July 11, 2004

anchor rotation zones

We went to the Oregon Country Fair yesterday. I'd been told by a number of people "oh you HAVE to go to the Fair, you'll love it," but the three most enthusiastic endorsers (as I suggested a few days ago) gave me totally different reasons why I should go. Some were more right than others. What I had demonstrated to me, basically: a) I am really, truly not a hippie, and b) I have a very, very high tolerance for hippies.

Endorser #1 said " it's just a big fun scene, and the food is really good." She was right about that: the food was really good. Not the same sorts of vendors one sees at a county fair--I think only one or two even offered anything deep-fried. Complicated Indian thalis, excellent rich carrot cake, slices of fresh yellow watermelon, Peruvian tamals, raw-foodie juices, hibiscus lemonade, fantastically flavorful handmade artichoke-tofu ravioli... for most of the day I took care just to graze, but right before we left Lisa and I both got big meals we could share, just because it was all so good.

Endorser #2 said "it's a total back-to-nature experience--wilderness, trees, naked people everywhere sitting around fire pits, swimming in the rivers," etc. Well, yes and no. Trees all around, yes (I put on sunblock but don't think I needed it, since there was near-continuous tree cover), and beautiful scenery, but the nature part is extremely managed: the paths are broad and flat (although not quite broad enough to move at a decent clip once the real tourist congestion starts in early afternoon), and then to the sides of them are vendors' booths and such, and then beyond that there's usually a tall fence, and past THAT are the campgrounds for the "fair family" (the people who work/perform/have booths there, who are the only ones allowed to camp over or to stay on the Fair premises beyond 8 PM). I mean, there are a bunch of drinking fountains. (Note that I am not complaining about this at all; just noting that the presence of nature is not unmediated.) Not exactly naked people everywhere (beyond a bunch of topless-and-ornately-painted women & occasionally men), aside from the Ritz Sauna, which was pretty great. One huge and moderately toasty sauna (maybe 50 people in it at any given time, aged roughly 3 to 75, occasionally singing songs that I'm guessing were of fairly recent vintage and Wicca-related); one smaller and very very hot/dry sauna (could fit up to perhaps nine people at once; when there were fewer, people tended to do yoga in it); a bank of cold and adjustable-temperature showers; and the fire pit my friend mentioned, which had a jazz trio playing next to it and 30 or so people lounging around it.

Endorser #3 said "you're a big Burning Man buff, right? I bet it's a lot like that." As I'd suspected, they're very very different, despite certain surface similarities. Burning Man is about what's possible when commerce is taken out of day-to-day interactions, and when it's forbidden to be only a consumer of culture, and secondarily about pulling off really stylish stuff in a very challenging physical environment. The OCF is very much about commerce and spectation--really nice, non-mass-produced commerce and spectation, but still--and the glorious-ridiculousness factor is a lot lower. This ultimately becomes part of almost EVERY kind of interaction people have. (The OCF is also a lot more kid- and family-oriented: there were children and babies and teenagers everywhere, as well as a healthy number of gray-haired folks, and a lot of the people I talked to said "this is your first Fair? Wow, I've been coming since I was two.") Everyone with the holographic wristband that indicated they were among the elect said "it's different after dark"/"it's way better after dark, when all the tourists leave"/""it's all, you know, family then--you can trust everyone"/"you have to camp here to see what it's really like"/"after dark is when all the real action happens," etc. I bet they're right, and next year I really want to see if I can participate/camp there--it sounds like my kind of thing. But there's still the insider/outsider issue: the participants who spend eight hours a day interacting with the spectators.

I'd been advised to dress up, so I wore Lisa's silvery-pastel wig, the spangly shirt I'd worn at the 801 shows, and a pair of weird black vinyl pants I'd gotten a couple of days ago. Which were fine and not inappropriate and all, but a lot of people were wearing serious hippie chic--not really tie-dyes/jeans, but clothes whose main characteristics were bright color, rich texture and general flowingness. Brought a Polaroid camera, a bunch of film and some razor-point Sharpies to do my "imaginary tattoos" routine (i.e. I take a Polaroid of wherever you'd like your tattoo to be, draw the tattoo on the Polaroid, and give you the result; a good way to strike up conversations with people). About half the people I did it for asked me how much it'd cost; a few couldn't believe I was doing it for free. Second-saddest response: a woman for whom I'd just drawn some kind of rosebush-type thing on the Polaroid of her her upper arm & was having a nice conversation with, once I handed it to her, tried to give me a five-dollar bill. (No! Put it away!) Saddest response: guy who'd asked me to draw a mushroom being visibly alarmed when I actually started to draw one--he'd thought he was going to get, you know, actual mushrooms.

I passed a lot of nice-sounding entertainment--string bands, fiddlers, a marimba ensemble, etc.--and had wanted to see the Black Peppercorns, who cancelled--but only really sat down to see one thing: the "girls' circus," which was really sort of a semi-pro variety show with a little more acrobatics than usual. There were a few men (in drag) in the cast, but it was mostly women and girls--some of them very very little. A dozen or so of the smallest ones came out near the beginning dressed as ravioli, and another one (on stilts), dressed as a chef, came out to "stir" them in the middle of their tumbling act. It was the sort of circus where the synchronized six-person juggling act can go about 10 seconds at a time before someone drops a pin or two, and the sort of crowd where that's totally okay.

Anyway. After all that, you still want some music? Okay. Soft Pleasing Light's "adinfinitum" (removed) is a pretty simple song--mostly just a single time-altering chord, and some decorative voice and a few other instruments hung on it to keep it interesting--but I always liked how it gets that huge floating effect with very low-tech means. The story of Soft Pleasing Light appears here; this version of this song was originally on a split single with Rob Christiansen, packaged in somebody's curtain that had been cut up and silkscreened. Thanks to Bill Fantegrossi for permission to post it.

Posted by Douglas at July 11, 2004 3:47 PM | TrackBack
Comments
Post a comment