Thursday June 17th, 1999 9pm - on

(the e-mail gods are frowning upon me and after meticulously honing the
last missive, all that got sent out was the character '9.'  so ok, from
memory, we try again.)

as many of you know I often have to prostitute my skills down in the great
arid southland; yes Hollywood calls and I run, often tripping all over
myself, trying to make some money, trying to survive and what's left at the
end becomes the abstrakt zone.  this is a point of stress: there may come a
time in which I am trapped by my work, my success and my obsession.  so
this time the thank you's are all the more sweet as I have been working
down south and without the help of some great friends the zone would not
have happened.  thanks to my homeboy Paul who came in early to plug in the
gear, to my homegirl cate who dealt with the food, to Steve who illuminated
the space with candles and to the others who came early to help out.
special thanks to Rick walker, percussive maestro who subdivided the night
with rhythm and noise, to the tantric raccoons who brought their nine eyed
monster which is part of a larger work called 'SMART: sex, money, art,
reality, and truth,'  to sigi (who is also the zone's web mistress) for her
erotically charged projections, to pat for the real time interactive
mandala (real paint!), to jim for the time traveling stereoscopic
photographs and to the naked guy, who was that...you know a party gonna be
good when someone shows up without their clothes on.

at one point someone asked me why I do this.  well

 the abstrakt zone is my obsession.  
many years ago out at burning man, I was impressed by the
absolute altruism and creative willingness of all that I met.  I fell in
love with this vibe and I wanted to bring it home, make it part of my daily
life.  I guess that is what the zone is; informed by harkem bey's TAZ,
herman hesse's dream theater, and the hive, as mentioned 'in my dinner with
andre,' it is, as someone said to me, a sandbox for adults.  

it is a place to play and dream, to dance and express, to give and receive.  
so what exactly that pulls me into it? 

 first of all I wanted to invite as many
interesting and creative individuals to my home on a consistent basis and
give this group a base of community, secondly to provide a space for
unusual interaction, thirdly to create a web of interrelated but disparate
events and lastly (and probability most importantly) to explore how to give
permission for interaction and improvisation with out expressly requesting
it (though I broke this rule when I conjoled the gathering to clap after
the power went out, and you know what, it was a cool thing as in about
thirty seconds there was a killer percussion jam going and room filled with
dancing and grooving individuals urging it on; a beautiful moment that
one.)  I have to say by living out this obsession, I have inhabited the
life that I always wanted: jet setting in from work I land in the middle of
a gathering of warm creative fiends inspired to help.  it's pretty cool.

the end of obsession is mastery: hopefully you work something out,
understand it, get over it, and then move on to a new obsession.  in the
same way the abstrakt zone will end.  rather than stretching it out so that
it eventually becomes a parody of itself, I want the events to spiral up
into a great crescendo of light and sound.  and to further us to that
moment, the next zone will be on july 29th.

P is for POETIC.

see ya there.

  z o n e s