Safely in Pittsburgh

I arrived last night around 8pm. Dinner, unloading the truck, humpa humpa, then bed.

I am a bit out of sorts today. Distracted, unfocused, tired, chilled. But there's a happiness below the surface. I just have to settle a bit before it will peek out its nose.

And on the good days...

On the good days, I feel like I can take over the world!

A HUGE thank you to everyone who has responded to my post about DDI, both publicly and privately. You've given me lots of carefully crafted food for thought, lots of pithy little things to tell my brain when it starts getting frustrated and depressed, and lots of laughs.

On the good days, like today, I realize that DDI is something I innovated, something I helped to create, and something which went on without me. It was an idea that was big enough to merit a whole camp this year, and it happened without me at the helm. That speaks to the strength of the concept (in the burning man world, anyway) and to the strength of the project's cache to gain fans and contributors. That's pretty rad. A few people in particular stepped up this year to bring the project together, and it succeeded beyond our expectations and brought a lot of joy to people out on the playa. I remember the faces of the players waiting in line - people waited up to 3 or 4 HOURS to play. On the playa. Do you know how long 3 or 4 hours is on a Wednesday night at burning man? It feels like an eternity! The project really made people happy, and that's far more important than whether it gets in Rolling Stone or not.

Personally, on the good days I am able to take away the positive lessons and leave the rest behind. I have good ideas. I can organize people. I can motivate. I can build things. I am an artist. I can make things go BOOM. I can weld, solder, sew, carpenter and design. I have learned a great deal about the how and why of building large scale art, I have learned a great deal about myself and my needs.

I am in a much healthier relationship these days. A healthier relationship with my new amazing partner, and a healthier relationship with my art and my artistic motivations.

I was talking to avocado_tom on the phone about the whole subject and I realized something. He was talking about what it takes to motivate a project from the idea phase to the building phase, what it takes to actually make a project happen. He expressed some concern over how difficult that transition can be, how hard it can be to get things off the ground. I found myself saying that I don't have that worry, I know that I can make projects happen, I know that I can build and create. I found myself saying that after three years of building art for Burning Man, I don't need to build art for Burning Man anymore - I will make art wherever and whenever I want.

I understood this subconsciously when I wrote my previous post. I said
"How do you counteract DDI and IA with a creation built out of love and a *small* community in Pittsburgh?". I answered myself: building a creation out of love and a small community, building art personally, not giving a whit about the rockstar recognition*. Building for myself, for people I love, for the idea, for the pure joy of creation.

*[Amani astutely said "At the outset of DDI did you have any intent of being listed in WIRED/Rolilng Stone? nope. Just wanted to make a really freaking cool thing. So you did it." We didn't begin DDI in order to get popular, to do something that would get us noticed. In Burning Man 05 the project was way out on the fringes, and we didn't care, we still worked our asses off to bring it together. Somehow along the way it all went to our heads - I guess fame can do that. It's kind of retarded, really.]

It helps to know that if I wanted to build the next big thing, the next project to get credit and coverage, I know how. I could do that, if I wanted to. I understand the machinery of popularity now, and in the exact moment that I understood it, its power began to dissipate. Sure, I still love provoking a reaction, doing things to make an impact, pushing those buttons. But I feel I'm much more self-aware about it now, and I doubt the rockstar popularity could blind me the same way again.

I've had a few people ask me to work on their big projects for next year's burn, but I've turned them down. I'm not going back to Burning Man next year. I don't need to go back, there's a big wide world out there to explore and in which to create art. I'm working on my own personal projects, and I'm working on building a life in a new city. That's more than enough for now.