Chegou a hora

You are a wandering soul
You see the road rise up to meet you
All through this world alone
Ashes dust to dust

Este ano até agora tem sido o pior da minha vida, disparado, por vários motivos. É hora de ir para o vestiário, levar uma carcada do técnico, voltar a campo e tentar reverter a goleada que eu estou levando. Hora de ir para o deserto, passar por experiências extraordinárias, conversar com pessoas extraordinárias e ver coisas que não se vêem em nenhum outro lugar do mundo, num ambiente hostil e maravilhoso ao mesmo tempo. E encontrar os amigos, alguns muito queridos e aproveitar a doçura da vida com eles. Mas sobretudo reencontrar a minha vontade de construir coisas e fazer planos para o futuro.

No Mechabolic estão todos exaustos. Jim Mason e Dann Davis, os dois líderes do projeto, fizeram turnos de 24 horas contínuas. Vão precisar de alguém para dirigir os carros deles pois eles não tem a menor condição de dirigir. Eu não pude participar dos últimos dias, tinha outras obrigações com o jornal que eu edito no Burning Man e o meu emprego que paga as contas. Mas estamos quase lá. Vamos conseguir, mais um ou dois dias miseráveis de trabalho sob o sol e depois é correr para a galera e aproveitar a festa.

O que leva alguém a se matar de trabalhar noite e dia, largar o emprego, pedir dinheiro, torrar o próprio dinheiro por uma coisa enorme que não serve para nada, não dá dinheiro e que leva à exaustão quase completa? Para isso eu só tenho a resposta de uma criança: porque é legal.

É bom ser criança.

Até mais.

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Mechabolic

A pedidos, o website do Mechabolic, que explica os comos, quandos e porquês da coisa toda. Escreveram o meu nome errado, grr…

foto de Jess Hobbs

Eu sou você amanhã

Karen Cusolito ralando no deserto terminando a sua escultura Passage no ano passado. Amanhã é a minha vez… Terminamos o que deu para terminar, embarcamos o Mechabolic em containers e o primeiro caminhão parte para o deserto daqui a pouco. O Chicken et caterva também. Eu vou amanhã. Não vai ser nada divertido trabalhar com metal com o calor, a poeira e o vento, mas o artista tem que suar pela sua arte… Porca la miseria.

It’s fun to stay at the NMKY

Se lembra de quando o Fábio Jr. se chamava Morris Albert e fazia playback no Globo de Ouro?
Não? E daqueles filmes da Sala Especial em que a Sandra Bréa entrava em um Corcel verde que desaparecia em meio a um crepúsculo na Via Dutra?
Não? E disso aqui, você se lembra? É o YMCA da Finlândia, que aparentemente se chama NMKY, o que completamente esculhamba a dancinha que se faz no refrão. Não lembra não?

Pois é, eu também não.

Lounge against the machine

A pedidos da Graciele e do Ronas, Richard Cheese interpreta Snoop Doggy Dogg, “Gin & Juice”, a música cuja versão original eu estava ouvindo ontem quando estava correndo no Embarcadero (não da polícia, por esporte mesmo).

Beeyatch!

Coisas de iPod II

1. Descobri que Snoop Dogg é uma excelente música para correr. Dá o ritmo certo enquanto eu vou bufando ao longo do Embarcadero. Rolling down the street smoking Indo, sipping on gin & juice…

2. Estava dando uma carona para uma amiga e estávamos falando da Allison. iPod em shuffle. No meio da conversa, o iPod toca “Allison”, dos Pixies. Tem mais de 10.000 músicas naquele iPod. Eu olhei para a minha amiga, ela olhou para mim e, pela primeira vez depois de tudo, eu consegui dar uma boa risada. Quer dizer que você está ouvindo, né Allison? Bem que eu desconfiava.

E no meio disso tudo…

Foto: Mondo Il Magnifico Contra a Sacola de Supermercado Gigante, no Lost Vegas, evento organizado todo ano pelo Chicken. A sacola ganhou.

…a campanha continua. Chicken já arrecadou $17.000, de $2 em $2… Eis aqui o que a Lera, que é professora em Stanford, tem a dizer sobre o Chicken:

greetings friends –

i am writing with a strange but interesting request. one of my bestest long-time friends – chicken john – is running for mayor of san francisco. but don’t worry, he can’t win. we’re safe there. he’d make a terrible mayor. so you won’t get any pleas from me to vote for him. instead, i am writing to ask you to donate to his campaign.

why on earth would you donate to a political campaign of a candidate who can’t win, isn’t good for the job anyway, and whose name more importantly is “chicken john”?

well, chicken is his name – we can’t do anything about that. but here are some reasons why you may want to make a contribution. (www.voteforchicken.com)

chicken isn’t running to win. his campaign is an art project, a performance, an opportunity to communicate a message, and it’s a good message.

the idea is to open up a conversation about two topics dear to chicken and to many of us: public art and the environment. chicken wants san francisco to be a city of art and innovation. he is hoping to use his campaign to draw the mayor’s office attention to the great good that comes from art (wouldn’t it be great to have more funding for art for all to enjoy? to live in a city that supports its artists rather than driving them away?), and to push the city to be more innovative in environmental policy.

why is chicken doing this, and why does he need your money?

