Panmankey

Awake, shake dreams from your hair my pretty child, my sweet one . . . . . . . .

My love for The Doors and Jim Morrison often creeps up on me.  Due to their significance in my spiritual life, it can be hard to just listen to The Doors without entering a trance like state.  I'm cool with the ocassional Top 40 Doors song being on the radio, but anything more than that sort of raises the beast so to speak.

I like to say that Led Zeppelin (or perhaps Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers) is my favorite band, but I probably know more about The Doors, and I certainly know their musical catalog better.  Some of that's due to Jim being more of a crooner than a white blues belter like Robert Plant, but much of it's simply due to the transformative power of the music.

Not every Doors song is art, and some of them border on atrocious, but many of them are near perfection.  And if they are a bit over the top lyriclly, at least Jim did it first.  It's kind of funny to yell "Fuck the Mother Kill the Father," in 2010, but in the mid-60's that was something that could have gotten you jailed in Alabama.  I'm not going to argue that it was in good taste, or even ahead of its time, it was probably neither, but it was ballsy.

I don't think Jim Morrison will ever be celebrated as one of the great poets of the 20th Century, but he might deserve to be.  For every great Morrison lyric, there are two shitty ones, but the ones that are great, are truly great, and when spoken they are nearly hypnotic.  There's a cadence and a rhythm to Morrison's poetry that is so easily overlooked when it simply stares at you from the printed page.  His words were meant to breathe, to be heard, to be spoken.  Despite the attempts of his bandmates, I'm not sure all of this words need to be put to music either.

The Doors "American Prayer" is mostly a collection of Morrison poetry readings with the band adding background music nearly a decade later.  Like much of The Doors' catalog, some of it works, and some of it fails.  Parts of the music reflect the era in which it was recorded (the late '70's), and sounds nearly discoesque.  The tracks that work nail the whole Dionysian Doors Live in Concert Bacchanalia sort of thing they had going down in the late 60's.  No band screams "Decadent Transcendent Pagans!" quite like The Doors.  I'm not using Pagan there to reflect a deeply held religious belief.  I'm using Pagan more to describe a way of life, a world of phsysical and spiritual ecstasy, the path of excess, an existance spent in technicolor instead of black and white.

If I could deal with the hangovers, I'd spend my life with my head swimming in a wine glass, my face pressed up against the glass to listen to The Doors.  There's something very pleasant about tipsiness, even more so when that drunken feeling is spent with words and music.  There's a lonliness to it, but you can find great joy while being alone.  I think Morrison essentially lived his entire life in the Doors alone, with a bottle for his best friend, and words as his most prized mistress. 

As I grow older spirituality can get harder and harder to grasp.  I know the steps to go through in order to feel spiritual, but it's better when it just happens.  I think when you come to a belief system the early years are the best ones, because you view everything with a sense of child-like wonder, a sense that gets lost the further down the road you go.  With a few exceptions (like sex), the first time you do something is often the best that something will ever get.  (Sex is different because it lasts longer the more you do it, which is a big relief to Ari, etc.) 

The transcendence offered to me by Jim Morrison and The Doors is just the oppossite.  It's always easy to grasp, and has become easier as the years go by (which is why I can't always listen to it).  Preparing for a Morrison Ritual tonight I began going through my Doors catalog, deciding what to play, etc.  After two glasses of wine and one verse of "Break on Through" I was dry humping Ari in the living room, screaming my fool head off, and finding myself entirely lost int he moment.  I could have been in ten other places in that moment, and it all felt pretty good, and right.

Life is change, but I'm glad that the power of Jim and his bandmates only grows. 

I blog a lot, but for some odd reason I do almost all of it on facebook.  That's pretty stupid since I have this website, so I'm going to start blogging here again, and then posting that on facebook.  Makes more sense, and then I haven't abandoned old panmankey.com

Lots of changes in the past couple of months.  For those of you who don't read my facebook stuff, my wife and I are moving to California in February.  That's pretty big news.  We'll be living in Northern California, probably Palo Alto-give or take a few miles.  

Due to Pantheacon I do know some Pagans out West, so I've got a small network of people who know me out there, but I truly have no idea what to expect.  I'm hopeful that there will still be plenty of opportunities to talk in public and get out of the house (or apartment), but I don't know for sure.  I'm hoping that there's some sort of big outdoor festival within six hours of us.  One of the hardest parts about moving is leaving behind our time at Starwood and Brushwood.  (Not that we won't ever be back or anything, I'm sure we'll visit once every few years, but camping cross country while getting there on a plane is a logistical nightmare.)  

Finding a new group to practice with will be another challenge too.  I'm hoping we can find a BTW group that fits us, but I've been involved with about every kind of Paganism imaginable in North America the past few years, most of it works for us.  

Over the last ten years I've become a pretty effective Pagan chameleon.  I can slip in and out of different groups with relative ease, communities too.  When you do as many festivals as I do it's easy to be impressed by almost every community you visit, when you are only there for three or four days you never see the warts, or the Witch Wars.  Always a positive.  In my own neck of the woods I've managed to avoid being in negative situations pretty well the last eight or nine years.  Chalk it up to maturity, or a smaller ego, or a bigger passion for football than what people think of me.

So, changes are afoot.  We'll be in our new home state February 7th, just early enough to miss as good chunk of Michigan winter!   

I just noticed that people can "join" my site.  I have no idea what advantages this presents to anyone, but to those of you who have, thanks!  It's kind of cool and flattering. 

Thoughts on various festivals the last couple of weeks.

Wiccan Fest (an hour or so north of Toronto Canada)

Wiccan Fest was my favorite festival this summer.  Just full of nice people, enough to do, and a couple of really great stories that I will end up sharing over the next few months.  It's great when a festival knows what it is.  Wiccan Fest is a small festival designed for 300 or so people with an emphasis on community and shared experience.  It's the only festival I've ever been to where people have yelled at me "We love you Jason" for no real reason.  A little validation now and then goes a very long way.

