It's useful for me to categorize most experiences I have as either Adventures: things that you personally have done and, Myth: things that other people have done, that are then told to others.
The Adventurer is the only one that knows what exactly happens on their Adventures and Myths are based loosely on these Adventures. My memory isn't perfect, nor is anyone else's, so all Myths are false to a point. To think of it, attempting to make Myth into History is just another form of control. A form of control that really doesn't need to actually happen.
Once basic necessities in life are met, it's best to go on as many Adventures as possible - as many as you're privileged to do so, so you can create more myths to share. This entry is about going on an Adventure: and the adventure is nothing but a slide talk jam-thing: where everyone was to tell everyone else a Myth of their own. I just so happened to be one of those people, out of around 10 or so.
Another guideline in creating an Adventure is to get in situations that are new to you, but have some sort of root in something you've already done. This is, in essence: Traveling. Starting point and ending point - but the ending point is unknown. You're almost always in the middle of it and that's where interesting things happen.
In this case, it was talk I had done a week before at a different venue - the Denver Pecha Kucha, but it was to a different audience - this new talk was with people I really didn't know very well.
The Pecha Kucha talk was with people I knew and had worked with, done other talks with and helped in collaboration with community-oriented art shows.
This second talk at Ignite Boulder #4 was an invite via a secret email mailing list. I will be getting to why this is important very soon.
So, earlier that day, I ride up to Boulder on my bicycle - and visit the campus of my former college (CU Boulder), where the talk was to take place. It's a college where I basically dropped out of and wasn't during a very happy part of my life. The room was the same room I took some bullshit class in my first semester - something like Environmental Geography - which, I can't remember anything from. You wonder why I dropped out.
My talk was about a few things (you can see the entire slide show here). The first was about my love of going around countries via bicycle self-supported and how I find its complementary to the creative process. I'll let my art and my life speak for themselves about how successful that is.
The other part of the talk was how going around countries via bicycle self-supported, wasn't enough excitement: that instead of resting, it would be fun to get off my bicycle and do multi-day hikes called, Tramps. And this one time, I almost died doing all that, because I got stuck in a flash flood for days.
Like anything - like this very talk - like what this very talk was about, when you get into something you've never done before, you're bound to make some silly mistakes and it's a great asset to know how to laugh at yourself when you make silly mistakes.
What happened at this talk? This very night?
My twenty slides were all out of order, as soon as the talk started.
So you tell the slide DJ-Guy, the Emcee - the one guy basically paid to be there and make sure things run smoothly:
"My slides are out-of-order"
And they sort of shrug. And go,
"Meh... Eh,"
And you're facing this many people:
None of whom, you actually know. You realize at this point, you are not in safe waters.
I hate talking about Internet life. Mostly, because I find it banal. I think when I was much younger, the Internet was very much important to me - to the point where, it was the center of my world. I didn't really understand other people and wasn't curious to start knowing them. The abstraction the computer made was what I honestly required and probably became an addiction. I became ever more curious and learned the technology behind it and thus, a larger and larger source of new fuel was found. My basic right of curiosity was coupled with an intense fear of actually connecting to someone, but with a computer? It's a one-way conversation, as far as I was concerned and it was all: ME ME ME.
And then, I moved on.
And now, it's a fun little tool for things, but all these new things coming out just seem very much like toys. And, that's fine - I like playing with toys, but they're not my life. I can pick them up, I can put them down. They make life a little funner, sometimes, but hell if it's going to be something I'll revolve around. I do work, Internet-related stuff, but when work is over, it's over. It's life. It's not work.
But even if you've moved on, other people haven't. The people in this audience were really into this stuff. Why are they? I think it's because in the setting where they work, it belongs in the ecosystem: messages passed back and forth via your computer or your phone - no need to actually talk to someone - it's all strictly business. What's the bottom line? What's the need for all this ceremony and culture wrapped around it? It makes things slower. Less efficient. More costly. I don't want to know these people around me, anyway. I probably don't even like this job. Why am I here? No time to answer -
Move away from this setting and these tools become extremely useless. It's what I learned, when I'm away on long trips: what you really need. You really don't need a computer. And I'm talking basic survival. I'm talking about making meaningful connections with new friends. I'm talking about traveling and adventures and creating Myths. Having adventures.
So now, not only am I attempting to do a talk - a talk that's fucking burning in flames behind me in mixed-up slides, there's a live feed to a service called Brightkite and all it's doing is showing text messages people are sending to some special hoopie-doodle computer burning you, while you're talking, in Real Time:
And then you sort of realize, this is not the type of talk I want to do. There's 450-some-odd strangers and it's you on one side and they're on the other. It's like I have to be on defense, while talking. There was no feeling that the audience wanted me to succeed, as I felt while doing Pecha Kucha.
Now, I know the guy from Brightkite. I think he's a really great person. But, I don't know if having a auto-updating wall of comments while someone is talking is really all that good of an idea. Your asking the audience member to multi-task, which is basically a myth. Look: someone is typing away, looking at a screen, which means, they're not really paying attention to the speaker and other people in the room will look up, and instead of paying attention to the speaker, they will then read what some person in the audience is saying. And then, reply. Why is the speaker in the room? This is the same thing people do, home, alone, on their computers.
