You Are Responsible For Operating Your Own Brain Like Some Manual Stick-shift Transmission Located on the Side of Your Head or...
BURN BABY BURN!
Written for the DROP BASS NETWORK event EVEN FURTHER.
Parties have their roots in the fertility cults of prehistoric times. These cults come down to us through the mystery cults, like the wine cult of Dionysus in ancient Greece. In this cult they worshipped wine, got naked, got drunk, and partied
throughout the night. You can see their influence in the modern festivals of Mardi Gras and Carnival. These are the party religions, Aristotle wrote about them and said they were more about an experience than a teaching. What we are doing is an extension of that, we are taking these pagan party rituals right into the future.
Historically, pagan ceremonies have been about the cycle of the seasons (the birth, the death, and the re-birth of the crops) and mankind attuning himself to the forces of nature through rituals in order to insure his own survival. But now, we are no longer confined by the seasons, we are confined by our outdated modes of though. Our institutions which once worked for us have, over the passage of time, become oppressive and need to be destroyed! The Burning Man is our symbol of that natural progression of ideas, from birth to death to re-birth, so that we can promote our own evolution and attune ourselves to change in the universe.
Dr. Timothy Leary said, "Throughout human history there have always been political leaders, religious leaders, and educational leaders, who want to give your rules to run your life and determine the way you think." YOU are responsible for operating your own brain, like some manual stick-shift transmission located on the side of your head. Forward, reverse, and overdrive! You must learn to think for yourself, know yourself, question authority and create your own reality. Just say know! It's not about what your schools teach you to be, what religions tell you to be, what the government, what the large corporations of this country try to force you to be. It's about being yourself, changing yourself, morphing yourself into whatever person you want to become. It's about having fun! That's why we have these parties, that's why we express ourselves, that's what it's all about.
All of us, most of our lives, live in a media who's reality is controlled by others. Television networks, radio stations, newspapers and magazines, the entire mass media conglomerate is controlled by politicians, by large corporations, by the rhetoric of religious institutions who are not interested in communicating a reality that is in your best interest. The words you use, the modes of communication you follow direct your thoughts and determine the realities your inhabit. Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message" and YOU control your own media. If you want to change yourself and change your world, change the words you use, change the clothes you where, change the music you listen to. If you change your media, you change your message, you change yourself, and you change society. That's what our Burning Man ceremony is all about, our ability to change ourselves.
RIGHT NOW imagine that WE are the human race one-thousand years from now. We are the Burning Man. We burn bright, we party all night, our seasons change with sequencer upgrades. We are melting down into one big beautiful hive of humanoids. Let the revolution begin!
thoughts kicked by TJ Richter
© April 1, 1998 Theodore J. Richter |