It's not a very busy festival (though I was kind of busy) but there was generally enough to do to keep Jason entertained.  There were small concerts every night, and mostly featured music familiar enough that I didn't hate most of it.  For those of you who know me well, you know that such a ringing endorsement of Pagan music means that there were no bands or performers featuring a "dash of funk."  ("Dash of funk" is generally the kiss of death when any band adds that description to their festival bio.)  

The best part of Wiccan Fest is their drum circle.  It's not that the drumming is leaps and bounds better than the drumming at any other festival, it has more to do with the community that gathers there.  You can dance, you can drum, you can just sit and observe, and people will be friendly towards you no matter what.  I was camped near the drum circle and the community that camped around there was just freaking fabulous.  Great people, great drinking, great other things for most of them, and everyone was nice.  

I did five workshops at Wiccan Fest in three days, which is a pretty good amount of work.  It all went well, and I sold a decent amount of Horned God books as a result of it.  I did miss the late night rituals that have generally gone on there in the past, but that's a small point and nothing to quibble about.

One of the things I noticed this year at Wiccan Fest versus other festivals was how accessible the staff was.  I can go to some festivals and never run into an organizer or anyone with any authority or ability to offer me assistance.  At Fest I had people fetching me power cords and doing everything in their ability to help a blonde boy out.  Nice.

Starwood

I really enjoyed this year's Starwood.  Going in I thought I it would be a giant clusterfuck, and while some things didn't work out quite right, for the most part it went very smoothly.  Wisteria (the new campground) is great, lots of beautiful trees and hills, and I can see why Ari totally fell in love with the place.  It was nice.  That's not to say it was perfect.  The showers were rather dirty, and there were no flushable toilets.*  I was also a little bit disappointed with the restaurant on site.  After eight years of the Blue Lady and Phil's Grille at Brushwood it was difficult to adjust to something new.  (When it's 95 degrees outside, bottled water should NEVER cost 2.50 a bottle.)  And in a lot of ways I didn't even get the chance to adjust since they closed the kitchen rather early, 8:30 or so.

As far as the festival its self goes, what I loved the most about it was just how laid back it was.  After tension so noticeable you could cut it with a knife at the last few Starwoods (held at Brushwood), it was nice to visit a Starwood where that was blessedly absent.  Everyone seemed to check their ego at the door this time around, and the whole campground seemed to delight in each others company.  I did things I've never done before, like sit in the ACE (Association for Consciousness Exploration-the organizers of Starwood) tent, talk to other presenters, and just relax.  

When I said there were problems, I wasn't kidding.  Starwood Radio barely got off the ground.  The area picked for midnight rituals lacked any sort of lighting, and was extremely inaccessible that late at night.  Raquy and her Cavemen thought that drumming over Ivan Stang's annual devival showed good manners, so yeah, problems, but they were overshadowed by the good that was there.  

Some of that good was Ivan Stang making fun of me and my workshops three times over the course of a rant, what an honor!  Seriously, that made my day.  The drum circle that people went to (I think it was called Paw Paw?) was gorgeous if a little cramped.  Camping and dancing in a small clearing surrounded by trees is simply magickal.  Hell yeah that was a good spot.  My workshops were pretty well attended for an outdoor festival too (especially after I heard the average attendance was about five people, I was lucky enough to score about 20 per talk).  

Starwood featured some of the best music they've had in awhile.  I managed to sit through an entire show for the first time in forever as Ari and I really liked the band Coyote Run.  Coyote Run is mostly a Celtic-type act, and they played with energy and passion and were just a delight for their entire two hour set.  We really liked them.  I hope they come back one of these years.

So all in all, a very good Starwood spent with lovely friends in a beautiful setting.

Brushwood's Summerfest

Brushwood will probably always be my favorite Pagan (or Pagan friendly) campground, though Summerfest was my least favorite festival of the last few weeks.  Visiting Brushwood is always special, I have so many friends who are seasonal campers there, and the lank speaks to me in a way that few others have, but with very few exceptions I found myself bored a lot of the time.

Those exceptions were some of my favorite nights of July though.  I loved Brushwood's "Party Like a Rockstar" and for two and a half hours i had a blast playing Marilyn Manson, Weezer, Snoop Dog, and Dio.  What was kind of a bummer was starting a good solid hour later than planned and being moved to a new location just six hours before our start time.  It gave the whole thing a very unorganized feel, and that's not something I'm used to from the folks at Brushwood (who are generally on top of things).

The other thing I loved was the Bellydance Showcase Ari (and our friend Laura) put together.  I also get to MC it.  How can you go wrong MC'ing an event full of hot women?  That's great.  The attendance was great too, they had fifty or so people show up, more than what showed up for the big concert going on at the same time that night.  The only downside was that it was held at 10:00 pm, in a location without any real lights.  Hopefully that'll change next year.  

In a lot of ways Summerfest felt like a continuation of Sirius Rising, which is the festival at Brushwood the previous week, and that was either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective.  I was hoping that it would be a little more Starwood-like:  midnight rituals, some parties, etc.  I can certainly understand Brushwood's desire to distance themselves from some of those elements** but to move away from all of them might be a mistake.

It was a good three weeks on the road, but right now I'm happy to be home.

*There are just certain things I do not like doing in port a johns.  It wasn't a deal breaker for me about going back, but no place can be my favorite campground without some flushers.

**People have constantly described Starwood as a "rave" for the past ten years.  I have never felt this description was accurate, or even close to accurate.  Starwood has attracted a few undesirables over the years, but the amount of parties and overall craziness has been exaggerated.