Liz Baumann

Four years ago I had a dream which I only vaguely remember now, but I wrote it down in a dream diary. The next entry in this diary is on 3/5/11, and I started keeping the diary in 1994. Yesterday I was looking up another more recent dream and stumbled on this one again. I thought about my experiences over the past year and it made me see this dream in a completely new light.

In January of this year (2011) I first started working with LEDs and other electronics. December 2010 was when I first got the idea to do this; before then it was nowhere present in my consciousness. I frequently have problems with my LEDs flickering and/or not working and it is extremely frustrating because I haven’t had much success in figuring out what is wrong; I replace lights and wires and they still won’t cooperate. I also broke someone else’s lights recently, and I want to remedy that.

Here is my dream from 9/27/07:

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“My lights don’t work!”
I woke up trying to say this loudly. My dream had ended with me turning on lights in my bedroom (different layout but with some lights like in the guest bedroom). The lights wouldn’t light up, and I felt it was due to the bulbs (obvious) yet at the same time, felt frustrated that I was always changing the bulbs, yet the lights were always burning out the bulbs quickly. When I tried to speak the words in the dream, my voice didn’t want to work either, which is why in life I spoke it loudly and forced.

Also in the dream, before turning on lights I was trying to hit the wall for some reason, and my impacts seemed unfocused and I could barely feel it and I figured the wall could barely feel it. And before that, I was with some others, it was kind of half first-person and half third person, but I was wanting to listen to some certain music (Heart, CCR?) and my partner/boyfriend/husband wanted to listen to something else, and there were others there too. This half-self sort of pissed off the others; another different first person of me saw this and wondered, possibly out loud, why I/she didn’t listen on headphones and take a break from the situation (and him too) and not only would we both get to listen to what we wanted but also would have the benefit of a break.

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Some notes I made at the time after thinking about this dream:
The earlier part (about the lights) I woke with the feeling of being numb, fading. Wonder if it has to do with (if dreams have meaning) my wanting to not be in people’s way, or just a feeling of fadedness or lack of interest or something. Yesterday I almost caused a head-on collision at a confusing intersection while driving.

In my last post I promised to spill why my burner name is “Sparks”. There are a bunch of reasons:

• This spring I had a dream I was camping alone and was able to light a fire but then had no fuel to put on it*
• One day a couple months ago my friend Malina, in complete seriousness, asked me if I had her spark. (She wanted to do an Ignite Boulder presentation and they call the topic summary a “spark”; she couldn’t find her copy from before. I of course knew I would have it, and I did.)
• I’ve found 2 lighters since June (fuel)
• My obsession with sparkler painting this July 4 (one of those lighters came at exactly the right time for that)
• My interest in lighting up clothes, bikes etc.
• I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve sparked at least one relationship between other people
• I need to be careful around people who are dynamite with a short fuse
• Various people using the word spark around me and/or saying I sparked some thought for them
• Let’s just say, it takes one to know one
• more that I won’t say, have forgotten, or haven’t learned yet… it seems almost daily the word surfaces or there’s a metaphor or song or some other new reason

Does that spark anything for you?

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*The dream mentioned above was interesting in its own right so I’ll tell the whole story:
I had a dream I was camping alone and was able to light a fire but then realized I had no fuel to put on it, leaving me to helplessly watch it smolder. Then I realized that I should have put up my tent beforehand; now it was dark, cold and starting to rain. I got the tent up only to find I was camping somewhere off-limits and had to move. Now I was at my wits end, feeling very hopeless… but then there was a voice (my power animal?) pointing out that I had a car which I could put my things in and which would provide temporary shelter, and that was enough comfort to make me go on.

Post-dream analysis:
In waking life I was feeling pretty inadequate about something so the dream fit there and really made an impression. After I thought about it for a few days I felt the part about my car was telling me to spend time in Denver not just Boulder. At Apogaea this summer we started setting up camp and then were told we couldn’t camp on that spot and had to move.

For weeks I’ve been telling myself I should have finished this post by now. I think I’m still trying to decide how I feel about having gone to Burning Man. Maybe I should just list a bunch of random thoughts.

Burn In

• I suspect you can only really know what it’s like by going. I’m glad I went. The official Burning Man website, Wikipedia or Google can tell you what the event is all about in general.
• I met totally awesome people at my camp. I had several deep and meaningful conversations with new friends; that is one of the things I look forward to in this community.
• Like when you go hiking in a beautiful place, almost no one was grumpy. There was a couple fighting outside my tent one night (“Listen to me! Listen to me!” Then silence … he was listening, so then why didn’t she talk? LOL), but that was the only negativity I can remember personally.
• Having some sort of purpose there is important. I helped out with an art project and also our camp setup/takedown.
• I didn’t see all the art on the playa. I didn’t go down all the streets. I didn’t see all my friends who were there. You can probably replace “didn’t” with “couldn’t” and these statements don’t lose any accuracy.
• In spite of being about radical self-expression, I found myself feeling a little withdrawn. I missed my electronic connections, especially Facebook, my primary outlet for making cryptic comments, airing deep thoughts and cracking stupid jokes. When the rest of the 50,000 or so people got to the playa I realized I might as well put my phone away, plus I thought it might be good for me to just give it up for a week and so I did. I think I would have been alright if I’d thought up something to replace it with. But I didn’t, and so in some sense I withdrew a little.
• Adding to that, I found the weather/climate very uncomfortable, especially in the day: hot, dry and very dusty – and this was a “good” year. In a way the whole thing was like a big party; I enjoy but am not a big partier. I was there early and left late. 11 days of uncomfortable partying is too long for me for.
• I did really enjoy going out at night wearing all sorts of light-up stuff and seeing other people’s illuminated creativity and seeking out good music. Disorient, Space Cowboys, Bass Couch and the Robot Heart… The last time I found the Robot Heart it was on the move, and I was one of dozens of people on bikes, pedaling along on the port side. It reminded me of how dolphins follow a boat. So then I wondered if the sound which boats make as they motor by is like the house/psytrance music from the Robot Heart. I’ll choose to believe that.
• I already had a burner name in mind for myself and on the way out there explained to some of my campmates and one of them started calling me that: “Sparks”. More on that in some other post

Burn Out

• As I’ve wondered whether I can wash suede, sussed out how to clean my suitcases, and was rearranging the dust in and around my pickup the other day, I mused about why people burn so much there. And was reminded of what a trailwork friend from California said after he’d been working around poison oak – that he would wash his clothes in the fireplace.
• Being in some kind of funk after the burn is all too common. I felt a little like I’d been in a plane that someone else had been driving and they’d suddenly left and left me at the controls. Several people I know came down with physical illnesses. Socially it sounds like we’re walking on shifting sands. It can feel like a hangover. I didn’t get sick, but I felt depressed. Now I’ve mostly got control of the plane again, but it still has a few dips and swoops. But maybe it’s better that way; don’t want to get too comfortable.
• Those feelings notwithstanding, it WAS worthwhile, I’m real glad I went and I do hope to do it again sometime. Just more comfortably and/or not for so long. Maybe next year, maybe not. If they continue to limit ticket sales, I might prefer to imagine my ticket in the dusty hands of someone who’s never gone before. We’ll see. Shifting sands…

Burning Man 2011: black flowers before the temple

More photos on Flickr.