sort of

about

it's a kind of a Yeah, there's a similar theme going on there of like rediscovering the history of of doing science in the world and being like, "Oh yeah, women were there, too."

And not wait a second, not only were women there, but they did something groundbreaking and then we just sort of like swept swept it under the rug because that's too embarrassing for the men's and their feelings, I guess. helps

like make these machines and do all the calculations and then like okay thank you very much and then they just kind of took it and ran with it.

It's so funny because my grandmother it was in the late 90s when things like um the like women in technology international and um the a bunch of other groups like the le e uh IBM came to visit my grandmother. I was actually living with her at the time um like a proper Irish Catholic family. I was I'm the oldest of five kids and it just got too busy. So I ended up like living with my grandmother who was just down the road and I remember them coming to interview her and they were like you what what made it so that you wanted to like major in mathematics like what what drove you to do that and she's like I don't know it just felt fun to solve puzzles and they're like how do we get more women and girls into STEM? And she's like I don't know like that's just something that I wanted to do at the time and people find that I remember people finding that like really unsatisfying, you know. Um, but she never thought that it was particularly out of sorts to not credit her.

Mhm.

Both both because of the culture and because of her feelings that she was just strange. Do you know what I'm saying?

Mhm.

Um, and so a lot of this just like didn't come out didn't come to light until after my grandfather had died in 1979.

So, how did they find her to become a com like in the beginning with I mean is that she was like, "Oh, well, she applied to school." Or was it just that like, "Oh, here's um I'm no I don't know what her name is, you know, but uh

K." Oh, K. Oh, yeah. You should talk to her. She loves puzzles, so she gets

No, no, no, no, no. So, sure. Her father, who by the way was an Irish revolutionary. He fought in the IRA, uh, 1918,

um, 1916 to 1919 or something like that. Went to jail, was imprisoned by the British, things like that. They had to, and they had to evacuate Ireland. because it just wasn't safe.

Mhm.

Um very, you know, with their like little family. Like my grandmother had just been born and he got arrested. Anyway, so my so my greatgrandfather encouraged her to study whatever she wanted. He was really big on just education in general.

Uhhuh.

Um and my grandmother was just real into math. And by the time she had finished her degree, like the war effort was on. There were job postings. And uh the job postings were just like, you know, we're hiring women. to do math and my my grandmother's like great I'm a woman who does math like it was just this weird like you know there she was and so it was so I think that's part of the thing like when I heard my grandmother talk about like how she found herself in these in this spot where she was doing something groundbreaking and she's just like I don't know I just love loved solving I took every math every math they had I took every single one and I just loved it I just loved solving the puzzles

but it was also an amazing just kind of like the just the the the the time and the place. I mean, she just happened to like if it was 10 years before or after or something, you know, it's like maybe she wouldn't have had that opportunity or

Exactly.

That's actually exactly what I ended up saying when I went to Letter Kenny a month ago.

Like their thing at Letter Kenny is they wanted to emphasize like we're doing we're we're creating a not just a data center but a maker space. We're encouraging people from all over the world to come here and play with our stuff. like it's not just like just for students in letter kitty. We want people to come here and experiment. And so I was like, "Aha, great." Because what's missing from the lives of so many people is just the opportunity to like mess with things, just like play around and like explore into your own capabilities. So my grandmother, what I said in that speech was my grandmother was certainly she was remarkable for just being a woman who was driven to learn math and certainly remarkable for being um a uh the the daughter of a man who just had a rebellious enough attitude that he's like, "Live your life. Learn math, child." Like, doesn't matter that you're a girl, right? Remarkable in that sense, but also not remarkable in the sense of like, you know, if we made opportunities for people on a more equal playing field, like it could maybe it could have been someone else in that spot. It was just a very strange bottleneck of a thing where my my grandmother was was able to do a thing that they weren't even allowing women to do like three years ago.

Oh yeah. I mean, just imagine if it was 20 years before that and if her father was like a priest.

Yeah.

Well, if he was a Catholic priest, he wouldn't be

Yeah. Wouldn't knowledge that. Yeah. Yeah.

