Burning Man 2006… Pics and Video!

Holy shit that was an incredible burn! Many people I spoke with seem to share the sentiment… and not just the people in my immediate camp!

I had planned to post a full play-by-play of the event like I did last year but I got so much good footage here I decided to just let it speak for itself.

Picture Gallery:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seventhswami/BurningMan2006
be sure to click where it says “See All” at the bottom…
(there are 228 pics altogether)

Video Gallery:
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=seventhswami
23 videos in all… don’t miss pages 2 and 3… 

I’d like to extend a special “thanks” and plentiful hugs to all my friends who came along and camped with me this year… Brandon, Misty, Emily, Jonah, Richard and Seb… I want to thank Jay Schnieder for being so awesome to hang out with and so handy with the SD-card readers and extra water… I want to thank Camp WantIt for being so goddamn fun to be around and for this “I played spin the bottle” pin… I wanna thank Raja and everyone in the Specialists camp for letting me play… I wanna thank Ka Pilina for letting us wreck a mic or two… and I also want to thank whoever came up with “Pimp My Pottie”…. that shit was so funny…. I’ve never seen such a beautiful porta-pottie…

some of my favourite scenes from the week:

I *heart* Gypsies

Uchronia

Ooah and company at Lost Prophet…

Huge Dust Storm

War of theWorlds?

Conexus Cathedral

Uchronia at Night

“Water Gun Cam”

Chillin @ Camp

AMAZING art

Good-Ass-Times… Good-Ass-Friends!

My FAVORITE photo of the WEEK!

Miracle Grow

Hydraulic Spider

The Temple of Hope burns

ME bitch!

Namasté,
=)~S

Love Infusion (Lovefest Afterparty)

HOLY SMOKES this was a nice surprise… Tantra, Opel, EvilBreaks and  The Ambient Mafia will be throwing Love Infusion… their LoveFest After Party. So if you are there on Sept 23rd (and I expect most of you WILL) be sure to come out to the patio and say hi. The mafia going to great lengths to make this a lush downtempo experience and I will go to great lengths to make sure you go home with a nice swami aftertaste. =) take that however you want…

More Wilderbeats Pics

The view from the bluff is just insane

Wilderbeats… host to the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen

look at those bands of color on the horizon… even these pics can do no justice

like a painting or something i swear

mwuaah!

They sneak up behind you when you least expect it

“A Different Spin”… these guys fucking rule!

up up and away

quick get the dildo!

Auger…. “Submarine-Dog”

Are those Menthols in your sarong or are you just happy to see me?

Chai and the five fingers of doom

Kinda like Sasha and Digweed if S&D were like… good…. and hot… and like… good.

These outfits will be dope for “Wilderbeach!” (stay tuned)

“I don’t eat meat but I’ll cook the shit for you”

BCB camp in all it’s splendor!

COOK BITCH!

i think we went through 10 packages of bacon or so

Mo-Marys in production

Mr Rogers and Athena learning the joy of bacon and cake

Cold Chillin

Hot Bacon

My fellow culinary master

Sal…. Hey SAL!… SAL!!!… nevermind. =)

How you gonna wreck it like this SONNN???

Perfect campfire

El Fuego

El Riznah and El Praxis

Morgan w/ hoop… i didn’t know you hooped Morgan?

Misty and the original Swambat

O.G. Riznah artwork

New Riznah dopeness

Wilderbeats 06 and More Wild Dreaming

Well that was one of the highlights of my year thus far. Wilderbeats 06 turned out to be more than a party… marking some sort of a “circle of completion” or catharsis for many of us. For me, it was the 1 year anniversary of my first solo gig and the 1 year anniversary of meeting many of my favorite people on earth… my burning man family… Returning to this secluded Forest Hill location turned out to be very special. I was especially touched that people planned the hours of operation for the Bloody Cake ‘n’ Bacon camp so that they would not miss my 1:30 set. Amazing friends i tell you. And let me tell you what i learned about cake and bacon…. mmmmm-MMMMMM BITCH!!! THAT’S what I learned!!! That was seriously the tastiest fucking combination… EVER.

