This project started back in 2007 - it was a Burning Man Honoraria project, with a grant and everything, and was built in Brooklyn NY. Michelle brought me to Burning Man the year prior, in 2006, and I came back inspired to build a mutant vehicle. I'd been working in theater, building automation systems for Broadway shows, and I had a fabrication shop on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook. It was an amazing place, 199 Van Brunt.
I tried for months to come up with a 'good idea' - and finally, one morning, I woke up from a dream and knew what to build. I had just been standing on the deck of a pirate ship, rolling over the desert, with steel horses going up and down on the deck, while fire flashed overhead and the party raged around.
I started talking about it, and Marlene had a similar dream, and in her dream, the people in the background were yelling 'Acavallo!' - and so the project had a name. With the hard L, as per the Italian. Dream-car with a dream-name. Dan Glass built a story around it - a lost tribe of post-apocalyptic weirdos searching for the lost horses of lore, that kind of thing. It was go time.
I applied for an art grant, vastly under-budgeting myself in the process, and got it. I knew it would cost more than the grant would cover, but I was used to running over-budget in theater - there was always another job that would come along and the credit cards would get paid back and all would be well - so I went for it anyway. 2007 was not a good year to pursue that sort of plan, as the economy was about to tank, and I would be a leading economic indicator. But I didn't know that. And more - my wife Michelle and I had a newborn, our relationship was on the rocks, everything was about to come crashing down, my life as wreckage. And so it began.
I worked on the design, I was awarded the grant, and best of all, built a large cadre of friends. There was a circle of burners in my friend-scape who really made Acavallo happen, in such a huge way. It was unbelievable, the energy people were willing to devote to this project. I swung for the fences, I had a team, I had a grant, I had a shop and an idea.\
I drew and revised and drew and revised, in a mad rush, working so many hours to figure out how to do this. I started with what I knew best, which was theatrical systems, and then when time got tight, dug into my hill-billy skillset and got practical. The design story was, and is, epic and ongoing still. Design is an iterative process, of course, you have to start with what you think is going to work, and then you learn.
I had a lot to learn. My design wasn't that great, as it turned out, being far too big, far too complex, and way, way too hard to assemble. I was used to large crews, theatrical scale assemblages, was comfortable with the idea of showing up with a thousand pieces and putting it all together. I had no truck or trailer of my own, and so designed around a 26' box truck - how much artcar could I fit in there? A lot, if you take it all part. So that terribly simple design constraint guaranteed a total butt kicked future on the playa. But what did I know? I'd only been to burning man once.
I knew about designing and engineering steel frames, and practical ways for attaching mechanical things to them - so the ship started with steel frames, big trusses running fore and aft. I also knew I wanted big tires front and back, on a steering suspension of some kind, with more wheels in the middle. So it would steer like a boat, turning around the middle of the craft, and not the back axle. I found the cheapest big tires I could in agricultural components - I found the cheapest high load suspension in big air-bags, I ordered some rod-ends and a bunch of waterjet cut plate (should have bought a cnc plasma cutter sooner, I was paying high dollar fees for this) and made a pile of parts. And kept drawing. Figuring out how to achieve the horses was probably the hardest, spiritually - it was my first foray into sculpting with facets. And what the hell does a horse look like? OMG. Swinging for the fences.
I'd grown up riding, so I knew pretty well what a horse looked like from the rider's perspective, and it shows in the original design. I got the back and neck modeled, the butt, some kind of head, punted on the legs (finally got those drawn in 2019, I had to develop a lot of techniques). But I got the important parts right - the backs were comfortable, you could stand on them, they were sturdy, they were sexy, they were good enough. And then there were all the other things to figure out - how were the horses going to go up and down? I drew timing belts, CNC crank mechanisms, ended up going hillbilly and using old automotive rear-ends - sourced out of a junkyard in Long Island - adventures inside of adventures. I wasn't able to figure out the propulsion system, and punted on that, called up my dad to see if I could borrow his old truck that he'd just restored to tow the ship around - which was a little short of the vision, but I knew it'd look good and I was out of time and the budget was not there for anything else. I didn't model every detail - I was largely drafting in 2D, which is how I drew back then, so I missed some interactions that would prove challenging on the playa, but again, lessons to learn.
Soon enough, it was June, and it was time to build, and I still had a bunch of theater work to finish. I needed the money. A remote control drive around swan for the Ballet, some winches for Broadway. And I didn't know it, but those were going to be my last real theatrical jobs. The economic clock was ticking! As well as all the other clocks.