But uh I don't know. He had be

technically he wouldn't be having children. We'll just leave it at that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that, but then it would just like the mom would be sent off to one of those schools for wayward girls or something.

Ah, yes. The the Magdaleneies.

Yes, that's what they Mhm.

Yep.

Wow. So, how long did your your grandmother live for? Like, was she around like when you were like going to Burning Man? Did you Did you ever think it's like you should she you should come out to

No, she died like a year the year I moved to to the San Francisco Bay area. She died in 2005.

Oh, okay.

So, it was like just prior to my I think even then she kind of just would have went like h that would have been that would have been kind of it.

Wow.

Yep.

So, um so where did you grow up?

I grew up in Philadelphia which is where

my grandmother's family landed when came over from Ireland.

So your grandmother was born in in Ireland and then they they they they fled to the states

pretty much because of the rebelliousness or whatever. Like when did they when did they come to the states?

What when

Yeah.

Uh there's it's on Wikipedia. Um James Menoli, Irish activist is the Wikipedia page for my great-grandfather. Um uh it would have been like 1918 or 1919.

Oh, okay. It's a long time ago.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, my dad's um mother and father came from Italy like I think it was like the 20s or something like that. I remember like seeing the Yeah. It was like the Ellis Island like paperwork and and stuff. And

Yeah.

Yeah. But my great-grandfather had connections already because he had already been coming to the United States to work as a stonemason. In fact, he worked for Grace Kelly's father.

Oh, wow.

Of all things. Yeah. So, he was a like family friend of the Kelly's.

Did he ever go back or did the family ever like

he went back and forth? Actually,

um I mean I'm I'm cutting the story short slightly to talk about the the family motivations for coming to America. I don't know what you know about Irish history and like the postrevolutionary years, but um you know how like there's Northern Ireland Yeah.

There. So that's not really what Ireland wanted. I don't know if you know

No, they wanted

Northern Ireland was created as a as a compromise

to to stop the war. And that compromise um the that treaty with Britain became a source of contention and created a civil war in in um in Ireland. Uh and so it's very easy to you know if you if you talk to somebody in Ireland about the history of their family and you'll say something like, "Oh, yeah, my grandfather was uh sorry, my great-grandfather was anti-treaty." And people go, "Oh, okay." Because it became very uncomfortable to to still want to fight for the the the fate of the rest of the counties of of Ireland um post treaty because what that really meant was just more internine violence seemingly endless.

Yeah. So, it was not I mean my grand my great-grandfather was put in jail in Derry When he came out, the treaty had not yet been signed. I think I might be mixing up the history of things, but he came out, there was relative peace. Something good was about to happen. And then the treaty came and he thought that was a disaster and he got disillusioned and he's like, uh, oh well,

decided to take his family to America and find his fortunes here or

Well, the the decision, as I mentioned earlier, the decision was is based on there's there's just a it's really you know what it's this is really hard to pick apart. It was the combination of not feeling safe and then the disillusionment. Let's just

I feel like we're going

Sure. Sure. Sure.

It's like two

but it's just interesting backtory for you. But so you grew up in Philadelphia and then uh moved out to San Francisco 2005 then hit the PLA 2006 and all these years. Uh so you said the last time you went to Burning Man was what 28 18.

Yeah, it was my last year there. Um because overlapping for me in this time where I'm going back to Bernie man is I'm also discovering uh street theater and immersive theater.

Okay.

So, I don't know if you've heard of the like sort of immersive theater movements that have come out. So, the the touchstone points that people most people know about would be like Sleep No More in New York City.

H

um no. Okay. And then the other one is Meow Wolf. Maybe you've heard of Meow Wolf.

Oh, Meowolf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um I don't know if they would call themselves exactly like immersive theater, but it's like immersive world or something. I don't know what they call themselves, but um these movements are all coming out like kind of simultaneously. There's also this um uh growing scene in the early 2010s of alternate reality games, I guess. call them of like you see a you see a flyer around San Francisco and it says something completely weird and it has a number on it. You call up the number and it's like oh this a live line. No, it's not just a joke flyer. There's like something really there. Um so that's the start of a couple things called like uh the Jun Institute.