It's the same thing people do at coffee shops, as their annoying friend, that's actually - physically there is waiting for them to finish up, so they may continue their finite lives in actually physical/breathable/touchable reality.
There were so many things off at this night. It seemed strange that some of the slides where stamped with corporate logos - as if the talk was branded.
Many of the talks were about making fun of the guilty pleasures we all like to partake in - and perhaps take in too much - yet didn't give any sort of alternative. Just reveled in it. Just, masturbation.
A lot of the talks were just about the old rat race and succeeding. I felt sick, at one point. As a talk, I'm not sure anything was getting anywhere. I wanted to go somewhere on my talk, but it's hard to do so, when you're narrative is torn to shit. Wrong room, man, I was in the wrong room.
Not that I really minded. If you travel enough, the way I do, you're bullet proof. My feelings weren't hurt, I just wish the crowd was a little less anonymous and wanted to go somewhere with me, instead of acting as if I was just another sprite on yet, another screen.
Sometimes a little randomness ala John Cage is a good thing. And, I stumbled through and totally lost the, "I got stuck in the middle of a river during a flash flood for three days and this is how art got me through some tough shit" narrative. Which I guess is everyone's loss, except mine. I know the Adventure and they lost out on the Myth. Without their help, we all made a new one: I FAILED.
People have made their minds to make technology rule their lives. They chose the Fresh Prince of Bell-Air theme song, done in Olde English as a slide talk. And, that's their choice.
What I realized on that stupid fucking island, cold, shivering, without any sort of shelter and having my mind wander between, "I'm going to die" to, "I'm going to kill myself" is what was important to my life: People.
People that I've fallen in love with and people I have yet to fall in love with - or have even met. Friends that are actually and truly there for you - how entirely small that pool is.
I realized how horrible I was at being a lover and a friend in the past and that people around me also were in this conundrum, but we all, as a mixed up bunch of imperfect beings - had a little bit of hope that we could be better at it - that if we can just be honest and allow ourselves to apologize and accept apologies we'd be all better off. And that some of us are trying. And sometimes, sometimes it takes almost dying to appreciate what it really means to really live.
And this isn't something I will really ever relay on a 20, 15 second-per-slide, slideshow to 450 people at a time openly criticizing me in Real Time; or 140 characters via a cellphone to a web server somewhere.
That investing great amounts of time to shoehorn ourselves to use these technologies and methods almost exclusively (keyword, there) is a step backwards - computer applications are making us think like computers think and that's stressful. It's an additional layer of abstraction between your heart and someone else's. It's another excuse to not really be a whole person, but be happy to be broken, with shit job in an unfair world, surrounded by people who don't actually love you. And that's I guess, all some of us know.
The break in the middle of the talks happened and I decided to go out for some fresh air. A women comes up to me.
She says, "Hey, I like bikes too - and bike touring, what kind of bike do you have?"
And I tell her, "A Black One"
And she says - somewhat put off by my new-found disillusion, "Oh, I'm sorry if you don't want to talk about bikes, so..."
And I tell her, "No! no - let me show you my bicycle - it's just outside."
And I do. We take a walk. It's refreshing. I hate sitting still for too long. And I tell her it's no big thing, just black. Beat up. But, it's mine and I take it places. It's been around the world. Almost. And then, she shows me hers.
And it's beautiful. Power Coated blue/violet with well-thought details and she tells me about the tours she's been on and how she likes to camped on farms and in graveyards. She's excited about it all. Someone here, I find, is truly alive. And she shares her love for climbing hills and mountains, which is something I love to do, as well.
I say, "Can I take a picture of you and your bike?" And she says yes,
We talk for a little bit, then return to this giant, claustrophobic room. I decided that we needed to hang out some more and go on bike rides and extremely important things like that, so I told myself: find that girl when this stupid fucking thing is over and see if she's game and give her a way to contact you.
And when another round of empty and worthless talks are over - one's that reiterate some sort of wild-fire Internet meme and composed by the speaker, entirely on a screen (screens! More Screens), I turn around and she's gone. So, I decide to leave a note on her bike. But, after finishing the note, walking to her bike I realize the bike is gone too.
Sometimes, you know, that's how it is. Important people in your life can be fleeting and it's not really the time you spend with them - the amount, that is, but that you actually did spend some sort of time with them. That that person - the only person to do so, said, "Hello" and decided to share just a little bit of themselves to you and out of the entire crowd - the entire joint, one person connected with you. Not as some bullshit "friend"ing on a website - which amounts to nothing but a new row in a RDMS database, but just with a smile and a few sentences.
Then, good-bye.
It's something that's not time stamped, or tagged; not something able to be geo-located, rated or consumed in a vast electrical field that spans the globe, making us want more and more plastic, consumable and on a schedule to self-destruct at the most inconvenient times as they ever so slowly burn up our natural resources and monuments - places where Adventures happen -
It belongs now to myth - not history. Not to the consumable history of empty connections, coming to the flashpoint of absurdity.
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