I’m serious.

Just like at Burning Man I was plauged by crazy dreams at night. After drinking it up and helping set up camp on Friday night I fell asleep and dreamed that I was at the party but going through many anxiety-based-scenarios… not the least of which was falling down and tearing my shirt… bloodying up my torso… the kind of rough-ass dream that you wake up from 3 times throughout the night in a sweat…

When I woke up the first time I swear i was in the middle of monster anxiety attack. Why does travelling always induce this kind of dreaming for me? I think it’s weird that at Burning Man I had a dream that my father was dying right in front of me in a rite-aid and now, almost a year later, I come home from this camping trip full of heavy dreams and find out my father is going into surgery on wednesday because he may have cancer of the bladder or something… they’re not sure yet… Fan-fucking-tastic… 

There have always been weird synchronicities surrounding the idea of my father dying. When I was in Peru on my Ayahuasca journey I had a dream one night that I saw my father die and then my teeth starting falling out… just sorta getting loose at the roots at first…  NOT a fun dream to have… Well after Burning Man i picked up a book called Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck. In one chapter Daniel is staying with a shaman just like I was and had a dream that his teeth were falling out. When asked what it could mean the shaman replied “ah this dream means that your father has died.”

Of course my father hasn’t croaked yet but the ring of synchronicity there is just bizarre… how about the fact that Daniel Pinchbeck himself was hosting a few lectures AT Burning Man last year… the very day after I had the rite-aid father-dying dream. If I had thought of it then I would’ve gone to talk to him about it but i hadn’t seen the connection there yet…

well anyhow….

Wilderbeats was rocking fucking times… I’m sorry to do injustice to it by tangenting off into my dreams there because if i could give Wilderbeats the blog entry it deserves it would be a montage of beautiful people… vibrating trees… writhing dancers… clapping butt-cheeks… exploding taste buds… broken sunglasses… dildos and antlers…. highway debauchery… growling beasts in bushes… sunsets on mars… rattle-bears with sharks for hands… submarine dogs with propeller tails…. snakes in front of liquor stores… screaming teary-eyed vixens and He-Man wearing cop sunglasses and a fanny pack.

But I can’t do all that so here’s some pictures instead:

my heart was last seen here

Cake and Bacon… together at last (tecate optional)

be good to the help… or they will hit you with a dildo in your sleep

Dirt can’t resist the taste sensation that is Mo-Mary
(Mo’s special Bloody Mary recipe) 

Morgan and I discussing the logistics of getting faded in the early AM.

I still don’t understand how two Hosa cables went bad on me in one
weekend… see that yellow connector hanging off my mixer? That’s a
fucking playstation RCA cable i carry in my bag that I always
knew would come in handy.

Swami O-My-Gami

you would not guess from this picture that these two bastards are invincible

Show us your game face bitches!!!!

Everything’s Better With Bacon

nothing in this world would make me happier right now than a baked potato with butter, sour cream and chives and lots and lots of bacon pieces crumbled up in it.

Goddamn I can almost smell it!

Ok honestly it’s the bacon pieces I’m really after here… you can keep the rest.

This weekend is gonna be great. At Wilderbeats my friends and I are going to host a theme camp… a la burning man… and the theme is “Bloody Cake ‘n’ Bacon”… which stands for Bloody Marys and Bacon-Wrapped-Chocolate-Cake-Pieces.

Original? Yes. Foolish? Yes. Tasty? Well that remains to be seen but Mo and Phyllis who rightfully stole this idea from a brilliant white trash camp at Burning Flipside swear to it’s deliciousness. Yes that’s a word.