Oh, I've heard of that.

It's happening around that time.

Maybe slightly earlier. I think we're actually 2008 it kind of starts happening but that evolves into something called the the Latitude Society. It's a lot of those same people. Latitude Society is like a more secret society that unfortunately had a very ended up being very culty. People have written very like Lydia Lawrenson has written a lot about what happened with the Latitude Society. It's an interesting uh touch point in the history of all this stuff. Um and then I start wanting to get involved with my partner at the time who is just he's he and we together we have an alchemy. Uh we start going to is dressed as like um uh like with like plague doctor masks on holding gigantic lanterns and not saying anything.

Uh like we showed up at a sex party like that one time and that was really fun. Hey, just like hanging there in the corner of the room. It was great.

Awesome.

So we start doing that kind of crap and then we started doing that a little bit at Burning Man, but then we got more and more involved these like somewhat small but like certainly growing over time secret like um semi-sec in network invitation only type of type of events um which um they are one of their rules is that you don't talk about them on so social media like you don't you don't share their like photos on anything whatever

um and so we did that and like submitted art projects and did grants and things like that for that group of people for like 10 straight years.

Oh wow.

Um and they took a lot of Oh yeah. very much growing strong. Oh yeah. Um I and I would say a lot of the inspiration for those parties comes out of Burning Man. It comes out of that psychedelic scene. Give me a second.

Yeah, sure. Sure. Take your time. Yeah. Well, while you're having a sip of water, I I just I think was it uh caveat magesters book you know was it the the

turn your life into art or the cities.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I remember he was descri the

Yes. Yeah. He would have mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Latitude society. I was just like wow wait a minute like I've heard of this like where did I hear about this from before?

Yep. Yeah. We're talking about that whole scene. So very much out of the cacophony society merry pranksters

which itself arises from um the surrealists and situationists.

Mhm.

Right. There's like that sort of art lineage.

Yeah. Is cacophony like still active in San Francisco or

I would say yeah.

Yeah.

Um only because like I can name you and I I'm not going to do it in a recorded format, but I can name you several people who are still involved with things

like creating underground events.

Yeah.

I have to stop there unfortunately.

Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. That But yeah, they're, you know, those people are still around and they're still there's new people coming into the scene who have like just moved here or just discovered this kind of stuff, range of ages who um I I think that's one of the most inspiring things I think about the about the this interplay between things that are either Burning Man or Burning Man adjacent and things that are much more small scale. I wouldn't even say they're festival. They're more like

secret underground,

you know, happenings. Yes, that's a really good word.

Underground happenings. And this range in between those things. And it's a wide range of ages and different backgrounds. I mean, certainly artists,

certainly disillusioned Silicon Valley tech people. Um, but also like writers like Caveat and um people from traditional theater, people who've done belly dancing for all their lives. Just

Yeah. Still a very very vibrant art scene here even if it doesn't totally always look like it on the face of it.

Yeah. Yeah. I I lived in San Francisco like 94 to 2001. I remember like we did a number of events things like there happenings like that. Like what or one of them was um it's like a treasure hunt kind of thing. And so you like

you show up at like a warehouse and then there there's all these crazy rules. you know, and and you get like certain amount of like points for doing all these different things. I think it was like it was my birthday, so like you know, my then girlfriend, now wife, you know, was just like, "Let's do this thing with a couple other friends." So, it's like you had to have like a designated driver, a designated drunk. Uh

yeah,

I was This was my birthday. I was a designated drunk. And then it's like, yeah, I had to be handcuffed to somebody the entire time. And then it's like there's a number of bars that you could go to and then if you get like a drink at each one like that's a point for and then there's like all of these different places like um Palace of Fine Arts like you would

have to do a scene from like Rocky Horror Picture Show or something

and then uh yeah and then it's like at the end of the day it's like I mean they have this big laundry list of like all these different places and all these crazy things and then um at the end of the day it's like you have to go to like Treasure Island and then you look at the back of the sign and then from there it takes you to like this place in Oakland from there and like and then eventually you wind up at some like warehouse in like Oakland or Alamita or something like that. And I just remember like we we we'd spent the whole day and I was like really drunk cuz I'd been going to all these bars. I was a designated drunk. I was like I've done my job, you know, like and I remember they were just like the very first place that we went this place called the house of O and we were just like I don't know whatever the house of O but like it was the house of like orgas like so I mean the whole thing was like there was this one woman who and she was like well

