Non-Fictional Tales #3
A Full Moon on Solstice, the Flames of Summer, and reflections on the power of stories and drama.
A shot of the Full Moon at the Alberta Festival ‘Freezerburn’ - the local Burning man regional festival.
I’m behind on my writing.
Likely, this comes as no great surprise for those of you who follow me. Life is strange when you’re a “Theatre Carpenter / Art Lantern Technician / Project Management Consultant for Creatives & Entrepreneurs / Writer of Fantasy Fiction / Community Organizer.” I fear sometimes I overcommitted at life. So to all you serial over-comitters out there - I see you my brothers and sisters. Carry on with your unrealistic expectations of how much time you have to get stuff done.
🤷♂️ At least it’s interesting.
My brother Dylan had an ambitious lantern plan for Freezerburn this year, putting up the first official installation of the “Lostbuoys.net” Art Lantern system. Working with the Ocean Legacy Foundation to try to repurpose tens of thousands of Ocean Buoys that have been recovered during the OLF’s cleanup programs, Dylan came up with the rather ambitious plan to turn them all into hanging lanterns.
But these Buoys are built to last rather harsh conditions for long periods of time. So cutting them isn’t exactly straight forward. Add to that some weird issues with data transference down the cables for the programmable LEDs, and it came down to the wire for delivering these lights in time. I spent a bunch of time troubleshooting possible solutions for these things until we came up with one… mostly… acceptable outcome.
Panic-Art is something I’ve grown used to over the years, and I think it’s made me a lot more resilient with a “I trust that this will work out and no one will notice the flaws” attitude. Life imitates Art and vice versa and all that.
Or they’ll notice, but they won’t say anything. For the most part.
But it worked out, though because it was down to the wire we missed the early entry setup date for the artists and theme camp participants to setup the day before the event. So we spent the first day and a half of the festival trying to hammer through a rather full set up.
And of course, in the middle of setup, the ugly face of technical difficulties reared their head again, leading to some truly creative and inefficient use of cords and controllers to make sure everything worked.
And while they surely weren’t working right on Day 1, everything worked by Day 2.
I’m a little concerned I need to replace my phone after only 2 years. The upgrade in night-time quality shots of the newer iphones and androids is reallllly noticeable. And alas I am still only packing an Iphone 12.
You can help Robin provide you with better quality photos by becoming a paid subscriber today! 😉
I would show you my photos of the fire performers pre-burn of the man, but my distance and angle of the performance was -not great-. So instead, here’s a professional video of some of the highlights of that performance.
The Pyromystiques feature a fair bit in this video, and are a lovely team of people who do fire and LED prop performances in the Alberta Region. I know quite a few of them through the Flow-Arts and Contact Improv Dance community here, and think everyone should go find them on instagram and follow them if you haven’t already. Some of my favourite contact dance partners are a part of this troupe.
The annoyingly handsome man with two fire swords is my long time friend and sometimes client of IPPM Daniel Musashi, known as the “FloWarrior.” This event was pretty special for him - as it was the first time he performed with his new dual-fire-katana set that burns, sparkles, clamps together into one sword, or clamps together into a dual-fire-sword-staff. As fire props go, it’s… easily the most incredible performance tool *I’ve* ever seen and it’s pure magic to watch him work with it.
This 2022 demo reel of his is pretty fun to watch:
And then there was the burn itself.
Which took a *comically* long time for the fire wardens to get going, as there appeared to an ongoing string of technical difficulties that interfered with getting the burn started. Pretty sure it was firework/explosives related.
But I did really enjoy the exploding armpits. That was a nice touch.
And the flamethrowers criss crossing in the field while fireworks exploded over head made up for the ludicrously long wait.
And of course his groin.
Was an interesting take on the idea of “my genitals are burning.”
Or… “Burning discharge”?
And much like the setup, the man took too long to burn. I wish I’d gotten a photo of it, but by the time he collapsed I had long since stopped taking photos out of a desire to be present to the experience and annoyance at how long things were taking.
Lets just say the collapse itself was a pretty hilarious trick on us all.
You really felt how over-done the pyrotechniques were.
A pure act of love and overspending on explosives.