1. why is it chicken doing this, and not someone else? well, first, chicken had the idea to do it, so it’s his show. second, he is a great person for the job. he lives his ideal of art and innovation. and he is a born provocateur.

chicken has spent all of his life creating interesting and unusual performances, experiences, and events, and he does it all with no resources whatsoever, all made entirely out of junk, re-imagined by chicken into cultural treasure (see, art & innovation). i could spend many pages listing all chicken’s many spectacular accomplishments and terrific failures (ask me if you’re interested or go see his terrible website http://www.chickenjohn.com), but here are some recent things:

chicken converted his pick-up truck to run on used coffee-grounds, with zero emissions (his girlfriend runs ritual roasters, so the used coffee-grounds are free). the new york times wrote about it. for more info see: http://www.caferacercrew.com/

he built a biodiesel raft out of junk that floated down the missisippi, spreading culture and chaos. the new york times wrote it about it several times. as they described it: “Imagine if Don Quixote, Salvador Dalí and Che Guevara collaborated on a floating medicine show.”: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/arts/09arma.html?ei=5088&en=91dedd4ba9963741&ex=1312776000&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

when chicken owned the odeon bar on mission street, every night you could go see some unlikely and sublime performance chicken had conjured up. there you might find a pancake juggler (someone chicken took in off the street), a monsters of tuba all-tuba tuba-thon (with all 40 band members staying at chicken’s house), a pirate puppet rock opera, or thai shadow performers (that chicken had met on a trip to thailand and then brought back with him to san francisco).

importantly, chicken is a borne provocateur. he has a knack for attracting attention and getting publicity. he is constantly featured in the local papers and is the cover image of the weekly or the guardian about once a year. more impressively his picture ends up in the new york times 3-4 times a year. and in different sections. sometimes it’s in the arts section. other times it’s about technology, or the environment, or politics. for a guy who dropped out of school in 7th grade and has never had a real job, it’s pretty darned impressive. he knows how do the thing that matters, that captures the imagination and gets noticed, how to say the thing that gets heard. and that’s exactly his job here. to get noticed. to start a conversation. to stir the pot.

this campaign for mayor, like all of chicken’s projects, has a guarantee of failure, but a very interesting process of arriving at that failure. like with all of chicken’s projects, i am very skeptical about it, i think it’s a bad idea and a waste of time, and at the same time i know that something wonderful will happen as a result of the experiment and i can’t wait to see what it will be.

2. why does chicken need your money?

chicken is trying to raise $25,000 for his campaign. if he manages to do so, he will qualify for 2:1 matching funds from the city of san francisco, so his campaign will have $75,000 to work with. if he makes it past this hurdle, his campaign for art and innovation can really take off.

amazingly, chicken is really close. he has raised $17,000 already. unfortunately, he only has a week left to raise the rest. so he really needs help in this final push. any small amount donated adds to the pot. this is definitely a populist effort, so any small amount is very valuable. the city will match up to $100 each sf resident donates to chicken’s campaign.

gavin newsome is running essentially unopposed this time around, so we the voters don’t get to voice any of our policy preferences at the voting booth. but this is another way to make your opinion heard. if you’d like the mayor’s office to spend more time thinking about art and innovation, then help chicken’s campaign by making a contribution. then let’s see what comes of it. i’m going to donate some money to chicken. it’s an interesting experiment.

finally, here are some words from chicken:

“There is no doubt that Gavin Newsome will be our next Mayor. But there is value in fighting the good fight even if ‘winning’ isn’t your main objective. I have engineered my entire life around the embrace of the amateur. To live life as art. Mediocrity is not an option. Samuel Beckett’s quote fills me with possibility and adventure: “Fail again. Fail better.” I honestly feel that right now San Francisco, the city of Art and Innovation, lacks whimsy. It lacks a decision making body that results in the manufacture of ‘Units of Interesting’. We need there to be more Units of Interesting. The acronym sucks, or it would be the new catch-phraze. UoI.”

you can donate at http://www.voteforchicken.com, or write a check to “vote for chicken”. if you donate using paypal, please also provide your address, occupation & place of work in the message field (this way the ethics committee knows that the money is coming from SF residents).

http://voteforchicken.com/

see you tonight….. chicken

Yee Haw!

Burning Man do ano passado. O pessoal que trabalha na organização às vezes aparece no nosso acampamento e nós fazemos um arrasta-pé.
Tocamos Clash, Pixies, Dead Kennedys, Fear, só que à moda caipira. Caipira Americano, mas caipira… Já ouviu Holiday in Cambodia tocada com banjo em ritmo de Família Buscapé? Pois é…

Danou-se

Isso é uma foto do que acontece quando ventos de 70km/h sopram no deserto. Infelizmente a foto é de ontem, e, de acordo com o pessoal que já está lá, tem sido assim a semana passada toda. O negócio é trazer óculos de proteção e respiradores. Tendo estado no meio de uma dessas tempestades, eu sei que não tem a menor graça. Espero que isso passe até nós chegarmos lá.

Exausto

Fim de semana inteiro trabalhando, carregando vigas de metal, correndo para comprar mais ferramentas, soldando, cortando, lixando, por horas, noite a dentro. 4 horas de sono, acordar, começar tudo de novo. A estrutura está pronta. É enorme, mais longa que duas jamantas. Os gasificadores funcionam. Falta juntar todos os subsistemas, testar, depois desmantelar e colocar em containers. E depois montar tudo de novo no deserto. Ainda não sei se vai dar tempo de acabar antes do deserto, veremos. Mas eu estou cansado prá chuchu.