um

like out of the four of you could have either one or all four of you whatever but like like you bring yourself to orgasm and I I will rate you like out of like one to 10 or whatever you know and um we were the first ones there and I remember like she was like just like dropping acid like right as we were like like halfway and so and my my two friends were like me and my girlfriend were like I don't know but like our two friends were like yeah no we'll do it and so they went to like a room and then you know came out 10 minutes later and she was just like wow okay you know like and so she gave us like a 10 and we're just like okay awesome and then I remember she like she goes and she drops acid and we're just like woohoo this game's easy you know so then smash cut to the end of the day where it's like we we go there and we're submitting it and they were just like wait a minute this isn't real this isn't right and we were just like no Oh, they're like, "You cheated." We're like, "No, what do you No, these are these are legitimate." Every place we went and they were like, "No, no, no. This one, House of O, you got a 10. No way. No way. There's no way you guys got a 10."

We're like,

"Is this an act?" Like, now I'm suspecting like, "Did they give everyone a 10 and then question?"

Apparently, we were the first ones there. And like right when we got there, she dropped acid. So, every single person that came after that,

I think, yeah, she was just so high, you know, she was just like Yeah, whatever. I'll give you a one. Like cuz they were just like she was like, "Oh, you know, she she only gave like ones and twos to people." It's like she never get like a 10. That's impossible. That's utterly impossible. It's like It was funny cuz I think we would have actually won the competition. Like we're like no. Like

you set the standard.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, friends, me really, but Wow. Okay. So, yeah. So, What's it all mean to you? This whole Burning Man thing like how has this impacted your life? I mean, if you Well, I'm not going to say if you hadn't gone, but because you had did go like how is it impacted or influenced your life?

It's really I mean, it's interesting because it um it is such a fixture in my consciousness even when I'm not going.

It is uh it is one of those um especially living in San Francisco, one of those guideposts by which you either uh agree with something or want to avoid something.

In a lot of ways, there's there's like an aesthetic uh watermark that is like, "Ah, that's that sounds like Burning Man." And you either want more of that or you don't want more of that. But like there's never not a comparison to Burning Man um in people's minds when they when they encounter um outsider art in particular.

Um and since um since a lot of what I do as an artist is mostly outsider art. Um like strange fringy kind of stuff like like uh for a couple years I had a tentacle poped character.

Oh wow.

Um I I I made a pope hat that with like tentacles on it and like covered myself in tentacles and um

and uh I made a whole character out of it. It was actually inspired by reading the book of the subg genius again from like Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I I still have like this really beat up copy of it and so and I was still finding my way. I hadn't taken any improv classes at that point and I was like I you know I know that I can make myself like look weird and I know that I can like show up and fully embody this thing but I'm like not good at coming up with things to say on the spot necessarily. So basically I like covered this book in um like the book of the subg genius in like this ornateness that looked like a gigantic like um you know very rich ualistic space bible and then I would read like walk into a room in one of these like underground art party type settings. Um I had two minions with me. They would like lay down a carpet like that looked like money just like it's like this it like this flappy cart that looked like bits of money. Okay. Especially if people are really really high.

And then like lay down and start like flogging themselves. And then I would just open the book and read from the book of subg genius. Close it up like and then like walk out of the room without saying anything. So people thought it was great.

What kind are you talking about? Like I mean these just like what kind of parties are are happening?

Oh, it's like what I was saying earlier about like immersive art that um bears some um lineage out of like combination of like psychedelic scene. Okay.

Cacophony Society, Burning Man for sure. This is my answer to like where does Burning Man like always bringing me a mean to you. It's like it's kind of suffused in this culture where I live.

Um and uh that sense of um the embrace of serendipity, I would say,

which is something that I found very comfortable when I went there for the first time.

