Deep Links

Desert reflections

Something inside me is unravelling. The desert is doing its thing - evaporating all the tightness and crap and stress from the past months/year. My last three sleeps (here at the dome) have been deep and full of bliss. I wake up more refreshed and calm than I have in I can't remember. I've spent my days moving boxes, unpacking, sifting, sorting, identifying all the little fixes the dome needs. I play music loud. I keep things silent.

I throw out things that are no longer needed. You never know how wound up you are, until you start unwinding... and the desert (for me) is the best for this. The land, the nature, the sky, the wind, the air, the crunchy rock/sand ground, the spiky cacti, the clouds, OMG the clouds are amazing and food for my soul.

But there is something else here I will have to face, and that is the people that live here, and that I am an outsider from another culture. I can fake the redneck desert rat persona, but I can not fake the local. I did not grow up here.

I ran away from a similar small town to the big city, and here I am back, faced with all the same things, 20+ years later. I wonder what I will learn and how I will change, and how I will inevitably leave my mark on this place that called me here, from the whisper on the wind as I drove my motorcycle down the mountain into the glistening town on the edge of another planet - 29 Palms.

Zombie Lemonade

In 2006 I was at a gig-decompression party in/near the Brewery. I was among friends. There was a face painter going around giving all the women beautiful sparkly face accents. I wanted to be pretty like that and I finally tracked down the make-up artist when he was available.

He asked what I wanted, and I told him that I really liked what he had already painted and to be inspired. He stopped for a moment, paused, looked at my face and my outfit (I was wearing black pirate pants and a men's ruffly tux shirt and boots) then whipped out his brushes. I was excited to see the colors and sparkle and glitter he was creating.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw that half my face was a painted as a skull. Internally, I was like WTF. I was really disappointed. I wanted to be pretty, sparkly, colorful. But all I got was this half face skull. But I said nothing. Other than thanks and went back to the party to make the best of my new face. In typical heathervescent fashion, I choose to own it.

If the make-up artist gives you the only half a skull face at the party, live the undead lifestyle, even if it's the opposite of what you wanted. This was way back before zombies became popular. It was also the same year I started my Zombie Cabaret.

I'd be lying if I said that makeup artist didn't inspire me to do the Zombie Cabaret. So while he failed at making me "pretty" and "ladylike" I got something much more... something I made my own. How many people can say they had a Zombie Cabaret in Los Angeles for 10 years? I know 2 of us.