Sunday, December 21, 2003

Winter Solstice: the shortest day of the year is challenging for those of us living on solar power:

Getting the systems ready for Mexico migration, I considered making this the first entry to that still-unused section of the eklektro.net website, accessible via the mainpage: The Philosophy of Gear: (under construction)
Philosophy, 'cause a lot of thought/consideration and testing/fine-tuning goes into mere SUBSISTENCE in an RV orbiting LA... let alone a self-contained solar-powered STUDIO... south of the border.
So when considering an exodus this winter, indeed outside the USA... via RV... seeking to complete the final push of finished-product work on my upcoming DVD, i'm preparing to stay down there for a succession of months... and the systems have got to be in perfect working order... with back-up systems... and stepping back and looking (and laughing) at it; it gets to be more and more like the space mission each and every day... transmission: to go where no RV has ever gone before... why? The Philosophy: Gear... for the sake of experimental on-location media: like the moon mission...
so indulge me in this ongoing analogy: RV as rocketship::

MID-DECEMBER's DIGITAL NOMAD... Revelations from behind the wheel
...like another (motor)home-cooked meal and a hot shower... in a parking lot somewhere between your urban chores and the beach... till security's kickin' you out and you're driving on, Live and Let Die-style till sometime after sundown your RV's a big dog circling slow before laying down at night, find some quiet safe space to sleep, inadvertently wake up early, start the engines with exciting uncertainties amplified day to day... orbiting LA!! :: yeah its OK (great!) to deal with the little logistical downsides of urban rootlessness when you've got the spring/summer/autumn SoCal weather and solar-power to energize you... but winter?
gotta' get OUT.

ie) the price of living mobile / remote / responsible, ultra-all of the above, all of the time, 24/7 urban intermittent exodus apocalypse desert island monolith motorhome affords willful isolation, fluctuating in and out of town like the tides, experimental taste-testings of anti-gravity: hollywood's (hallowed be thy name) potential for depravity, observed from safe distance: fireworks, or how fame and corruption equals mutation (and really bad role models)... from the mainstream (and even so-called underground)... ensuing media explosions and trickle-down dodging of space-junk... (an interesting past-time in the spring/summer/autumn... at one's leisure... but during the winter?)
gotta' get OUT.

surfing SoCal's diverse and often harsh atmospheres, salmon swimming upstream? or rather lab-rats seeking to dissect the strange equation of stardom, art/starvation/temptation on the tip of the tongue: techno (and Ravers, we've been GONE from the get-go) and with tougher techno toys, making pirate noise, kinda outside society kinda thing, or at least truckdriver king of my modest mobile domain today, a RIG after all... and "over and out" hollered over pseudo CB radio, over the wind, stopping only to guzzle up at the pump, love a good truckstop, love to be in motion... and when stopped/camped/beached (still floating)? For a fleeting moment TODAY i think i physically FELT the lack of root (fixed "apartment" or "house"... Holidaze? or did it have to do with the weather?: last taste of mid-70's mid-December and kinda Santa Ana breezy). warm, yet artificial, a warning? I felt it, like detecting a mild earthquake, feeling one'self mildly afloat... vertigo? ... something like it? or rather, a perception... an urge... ....a data analysis.... a seasonal signal: flashing in the back of my sometimes black and white animal-dream mind, interrupts me... chewing, staring into space, sixth sense: translate: Its time to MIGRATE...
gotta' get OUT.

...or at least there's an uproot impending... alone or by herd, a brontosaurus bird: a motorhome taking flight paints funny pictures, funny words: "cosmonaut" sounds a bit too much like comrade, or comedy... "astronaut"? too potentially beaurocratic, and while constitutionally-speaking I'm a hard-core patriot, i prefer dolphin to hawk or dove, politically leaning Libertarian, i prefer perception that we are all fellow space travelers essentially. we all chart our own waters, and while we should always throw a line to someone who is legitimately drowning, government at most should serve as lifeguard only. we must all first learn to swim, and then set out to responsibly keep ourselves afloat. and if i seek to be exemplary, it is as a VEHICLE, for others also seeking to escape the artificiality; and if you want i'm sure i could provide proof: yes, the RV has become me. i am a re-creational vehicle. and perhaps the migrational urge is a virulent strain of technometeorological-INSTINCT that i've developed (start the engines), like a more complex (some may say stifled) sense of smell...(grey-water tank leaking) i can't tell, but i know that the experience has changed me, running on rechargeable batteries (astrology in retrograde) and solar, and i seek further, unlimited options, the unbearable lightness of being, and i say this after 5 years full-time on the road... not a bad deal, all told. Its time to show my hand.

OBSERVATIONS OF A DIGITAL NOMAD:
(miscellania that'll all in some way make it to the DVD... thematically):
whether streetside, off-road or beachside (a "sweet ride")...as this sleeker version of turtle-shell / live-in vehicle affords ("rent-free"? incredibly expensive actually!... to the point of sacrificial...); we (me+RV+anybody who rides with me) are jettisoned at will and oracle-poised upon a rotating cultural observation deck of sorts...a panoramic view perhaps, in that we're solar and wireless, off the grid, pancakes on the griddle while driving and i like to see it in the eyes of those who ride with me sometimes...fresh sunrise and making coffee in the Mojave... a clean desert horizon, envisioning: opportunity: north/south/east/west... in that our RV's front porch changes every day... its either Close Encounters of the Third Kind landing party descending down the runway... urban, in-person... vs. virtual: telecommunications, like Lost in Space; or in-between: an LA impersonal kinda Seaworld, a rush hour behind car window glass, airtight, aquariummmed... the ways in which i/we see the alien species... a subspecies of that which was the ancestry of me: all languishing afloat, watch em flip and do tricks.... and sometimes if they'd swim in, perhaps i'd feed em from the digital kitchens, all's i needs is a bit of kitchen help: co-educational, a kid's TV show, a field trip, won't you be my Raver/neighbor, Mister Rogers meets Buck Rogers... Speed Racer, spouting techno terminology and radical beats, DV cam feed from the cockpit/pulpit... Eklektro video-RadioShow: wireless transmission, and fool-hardy enough to believe any of this makes any difference... awareness? food-chain? all eyes on the same dream? would this be capitalism if i was to suggest we seize the day? The Transgressor: E>K>G : go ahead: or at least try to keep up with me

in a 5 year scheme of things, EKLEKTRO.NET is "almost" ready to launch the new systems content...
closing in on DVD release, a space-oddity perhaps, coming in for a landing this spring, in orbit with E>K>G, alter ego Transgressor and associates Systemsoular... and Naoism, and many more... all independent transceivers in campground / concert... kicking off in a land where its often still legal to do so: may we suggest Mexico?

though i know most of my friends aren't gonna be ready to spring on out in January, if it turns out this way, then perhaps its best i get down there solo and get to work anyway... But what about February? what about making it a big collaborative experiment? i find the beach... the lawless Mexican stretch of sand. the proximity to essentials like internet... I send back salvos, and people karavan on down... or take a cheap bus... and we all live and work and create and relax for a couple/few weeks... and document the experiment... and then i either finish the editing or no regreso... no return... Its a do-or-die DVD... So, ETA back to the USA... April...?