Mhm.

Like I've always found serendipity to be one of the most easy and free ways of living my life, which is why I go around like with almost no fear. Like I went to I went to Ireland a couple like a month ago with a loose plan, but I took it day by day. I didn't know where I was going to sleep. I had a blast. There was like not an empty moment in my in my 10 days there. Um I climbed a mountain, all sorts of things. Um but I that was the first thing that struck me about Burning Man is how my intuition carried me

uh in this strange like you know non normalish place where I started to feel more normal like cuz there are so many other people who are who are embracing serendipity who are embracing their intuitive more intuitive selves at Burning Man.

Was this not like a a prominent part of your life before that?

Yeah. I'm not selling you. I'm not saying that that's how Burning Man changed my life per se.

No, I was just saying like before you even moved to San Francisco like in Philadelphia. It's like did was it serendipity like it was Right. I mean,

yeah. I didn't know that that was something that was different about me.

Uhhuh.

So, um, well, no, that's not true. So, I I think I've always known that I don't quite fit into the normal expectations that most people live their lives by

and have never wanted to embrace any of them. But that's about as far as I got in my understanding of my relationship to the world into my mid20s.

Going into Burning Man kind of showed me like, oh, like actually there are places and settings and those are important to like helping sides of people come out.

Yeah.

Right. Um in a way that like when you notice that you are more comfortable in a place that you didn't expect to be comfortable, it helps you learn something about yourself.

Oh yeah. I mean it's expressly a a place where you get free to express you like however you are. I mean it's it's you know, it's a home for freak like,

right?

Yeah. You be accepted. It's just like, wow, you know, I didn't realize it could be like this, you know,

right? And then on top of that, just like I've always been a novelty seeker, like I'm I am stimulated by newness in general. So, the ability to just walk all over the place, that's why I like was not lonely or sad or bored at Burning Man my first year, even though I was like basically just traversing the thing completely. alone.

Mhm.

Um cuz there was just so much to absorb and so many different things to know, so many new patterns to get and things like that. I didn't take drugs for the first two to three years that I was there.

Yeah.

One of the places I always tell people that like you can be completely sober and you will feel like you're tripping, you know? It's like really I mean this year went went back with my brother and

uh We spent a lot of years drinking and doing drugs and and this is like the first year we went back. It was just completely 100% well 98% sober, you know. And what an amazing time we had. What an amazing like difference it was. Yeah.

It was really only the mid2010s for me with that new partner of mine who was kind of like helping me explore into different things that I'd never really had access to before or like we really got into the psychedelic aspect like

today's mushroom day, today is LSD, you know what I mean? And like really really going hard on it.

That was that was really really interesting. And then that, you know, that taught me the lessons that I needed to learn from those experiences and I feel like I absorbed that. I don't need that as much now.

Exactly. You know, I can't remember who it was, but a friend of mine, I don't know, this quote always stays with me trying to remember. It's a repeated revelation ceases to satisfy.

Yep.

You know,

no. And that's that's ultimately like why when I think about Burning Man, I don't feel as drawn, you know, like I'm going to need a little bit more to like pull me back to the next one if I

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Cuz right now there's there's several things that are going on with like underground art scene, right? Like, you know, right in my own backyard, more or less, that are like really interesting and compelling. I think the my my draw as I realized from the like improv things that I wanted to do, those sort of like weird weird art interludes that I keep referring to where I just kind of want to drop in and just,

you know, do something either sight specific or disruptive.

Yeah. Yeah.

With myself and maybe a small crew. Those don't quite work as well as at Burning Man. And we found that out by by experience. I'll just the the type of things I this is really hard to like because I can't I can't give you like cogent points, right? So maybe I'll just say the the style of thing that I and my partner my my former partner wanted to do didn't feel as possible in Burning Man in an environment where there's just so much going on that you're constantly having to fight for prominence.

Oh, I see.

Even when people want to engage, there's going to be somebody pulling them out of it. at some point or someone or something pulling them out of it before you feel like you've really completed the encounter. And that's why smaller settings have felt more artistically satisfying for that type of

art

in a strange way. Too much cacophony at Burning Man, you know, like there's just too much too much, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can we can call it too much cacophony.

