....thus is was the Rough Draft No. 48, the September 1990 edition of the 'Official Organ of the SF Cacophony Society', contained this listing:
Bad Day at Black Rock (Zone trip #4)
When: Labor Day weekend, September 1-3.
Where: Black Rock Desert, Nevada
An established Cacophony tradition, the Zone Trip is an extended event that takes us outside of our local area of time and place. On this particular expedition we shall travel to a vast, desolate, white expanse stretching onward to the horizon in all directions.... A place where you could gain nothing or loose everything and no one would ever know. A place well-beyond that which you think you understand. We will be accompanied by the Burning Man, a 40 foot tall wooden icon which will travel with us into the zone and there meet with destiny. This excursion is an opportunity to leave your old self and be reborn through the cleansing fires of the trackless, pure desert.
Activities include:
- The en-route ceremony of the caravan crossing into the Zone boundary. Bring with you something of symbolic value.
- Campsite erection in the tradition of modern dadaistic nomadic Gypsies.
- The construction of a brick oven for baking of bread.
- A group ritual requiring your participation to raise and immolate the Burning Man.
- Night-time viewing of relevant desert videos on a big screen.
- Semi-formal evening cocktail party with music. Bring your favorite CD's.
- Visit to a natural local hot springs
- Other activities as we make them up
This event is co-hosted by the Cacophony Society, Burning Man Committee, and the Black Rock Desert Rangers.
The notion of the 'Cacophony Zone Trip' was derived from Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, a beloved art-school film that features a mysterious Zone that looks like the rest of the world but in which bizarre, inexplicable things occur. A caravan of Cacophonists, about eighty people strong, drove east from San Francisco over the sheer but gorgeous Sierra Nevadas, through Reno, and arrived in the tiny village of Gerlach around daybreak. They enjoyed breakfast, and the stares of the locals, at Bruno's Restaurant, then went about twelve miles past town to an accessible turnoff onto the Black Rock Playa. John Law drove the Man in a rented Ryder truck.
They all got out of their cars. Michael Michael drew a line in the playa surface, and the Cacophonists walked over it. They were in a different place now. Reality had mutated because they had willed it thus. They had crossed into the Zone.
From Brian Doherty's book This is Burning Man∞
See also:
Cacophony Society∞
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