desert.

Sunday

Well, we originally started caravaning with Howard and Ross; they showed up a half hour late, and we still weren't ready, so we ended up leaving at 11:30 instead of 11:00. After about an hour, just over the Carquinez Bridge, I realized I forgot our tickets, so we went back and got them while Howard and Ross kept going.

We got there eventually and set up the tent. It was windy that night, but otherwise we didn't really do much.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

We went to see The Wizard of Oz played with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon! We had heard of this, of course, called variously "The Pink Wizard" or "Dark Side of the Rainbow". I had heard it as part of the folklore of the high school/liberal arts college culture I grew up and was educated in: you can time the start of the album such that the music is eerily coincident with the action of the film (leave the dialogue of the movie off). I don't know the specifics, but you start the album at the third roar of the MGM lion, and in this age of compact discs, you have to leave a certain amount of time for what would have been the flipping of a record to the other side.

I will vouch for the experience being astoundingly psychedelic (even if you're sober) and somewhat creepy. Not only does the music fit the various moments of the movie, but a lot of the time the music of the movie and the music of the album have concident tempos, such that the dancing is in step with the Pink Floyd. It divorces the meaning of the film from its story, in a way, almost telling a completely different story by combining the old images with a new sequence of sounds.

Saturday

Night of the Burn. The day was hot, and we were all tired from a long night (Mona and I slept from about 0600-0800), so we did very little in the way of classes and things. We actually hung around helping to turn the Coast Guard into Bianca's Shack, and then we had little urge to go out to the Man...last year, there was a bit of a mob, and we were close enough that there was a lot of smoke and flying embers. It's hard to appreciate the power of that much fire from just watching it on TV.

Sunday

Monday

Well, we slept from about 2300 Sunday night until 0130 Monday morning. We originally thought to leave when we woke up Monday morning, but word on the street was that even doing that would have many hours of waiting just to get off the playa, so we (I?) decided to leave with the Coast Guard and GRAVE trucks, and Ross and Howard and Danfuzz.


Chris Doherty