Yeah.

It's funny cuz like

strange way of putting after you go for some amount of time, I think you also start to see the patterns of that kacophony.

Mhm.

Like, oh, here come the 100,000 LED art cars, right? And then you know, you know how that's going to change the scene. You know what you're what affordances are given by these wall of LEDs and you're like, "Ah, well, there are certain things I can do here and certain things I can't." Other people are going to make that same calculation and the people people will

self- sort.

You get you get the same patterns over and over again. Well, I mean, if you did go back, I mean, what I don't know. I could see you doing more like something just like a installation or something like the like one thing that uh my brother and I found. We like walked out to Deep Play it and it was like this simple like little dome kind of tent thing and there was this table and had like uh like eight place settings and there's like eight chairs and there was like six people sitting there and we just came and sat down and everything was kind of like glued to the table, you know, but

it was just like uh it's just impromptu just kind of like oh at like dinner party or whatever and people we just kind of sat down and we just kind of just started talking to each other you know like I mean yeah

I mean maybe not going out into the crowd of people and doing like your thing but like having like your own thing kind of out and

Oh to totally um yeah no I will say that deep playa experiences are the best experiences as far as I'm concerned I've always treasured like in my my memory banks when I'm like oh what were like the top experience is for me it always comes down to it's like 1:00 a.m. I'm you know I'm at this like really nice part of my trip if I've decided to do that

right cuz I've probably dropped at sunset or something like that and then and like so everything's like really super shiny and I'm like I'm warm even though it's cold outside and not wearing very much and I'm biking along and there's like some light on the horizon and I'm like oh speaking of light hang on a second

for the viewers the power just went out oh no the power's back on again No, no, no. Those are my plant lights. They're just on automatic timers.

Oh, okay.

I'm in my kitchen. Um, so there's some there's some light we're going to bike towards,

right? That like we're going to explore that thing. We don't know what's there. Like I never I don't ever want to look at a map. Like I don't want to know where is like, no. Exactly. Who does that? So,

you know, like bike out and like if you hit the trash fence, you go, "Haha, we made the trash fence." And then, you know, you might bike along the trash fence, look for the next light. Like those are my favorite. Well, serendipity, right? I mean,

and those are the places where you're going to find people who when they find that kind of that spot that enchants them, the circumstances of that site are such that people generally want to linger there a little bit more. It's a little bit quieter. They've put in a lot of physical effort to get there. They might be tired because it's just because it's the middle of the night. And it those circumstances lead people to feeling as though they've really found discovered something. something special.

Mhm.

Right. The people those other people are there at that particular point in time, right? It's not like you're on um uh Esplanade and you're surrounded by a huge crowd of people who came there for a specific DJ and you're like, well, okay.

Yeah.

But I mean, it's not that that's wrong like a bad experience or whatever. Like I've joined those crowds

different,

but there's that like sort of ritual or ceremonial aspect. to finding yourself in the like the the last movie theater at the end of the end of the earth or whatever. And it's not a movie you would have wanted to sit and see any other time in your life.

Three other people with you who made it there at that point in time and like now you're friends forever.

Oh yeah. Yeah. But go back to the serendipity thing. It's like it's not something you can recreate either. It was just like I'm going to come back tomorrow at 2:30 in the morning and then have the exact same experience. No, you have and then go Yeah.

Else, right?

Nope. It will never be the same moment in time again. And I love that.

Well,

but um I do find that at small festivals um even if they're more densely packed, like you know, small like a smaller surface area, a smaller area in general, like you can create those those sorts of like, oh wow, I really this is a very special moment in time that I can't recreate. Like I feel like those those moments can be architected

as an art form a little bit better.

Yeah. Have you been to any regional events?

Um, no. I'm just realizing I haven't.

I get invited to go with the crew of people that I used to make art with to um unscrews and I was like, "No, I actually never I've never been to one of those." Yeah.

Yeah. Um I'm actually making plans to because I the only regional events I think I've ever been to was the ones that we did because I'm the I started the Hawaii regional group like in 2002. I did that for like 10 years. The only ones I went to are the ones that I did.

