Rhythmic euphoric drizzles from a gracious soon to be sunny sky introduced and convened fifteen thousand people together this past weekend at Oak Canyon Ranch for Lightning in a Bottle 2012. Stages, temples, sculpture, color, mandalas, lights, tents and teepees were spread across the landscape, creating a parallel planet of swirling music nature spirits senses [...]

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Every single person brought their own brand of magic. Some magic was flamboyant fun and uplifting, and some magic—like the people having sex in the Temple of Consciousness with kids dancing around three feet away, or the dudes who told me they took two hours to sneak in over the hill so that they could find “E” and did I have any—creeped me out. The festival itself was a canvas sculpture dreamworld of people going for it, being unique, finding their childlike expression and spreading what is possible once we rid ourselves of standards or social norms, put faith in the religions of Expression Experience and Eccentricity, worship through rave, and leave the critical eye at the ranch’s dusty entrance.

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Kim Fowley once famously recommended Hollywood as a place for the cynical who’ve fouled their nests elsewhere. While it’s impossible not to marvel at the agglomeration of shitheels hoofing it in this basin, few can remain cynical around the fellow’s female entourage, most of which were running rampant at his Lipstick Orgy extravaganza at the Knit last Wednesday, the 20th. The tall and glowering host, father of a hundred chart hits across the decades and busy these days as ever, left briefing details to Christie Blood, the entirely delightful mistress-of-ceremonies for further cozening. Fowley’s shows always remind me of mid-1960s A.I. P. joint Dr. Goldfoot & the Bikini Machine, in which Vincent Price attempts to conquer the world with an elite force of pulchritudinous chickbots molded to every kink in ruling-class chauvinistic taste.

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