I am a drummer, and I pay attention to the fire spinners. They really inspire me. If it seems
like drummers are not paying attention, it is because they have to pay attention to their playing, or things become sloppy and unrewarding. Free-form jams require a lot of attention, especially when there are a rotating cast of scoundrels. But you see, that is the
zen beauty of it.
Drummers love the spinners. You are the flame and we are the moths.

Two cents...

After the yelling match about the music began, I took off with my camera to take pictures along the Hawthorne Bridge. My older brother is the dry-alcoholic, brooding, simmering, etc., which is exactly what I would come to the jam to get away from.

As I walked away along the bridge, several homeless-in-appearance types would pass me. Curious, I asked where they were going and they would all reply that their destination was the jam.

Who is this event for?
Angry drummers? Homeless seekers of a Woodstock?

What is the likely outcome of an event with no structure and a historical vacuum of leadership, an event that is frequented by people who invest nothing and thus have nothing to lose if the event ends? The events that transpired this weekend in Michigan come to mind.

When is it appropriate to throw in the towel? Before or after someone gets beaten, burned, stabbed...

Where is the magic wand to wave over this homeless Woodstock thing that now goes on every weekend? It appears that trying to establish a sense of safety in a lawless community is akin to farting against a hurricane.

Why is this event continuing?
Perpetuation of a memory? A sense of duty to those who initiated it? Those who did set up this event, who nurtured it in its infancy are distancing themselves from this Frankenstein monster.

The aggressive pack-male behavior is at the root of this event’s problem. It was that reason that I stopped bringing my nephews and niece to this event last summer. It was that core concern that motivated me to join the safety effort. Seeing it rear its ugly head over and over...

Heck, I’ll just go to my brother’s house.

Fuck, I lost my entire post. Took me an hour to write.

Okay, starting again. First, let's remember that we are talking about real people, individuals with names, rather than clumps.

1) Keith and I and the fire staff. Keith was standing inside the circle to 'prove that he could'. I was spinning pretty fast and went to the fire safety to put me out, and almost got him right in the face. I started talking to him about moving back, and while he wasn't going to move back for me (heck, he barely noticed almost getting flamed in the face), we were also joking about how it was because the fire is warm, and nice, and it's nice to be close.

Gerald looked over when we were staring at each other, and I'm glad you pointed out to finish putting out the staff and continue the conversation, and that I was being obstinate too. I stood next to Keith for awhile and we talked about other things.

I crossed the circle to talk to the fire performers. We were ready to not light up the next people until Keith left the circle, and just as we were ready to do that, he got bored and wandered off.

Later that evening, when I was cleaning up (who else cleaned up, eh? eh?) I noticed Keith standing next to his shopping cart and offered him the bottles. And we had another moment of 'togetherness' that may have mitigated our earlier experience some.

2) Draydin - He's the big shouty guy with the face paint who is trying to be helpful and 'part' of something. He's a good guy overall, and of course he becomes a crowd management issue himself when he pushes for order instead of inviting order. We are here to INSINUATE fire safety, not impose it. I'm hoping that I can model for him inviting people to do things and explaining why we'd like it that way, as a way to channel that urge to help into more effective tecniques, less designed to get blowback. And of course I need the same kind of help, as Gerald did when he spoke to me in the above situation with Keith. Overall I think his situation is one of being DISempowered, and therefore seeking power over as a way to balance his power structure within himself, rather than one of showing off for females.

3) Angrier Guy (pulled down the flags) - the amplified music really pushed it all over the edge for Angrier Guy, and I won't pretend I didn't know that Party In A Box wouldn't be provocative. I had thought that we could have turns listening to different things. While him taking down the flags certainly meant a LOT more work explaining to people who were casually wandering across the backstage, overall his position is a good one and it worked out.

I won him over late in the evening by being super excited and bubbly - I explained that I had a lot of camp chairs to bring down for them, and how it would be wonderful to have a full line of drummers along the west side of the fire area. Furthermore, we talked about bringing some benches down, though he did NOT want them to be made of buckets, because people would bang on the buckets and sound like shit. This was shown when Chris was drunkenly banging on the buckets, in the fire safety zone, towards the end.