But um I'm actually making plans to go to Unscrews this next year. I think it's what April 30th, May 4th.

Oh yeah, that sounds about right.

Like Yeah,

that time of the year.

Yeah, maybe you should come with us.

Yeah, maybe. Yep. I'd it. Um, yeah, I'm getting into a different phase in terms of my being a mom and also having a source of steady income that I didn't have a couple months ago where things feel a little bit more accessible because now my kid is 15.

Yeah.

Um, and it doesn't feel like like I remember 2015 through 2018 like we had to arrange for him to be taken care of and all that stuff and that was like and now I can just sort of say like yeah, you can just go stay with your dad and we'll see you see you on the other side also like a lot more independent too you know wants to you know go out and explore I mean you're in the city too I mean even my son when he was

there in San Francisco

last time there I think he was like 15 or no it was earlier this year I think he was like 17 or something but uh him and his cousin I think he was like 16 and they were just having the time of their lives just like we're going to take a bus and we're going to go down here and we're going to go gonna go to Amoeba Records and

oh my gosh

like yeah

my son is um he's a he's a he's a curious kind of guy like he has no problem doing that sort of thing like he's

he's got that sort of like yeah of course I can just take a bus across town but he doesn't want to feel like it

he'll do it to get from mom's house to dad's house and back again like he has to go all the way across town fortunately we we both live in

um but like kids these days man, they just want to sit online with their Discord friends and

Yeah. Yeah. Well, also I think it was because I mean I live like kind of like out in the country and Hawaii and so like you know being in the city to him was just like, "Wow, this is great. I get to take a bus and then go on a subway."

Oh, I see. I see. Okay. Yeah, that's different.

I mean, for many years, even just going in an elevator because like there's only I think the North here one elevator that goes one floor.

So, I'd be like, "Let's go to the big city and ride an elevator up. Oh yeah.

I mean, to be fair, I remember visiting my grandmother when she had her beach house in Florida and the the beach house had an elevator that was very very high in Palm Beach, Florida. And that was very much that was fun.

Those glass ones.

I remember.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Well, I think we're coming up on the hour 15. This has been a great interview. Um,

did you want to talk about the article at all?

Oh, yeah. Not that we have to. I'm just curious because that's the way we started talking in the first place.

Yeah. I'm trying to think. Uh, wait, what article was this again? Is this the

the one that I wrote on um Substack?

Oh, yeah.

A supposedly fun bureaucracy I'll never line up for again.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

it's okay if you don't if you don't actually. like uh remember like yeah it was I just remember you like you called out caveat magister as the was it Schroinger's spokesman

Schroinger's philosopher which yeah I

inside and on the outside like I love it's great

it's yeah so we don't we don't have to go into it if this is like not not a thing that you want to

whatever you want

um no just Yeah, I I don't know. Let's see. So, what do I want to say? Um, I think it's important to state that Caveat and I are actually really good friends. Like, we actually just had an event two weeks ago,

uh, where we were doing this, um, artist summit that we've been doing since 2017.

Yeah.

Um, and so it was actually Caveat who asked me to submit an article to Bernie man Journal in response to how he was perceiving the convers. around his articles about Burning Man bureaucracy.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And then I realized that there was a lot there were lots of deeper layers to kind of explore in this thing. And I checked I asked him if it was okay and he's like, "Oh, no. This is fantastic." So

hopefully it doesn't read as though I'm like really really calling him out, but it's more along the lines of like the position that he's in is actually quite regrettable for for him and he knows it.

Um the his philosopher and residence role which he was given by Larry Harvey was it like a decade ago.

Yeah.

To sort of carry the torch of like what does it mean to Burning Man, you know, like the 10 principles and how do those filt out into actionable actionable like pract practicable, you know, here's how we do this culture um what does this vision mean kind of thing. Uh was put in Benjamin's hands or Kaviet's hands um you know to to some degree there are other people involved in the philosophical center

astute man

um

so you know Kaviet still writes articles for the Burning Man journal and he's listed in his by line as the a founding member of the philosophical center

but he has no official role within Bernie man at this point

yeah

so so when he writes articles about how Bernie man should be or how the culture should be or what does this mean he's perceived as being both like like a puppet of the Burning Man or

Mhm.

but also Burning Man or doesn't really listen to him.