So if seeing SeventhSwami and Algorhythm this weekend wasn’t enough reason for you to come to Wilderbeats this weekend, now you have this to look forward to. (Forest Hill area… email me for more info).. oh and i hear someone will have a spinning dildo-copter hat… so you got that going for you as well…

Oh and I designed a few shirts (shown above and below) for us… So if you arrive early enough to get while the gettin’ is good I might have some iron-on prints or stickers left for you to help commemorate the day you ate ambrosia.

Dope

Stilldream Set

For those of you who asked for a recording of the breaks set I played at Stilldream, here is the mp3 you’ve been waiting for!

SeventhSwami Breaks Set @ Stilldream 2006:
http://resynthesize.com/seventhswami/SD6_Seventhswami.mp3
(right-click and download)

This is the full 90 minutes. Much thanks to Marc Schneider for being so on top of the sound and recording! Buko-props to Michael (aka: Redstickman) for letting me go apeshit with the breaks in the chill area… thanks to Brandon (Resynthesize) for hosting… and of course thanks to all of you who came to listen and to dance!

Scenes From a Weird Evening

During Dinner At My Mother’s Place:

Me: I gotta go Ma… I’m meeting a friend.
Mom: Boy or Girl?
Me: Girl.
Mom: Where?
Me: Downtown.
Mom: She is hooker?!

At The Gas Station By My House:

Man Talking to Himself (but for other people’s benefit) While Pumping Gas Into a Beat Up Convertible 90s Oldsmobile and Obviously High on Some Manner of Meth: All right man….. heh…. yeah….. got a full tank of gas…. a pocket full of cash….. fuckin twelve pack…. ha…. (replaces pump handle and gets in his car while watching me out of the corner of his eye) ready to party man…. let’s go to the strip club! AWRIGHT!!! (starts the engine and peels out with one wheel… out of the gas station parking lot… all the way up the street with the rear shocks dippin’)

Some Corner Facing West In Midtown:

Bicycling Asian Girl I Almost Ran Over: …..  (sees life flash before eyes)
Me: …..  (whispering: “Sorry…”)

How to Catch a Zebra

After much thought and careful planning, I’ve figured out how we’re going to catch and eat this zebra. And by “we”, I mean you and me because I will need an extra set of hands. I have prepared a detailed step-by-step plan, with illustrations, which I have outlined below… please take a moment to consider this operation and daydream about the tasty goodness that we will reap, should we follow through with it.

1) Click our heels three times and go to Africa… or at least buy 2 round-trip tickets and fly there.

2) Dig a large hole in the Serengeti underneath the shade of a tree.

3) Sink a large deep-fryer into this hole, making sure it sits flush with the ground… we will probably have to build this ahead of time which means you’ll have to pay for shipping this thing to Africa, as I am currently short on funds

4) Fill the fryer full of peanut oil and heat it to a boiling temperature. Everybody knows that when you deep-fry a turkey, it locks in all the moisture and flavor… I don’t see why the same wouldn’t hold true for our striped friend…

5) We will cover this with loose twigs and leaves so that it will be hidden.

6) Now we must bait this thing by hanging the Zebra’s favorite food from the tree by a string…(After several days of research I have determined that Zebras like nothing more than Fruit-Stripe Gum… it even has a picture of a zebra on the package! see exhibit-A.)

7) Now we sit back and wait… I recommend bringing a shade-structure and possibly a Game-Boy or something comparable… this might take a while. Rest assured, however, animals fall for this kind of thing all the time… just look at how many dinosaur bones they’ve found in tar-pits…

When we hear the splash, we run up and cover the thing with our giant lid then we wait a few more hours… play a few rounds of tetris… Perhaps this would be a good time to prepare our appetizer and side-dishes. If anyone wants to bring some bacon-wrapped shrimp, I am totally down with that.

9) Turn off the deep fryer and hoist our dinner out. Carve and serve….

As you can see, this plan is infallible. If you have any idea how to make this any easier or more enjoyable, I am open to suggestion. If you have any ideas as far as side-dishes, garnishes, or if you are a saucier, let me know also.