3) Chris - Chris was the guy who showed up pretty late and dumped his bike right behind the fire safety. I asked him, "hey, can I move your bike a little" and he dumped it right in the middle of the open area being used as flow/Practice Area. And so then he moved it right next to the column.

So we stopped performing and waited, and eventually he moved his bike over to the side. This was a good example of everyone on the fire performer side working together to exercise the only leverage we can ETHICALLY impose - that we can't continue if the perimeter isn't clear.

Then, he took his backpack and jacket off, cracked open a beer, and lit up poi. So that's a little problematic. Towards the end of the evening, he came up to me and hoped he hadn't 'set a bad impression' - overall, I'm sure he's a good guy, though him being OF the community but BETTER than the community is always... meh.


So the people that I have as noticeably involved in conflict (I leave out steve's interactions with Chris or Angrier Man because they weren't necessarily noticeable) was...


Keith -
Angrier Man -
Michael - translator for/to drummers
Ang - translator for/to fire people
Draydin -
Myself
Gerald
Chris

Keith and Angrier Man and Michael were treated with respect and won over a little, and we'll have to see if next week's efforts to support drummers (benches, chairs, prominent location, some cookies, some beer) will go over. Draydin and Chris are both management issues on the other side of the coin, Draydin for being unhelpfully brusque and over-enthusiastic, and Chris for the heavy inebriation/surliness issue.

Gerald was awesome for speaking up (we though Angrier Man was also awesome for speaking up about the Amplified music, even if we didn't like HOW he did it).


If we take the metavirus in the "Grief Cycle" version, the pattern of this change is:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression/Analysis
Acceptance.

The first week was denial and surprise. What is this is? The community doesn't know if or what to react to. Week two was anger - will me kicking up a fuss make the splinter/irritant go away? If no, then bargain.

We shall see if next week's efforts to give a lot of love to the drummers, by working on seating, food, prominence, etc, will earn us the ability to bargain for the ONE thing that we care about: Traffic Flow.

The week after will probably be the working out of small, yet important, details once the basic points of contention are addressed. Week 5 is "this is how we do things here NOW" - with the beginnings of a projection into the future.

_____________________________________________________________________


Separate/Related Issues:

Alcohol backstage - we need some signs that say, "PLEASE NO DRUGS OR ALCOHOL BACKSTAGE". The obviously inebriated fire performers aside, the presence of the bottles really needs to be curtailed. We wouldn't want it to appear that we are boozing up as a group.

Loiterers - I'm trying to model that if I'm not actively being safety, I step out. Draydin's pals, and the sister of the one fire performer (with the teddy bear backpack) are some of the worst with this, and they help to engender complaints from those that we have asked not to cross the line.

A further reason for this is that I repeatedly saw safeties distracted by friends or other people walking around, and the fuel dump (and all the expensive fire toys) are hard to monitor with a lot of people standing around. And then someone lights up a cigarette...

Turn-taking - this probably simply needs more chalk to show, and people will get used to discussing who goes next. I would point out that we probably wouldn't want to foster an environment where the strong simply walk out and go, and the shy wait forever for a 'turn'.

The perimeter in general: For us to live up to our agreement with the fire department, we need to have and maintain a perimeter. In the long term, this may mean putting someone's staves/poi out while they are in the middle of the set, if/when people try to prove a point by crossing that perimeter.


For those who might not know, last week Jerry Alvarez sent a police officer down to check us out, and he left the event alone BECAUSE we were there taking a new responsibility for how fire safety is being handled. We keep a line with 10' clearance to the audience, or we stop performing till they move back. Everything else is negotiable - manner of separation, drummer location, music, etc, etc, etc.


Again, the only ethical leverage we have is to remove ourselves until people are willing to step out of that area. This only works if there is consensus, and not every fire performer would necessarily be willing to engage in such a boycott. On the other hand, they'd better have their own fueling buckets, fuel, staves, poi, etc, etc, etc.


We have less than 4 weeks, at the outside, when the fire station will have active firemen, and I'm pretty much banking on them coming over to hang out and watch. Though they'll also object strenuously to the public drinking/inebriation.

Wonder how all this is going to appear in the Oregonian Article or the documentary!

;-b