Yeah.

Like it's becoming a little bit tenuous where he's like having to fight for certain articles to be published.

So that's what I meant by that.

Or they're even really publishing his articles at this point.

Yeah, it's it's

not I mean I don't know. I but it's just my interpretation or understanding is that like I I don't think that it's that they don't want to publish his art. Like I'm just not sure he wants to even submit them to him. Like cuz what he told me was that like one of the one of his caveats were for taking on the role was that he would have a free voice to say whatever he wanted and they were like of course you know but then as years went by

that started to change and and then I think that's why he's kind of bowed out because he he that freedom he had to express himself or to at least the things that they were going to publish in their journal. Yeah. I think they were starting to be like, "No, we don't want this."

Yes. Yeah. And as I wrote in my article, as soon as the philos philosophical center is under editorial control of the marketing department,

have a problem.

Yeah.

So that's kind of where things I think are.

Why I got to say I really love your article.

I mean, no, because it's like it's your unvarnished opinion.

That's all I got, man.

Yeah. You know, but it's it's it's so rare, you know, nowadays. I I mean, especially like in in the Burning Man world, um for for many years like in the regional network, I I was very active and uh we have an email list called like the the regional list

and

I I was always like kind of a fixture there. I mean, like I said, like in 20 from 2012 to 20 or so, like I I basically just kind of was was off. I just kind of I just I just the whole Burning Man world I was just like I have to raise my son, you know, and I just completely left it behind.

That's it.

Yeah. But like ever when I came back, I mean like what was used to be this this place where the the regional list where people could feel free to express themselves and to say like whatever you mean like speaking truth to power like it doesn't matter. I mean that had changed.

Interesting.

Yeah. And so I was always like like like you like I was always one of those people who are just like I don't give a f***. You know, it's like I'm going to say what I think and people just like well that's you know that's rude or you know like

you know it's just like I don't like this. I was just like well those are the facts and and I try I I I try not to be like insulting you know, but at the same time, you know, it's just like I want to kind of like lay things out. It's like this is the reality like as I see it and it's kind of like the emperor is wearing no clothes.

You're inspiring me to go back and pick up a draft of an article that I need to write on my Substack. I put it on hold because I needed to get a job and I did, but you know, I had to go through interview processes to get that job and now I'm settling into that job. But the the article I need to write is actually about um

well, it's it's actually about Pandora. a goddess and how this story is misunderstood. Um, she's basically the scapegoat for all the world's evils. But what I want to write is that she's the original like pointer outer of suffering in the world.

Ah,

and she gets blamed for causing it.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I like that.

Uh, because it's ridiculous to say that there wasn't suffering before Pandora opened a box because by then we'd already changed uh Prometheus to a rock and ate his liver every day by an eagle. Like that's already happening.

So don't tell me suffering didn't exist. Okay, I don't need to rant right now.

He created that. We didn't have it before she came around.

Devil woman.

Devil stone her. All right. Well,

um All right.

Now we're Now we're long.

I think now we go. Okay. Well, thank you so much. This is uh been an awesome interview. I think this is actually going to be my 50th episode.

Nice.

Coming like March, I think. What the I don't know. All right. Well, thank you so much.

Cool.

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The more reviews the show has, the more likely it will even appear in search results. Also, please tell a friend and share this show with anyone that you think might like it. Word of mouth reaches quite far, especially in the Bernie man community. If you would like to contact us, please send an email to shadowofthemanpodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow Shadow of the Man on social media at Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and YouTube. The links for all of these are available at shadowoftheman.com. Feel free to use any of these social media accounts to provide any feedback you might have. Your thoughts on the show are greatly appreciate it. Thank you and see you soon for a new episode of The Shadow of the Man.

Thank you for listening to this latest show. We have to make another one, so got to go. Don't worry, we already have one in the can. Very soon, you'll be Listening to a new shadow of the man.