Another project I undertook came to a resolution over the month of may as well. My “Ergonomic Meditation Stool” for Vipassana retreats finally got through the finishing stage in time for the Meditation Retreat i went to in early May.
These are meant for sitting in “Seiza,” or the kneeling posture, and look very uncomfortable. But they’re NOT! I promise. They keep your body weight off the backs of your legs and I’ve personally found my capacity for long sit meditations to be dramatically improved sitting on one of these stools. Ergonomically designed to keep your back straighter, placing less demands on your core to keep yourself in good posture.
For sale!
Sliding scale of $150 to $210, whatever you think they’re worth to you.
If you’re interested in one, email me at robingeorge@substack.com and we’ll talk about how to get one to you. I have several of them, and bills to pay.
Though if you have knee or lower back impingements, this may not be a good stool for you. It *does* require you to have some lower body flexibility to be able to use comfortably. Not lots. But some.
But I’ve found it to easily and comfortably double the amount of time I can sit in meditation. Plus there is something to the act of having a “Spot” for meditating that helps with ensuring a regular and consistent practise.
I undertook this project on behalf of a friend, and you can check out his project at Rankus.ai (Also an occasional IPPM client). That’s a whole other subject, and I’ll probably talk about that another day.
I also made it out to Rhizome Springs for their Jam into Spring contact dance festival in mid may. Three days of festival like camping in a forest, shared meals and then dancing all day and night. Definitely was taxing on my increasingly middle-aged body, but a truly incredible experience.
Having been a part of an ‘intentional community’ for nearly two decades now, it’s really interesting to travel and see different communities and how they gather and celebrate together. Salt Spring Island has to be one of the ‘holy lands’ for the contact dance community, as there are so many incredibly talented and skilled teachers and dancers of the form there. I’m enormously lucky to have many friends from over the years who moved there, so it was also a reunion of sorts for people I haven’t seen in ages.
I had some of the most entertaining and educational dance experiences of my life that weekend, discovering both my “I want to be him when I grow up” dance-spiration, and my “Gosh I hope I find a woman like her to marry and dance with all the time one day” dance-spiration.
Weird thing for a man in his 40s to think, but life is strange and it is what it is.
If you’re curious what contact improvisational dance is, you can check out this youtube playlist I made.
Finally - a thought on stories.
Have you ever received feedback that is so deeply out of alignment with who you see yourself as, but you can see precisely how you got there?
What do you do with that?
As a storyteller, a man prone towards story-making and rumination in his own mind, and possessing a political science and philosophy degree - the nature of stories and their impact on our lives and communities is a concept that I have spent a -lot- of time pondering.
I read enormous amounts of fiction and fantasy in my youth, and then later on in my adult years during some truly horrible periods of my life. The power of fiction and fantasy to give us perspective on our lived experience and inspire us to face our demons and dragons is real. I would not be half as functional as I am if it weren’t for the lessons that I’ve been taught through the power of stories.
This fact is a big part of the reason why I continue to put time and effort towards this project, despite it being a very difficult, time consuming project, that pays me functionally nothing. Because storytelling is -significant- and it’s how we, as humans, make sense of the world around us.
Rationalists claim that it’s facts that guide them, but in the end, it’s always the stories they tell about the facts that actually affect their decisions. Better facts make for better stories, true, but in the end, it always comes down to the “meaning” you interpret into something once you have that data.
And it’s possible to get that meaning very, very wrong.
So what do you do, when another human being is telling a story about YOU that’s actually DANGEROUS to both of you? And in particular, another human being you care about?
I don’t actually know. I guess I’m about to find out.
Weeeeeeeeeee.
Anyhow. It’s a humbling experience, to be seen in such a light. Particularly as I had something like… 15 other people that same weekend offer me some truly wonderful, powerful praise and appreciation for the things I’ve done for and with them. The juxtaposition was stark and uncomfortable.
But the validation-slut in me is obsessed with that one piece of particularly harsh feedback and I’m now asking myself, “Am I a Villain?”
The irony of this in my life right now isn’t lost on me. I hope you notice it too.
Welp. Time for therapy I guess.
The Drama-Llama in me sees the Drama-Llama in you.
Namaste. 🙏
Robin George