Take Me Back to the Ribbons

Biking the desert. Photo by EH

On Wednesday evening we (this is a no names sketch) cycled to the trash fence. This is in what is known as deep playa. In other words it is two or three kilometres from the city, beyond the Temple of Joy, where only one or two art installations are posted. Not many people venture out here (at least not at the same time), which is precisely why we had come, about an hour before sundown, to begin a journey that will stay with me as one of the most hilarious and mind stretching evenings of my life.

The mountains to the West were beginning to cast their formidable shadow on the vast, perfectly flat ancient seabed that is The Playa. The mountains to the East, which looked like they were created by an almightily hand that scooped up a handful of dust and let it fall slowly through a clenched fist, and which I imagined would crumble under even the slightest pressure from a human foot, were stroked by  the golden light of the late afternoon sun which retained much of its heat.

This is nowehere. Absolute nowhere. Photo by EH

They sky was still electric blue save for a small gathering of clouds making their way leisurely toward us from the South. The scene was beautifully alien and was about to become more so.

We dropped our bikes and sat in a circle and passed around a small brown vile which contained liquid LSD. A tentative and solitary drop was placed on the flap of skin between thumb and forefinger and then licked off. This was a nervous time for us all, being as we were, largely inexperienced with hallucinogenic drugs.

Not long afterwards my limbs started to feel slightly twitchy, or uncomfortable in the position I was sitting in, and a great pleasure was taken in stretching and moving them. The feeling of unease had long since vanished and been replaced by a quiet contentment.

Two of our party needed the toilet (bear with me on this anecdote!), which was a slight inconvenience as the nearest porta-potties were a long ride away through mounds of playa dust. Nevertheless things became desperate as it were, and I agreed to cycle with them. We set off and noticed some toilets about halfway between us and thTemple of Joy, which was a happy result for us all. We cycled along the path until it ran out, about 70 metres from the destination, at which point my two allies dropped their bikes and ran with all their might toward their goal. As I remained with my bike musing on the whimsical nature of the sight of those two strange creatures sprinting for a piss, I noticed them sprinting right back! They arrived breathless and more explosive than ever. I can only imagine the horror at running with ever increasing desperation which must have given way to an overwhelming sense of joy at the coming relief, only to find that doors were locked. Only then did they realise that the whole installation of 20 toilets was just that: an art installation – entirely two dimensional. 20 toilet doors to nowhere, in a row!!!

By the time we got back from the real potties the sun had dipped behind the mountains, the full moon was rising, and the colours I was seeing were burning much brighter than before. They were not necessarily different, but I could distinguish all the different hues and tones and palates that made up every single part of the multilayered, multicoloured evening sky; the clouds now pink with the sun’s rays cutting horizontally across them, and the silver lights being shed by the all too present moon. It was time to explore, and we decided to head in the general direction of anywhere.

The next ten hours were spent in a deeply exciting voyage of discovery. It was a physical exploration of the wonders and structures of the playa. It was an exploration of touch – everything felt new, as though touching it with fresh fingers. It was a visual exploration of colour, form, reality, and vision. It was a whole body exploration – the sensation of sitting or lying were completely altered, the way my body felt was wholly different. I could move and stretch in new, formerly unappreciated ways.

We came across a giant Rubik’s Cube suspended as if by invisible force in the black air. The squares of light were moving and I felt like I could control them by standing on a nearby podium and placing my hands on a coloured shield on which there were buttons (it later transpired that this was in fact the case!).

The Rubiks Cube. Photo by EH

There was a 10 metre long wall made of fractured mirrors which I ran around and around because to see the lights of the city in a broken reflection made me feel that it was not I, but the entire world that was revolving.

I spent an hour laughing uncontrollably with 100 others under a giant cube containing 1000s of tiny lights the size and shape of ping pong balls. The lights worked in sync and gave me the impression of lying just outside a huge cosmic nebula of stars that were flying around their universes of colour, and that I could touch and possibly enter that cloud if I just, reached, out, my, hand – but someone had thought of that and clever put a net in between us. This was before I realised there were 3D glassed to accompany the light show. Oh Good Lord.

And then we found: The Ribbons. In a camp toward the back of the city some clever sod had erected, in an S shape roughly 12 metres long, a net about 3 metres in the air and 1 metre wide. The edge of the netting was peppered with lights which may or may not have been changing colour – my eyes were more than making up for static lighting by now. Hanging from this net were thousands of long silver strips of ribbon than came down almost to the ground. They ran for the whole of the length of the S-shape.

As I lay on my back nearby, gazing at the moon and the rush of colours streaking through the thin cloud cover, I suddenly decided to walk through the field of ribbons which looked so pretty in the lights.

As soon as I parted the ribbons and entered I was not in the real world anymore, I was in an enchanted forest of green light and the silver trunks of trees of whose branches I was never to see. I was a child of the Brothers Grimm, I was fantasy, I was tiny in the great new world I had discovered. I used my arms to part the ribbons, or shards of light ahead of me and explored with wonder and dumbfoundedness. I felt completely surrounded, mystified and alone.

My time in that world ended and I was reborn into the real world with all its sights, noises and smells, as the last ribbon slipped from my forehead. I instantly yelled to my friends and thus the next two hours were spent discovering new universes inside the ribbons.

Occasionally I would meet a companion in the midst of their own visions; an unidentified form would appear in the foggy distance, until, right face to face, a moment of joyful recognition and hysterical laughter before continuing onwards with our own missions.

One time I went through and I saw myself reflected thousands of times in each ribbon. I was singing a song although I could not hear the music – yet the layered heads of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody music video sprang to mind. A vehicle of some sort parked near the ribbons distributing red light onto us. This changed everything. I was now swimming, actually swimming through deep red liquid while all around me bubbles were effervescing toward the surface and reaching the sky. Often times the wind would blow which changed the dynamic yet again; the ribbons were now horizontal as I struggled through a hail of metallic elements. Sometimes the wind would lift the ribbons completely above my head and I was rudely dumped in and exposed to a reality I had no wish to participate in. Instinctively my hands would raise upwards pleading with the ribbons and trying to pull the blanket of imagination back over my excited head.

At the end of each trip we would talk about what we had seen, contemplate leaving, and decide that one more adventure through the ribbons was probably necessary.

I have a piece of that ribbon in my backpack right now. As me and a friend curled up under my fur coat in a hammock we came across in a nearby camp, and watched the moon set and the sun rise, I would be lying if I told you otherwise than the conversation returned, not infrequently, to those magical ribbons!

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