on the road again..thinking thoughts of days gone by

Sorry, had to knock on the front door, because i lost my passport during the outside-fence customs officer’s insistence that he search my cavities (i mean i just went to the dentist). And i was going to send the MOJ a com-postable thread about the following, but the topic is germane, and i am trying to do this as secretly and discretely as i can given the environment.

Last Sunday, i suffered through one of my more embarrassing stage moments. Not to go into too many of the background details, but at last week’s event all three of my production companies were contracted to perform work. For three days i helped to provide infrastructure by which the promoters operated the event. Then i worked on an adventure game, through which ticket holders to the three-day festival could participate in a variety of hands-on activities across the entire human need spectrum (learning about sustainability, greening, and alternative methods etc.). But the toughest role was as the coordinator of emcees and author of scripts and schedules for the 14 stages and three days and nights of performances, speakers, panels, et al.

Due to a variety of “issues” (human behaviorial/attitudinal/socio-pathic?? and transportative), the schedules were updated each morning and again in the afternoon each day. I was literally forced to sit infront of a laptop and laser printer pumping paper while gofers raced changes to various stages. Finally Sunday afternoon i got a chance to let go, and using my ‘connections’ i allowed my mind to be stretched and plasticized and… (well you get the picture). I am sitting in the back of a small pavilion waiting for Dennis Kucinich to arrive, talking with a phenomenal bass player (well-known band as well as currently touring with a small jazz/fusion/rock ensemble led by a legendary jazz electric guitarist–no more hints), and mellowing out. Out of nowhere arrives a compatriot to tell me the whole thing is changed again, and that the Mayor and State Senator who were to introduce Kucinich and other guests also is not there. I was now assigned to help negotiate the scheduling changes and to introduce Arianna Huffington to the assembled masses in the big main stage area.

You have to accept that i was looking a bit haggard after a couple of days without sleep (hey now, they couldn’t keep me penned up at night during the late night shows), and looked not only scruffy, but genuinely trashed, and that doesn’t account for my mental state. At least i was wearing a t-shirt a friend had made with the image of Bush in an hourglass draining down into forming a new and better Earth. So i jump in the cart and whizzed off to the main stage back area, and spent the better part of twenty minutes haggling over who goes when, then where, then how. Much too much to try to describe here, but consider that a napoleanic british stage manager who hated any changes, was quite irate already, and furious with this latest interjection of flipflopping and reshuffle. So in comes two limos, one with Kucinich and one with Arianna. I got my good buddy to intro Dennis, and i am to introduce Arianna. I can’t imagine what she must have thought about this strange freak who was about to walk on main stage, calm down the crews, and tell 6000 people how cool she is. I didn’t imagine it either.

I have no idea what i said or how it came out or what happened really. All i realized in that moment was that i suddenly remembered the three different film crews who were documenting the event. Damn, here i am spaced-out tripping, trying to remember the three whole facts i need to remember, and there are all those pesky cameras. I don’t care about the 6000+ people, hell they wouldn’t remember anything; but a documentary film, a festival DVD production, and a feature film crew using the event as background for small scenes, were right there in front of me with boom cameras, back set shots, and two onstage competing handhelds. Fuck!! fucking god-damn posterity, digitally recorded into harddrives as i am handed the mic by the seething, teeth-gnashing stage manager.

What’s her name?? What is the name of her new book?? What’s this fearless shit? Whoa. I still don’t really know, and i don’t really want to either. I have tremendous respect for Arianna Huffington for making the paradigm shifts in her own life, for helping and supporting the new media, especially the blogsphere, and for putting herself out there to take the shots. I suddenly was very determined to get off the stage and find the next bite of special chocolate truffle to rid myself of any remnant of memory of all that.

I am relatively assured that somewhere down the road, some of that will popup on Youtube or MySpace vids or Google vids…Just keep in mind when it does, that part of my was having so much serious fun 20 minutes earlier, and another 20 minutes later. But Dante could not have felt worse in that middle period.