We really didn't start building Acavallo until July - which is insane. From the photos I have, in the beginning of July, I had a horse-face and a pile of tires in the shop. 8 weeks to go, nothing much to show but a bunch of drawings and some parts, and it was all hands on deck! Once we got started cutting and fabricating, well, it is impossible to remember, impossible to describe, I'd draw all morning while my paid crew welded together sub-assemblies, and then the volunteers would show up in the evening and we'd work all night putting those sub-assemblies together, and prepping the parts for the next day. It was absolute madness. My shop was New York sized, and we'd have to roll all the pieces out on the sidewalk to have enough room to build the next piece.
If that wasn't enough, we threw parties to raise money. We'd shut down the shop Friday afternoon, spend all day Friday night and Saturday getting the shop turned into a party space - a stage for the bands downstairs. Bars at both ends. Experience zones in between. A dance floor upstairs, with another sound system set up for the DJs.
Sound systems. I had some sound equipment, I'm a musician and had the basics, but needed a lot more. A lot more. Cables, amps, cords, mics, all of it. I found it in a friend, who had a system from a touring rock-show back in the day - and it was absolutely insane. I paid half up front, never paid the last half, gave it back later all dusty and trashed. Sorry about that. I really thought I'd be able to pay. Wish I still had it. It was amazing! Subs you could crawl in - four of them, we'd line them up and build the stage on top of that. The tweeters (there were four) were the size of normal speakers... and the mids would hit so clean in between. Well, that got us into trouble. The first test setup and the cops were out front. It was an amazing system. I miss it.
So - back to the setup, the parties - those parties were insane. It would start with a theme, and a Kurt & Zelda illustration, and off we'd go. Everyone in the crew were very creative, and worked hard to make the place amazing. We'd fully theme out the decorations, build bars, build cuddle-pits, disco fever dance cages - whatever we could come up with. As it got close, there were mad runs for booze - thankfully there were bartenders in the bunch, who knew how to work connections for bulk cheap whiskey and beer, because once the party got going, it flowed like water. Because of the themes (Astronauts and Aliens) people would show up as characters in overwhelming detail - and crowd in to the shop, slurping down booze and pounding the dust out of the rafters, shaking the old firehouse to her bones. We charged at the door, and per drink, and the cash that piled up was a huge help in keeping the project going. It was burning money like crazy. Thank you party people!
My job was sound, and running the bands. It was pretty chaotic - as you can imagine. Once, I shut off the mixer to cut the sound to get everyone's attention, and it never turned on again.. it was dead. Never to live again. So I had to, on the fly, reengineer the sound system, using whatever random mixers I had, using 4 mics with bands that had 12 musicians - just making it happen. Meanwhile, making trips upstairs to make sure the DJs weren't clipping my speakers to death - that was always a problem. If you send speakers a distorted signal, clipped and flattened, they don't move back and forth enough to stay cool, and the coils would melt. And DJs don't care - or they didn't, back in 2007. All the way up! Flashing Red! Why won't the subs work anymore?
The truly epic days were Sundays after, the party would last until 9 or 10, and then we'd kick everyone out and start cleaning. It would take all day, and part of Monday, but it was hilarious and good fun. Those are some of my favorite stories - Johnny Irish falling over the banister, lodging head-first in a trash-can, minus a platform shoe - he got some amazing bruises but missed the shelf full of drill bits. Dennis crawling around looking for lost drugs, while we filled dumpsters with empties, squeegeing out the piss and beer...
They were great parties. But we got too big, our last party was listed in the NY times.
The shop was in the oldest firehouse in Brooklyn, I had the left side. It was a rectangle, about 20' across and 70' deep. There were two floors. To get to the top floor, you came in the front, walked through the metal shop, to the back, climbed the spiral staircase up the old fire-pole hole, and fought your way back towards front, on the second floor, and into the DJ room full of overheating amps & incandescent lights. Total firetrap. There was no other way back down - except the spiral staircase - and to make that fire danger even more forcefully apparent, Dan Glass would be out in the back (it had a little courtyard) testing propane effects, shooting fire up to the roof ... right by the stairs. I'm so grateful we got away with it.
But when the NY times got wind of it... well, the people came in droves. We ran out of booze twice, the cops showed up twice, the place was packed. And still more people were coming. So we locked the door, and started turning people away - it wasn't just the fire danger, it was structural danger, the upstairs was pulsing so hard that chunks of ceiling were falling off on the floor below. But the people kept coming, all night long. And all those people that couldn't get in - they trashed the neighborhood. They stole the talking fish from the local bar, they left garbage everywhere, they were a nightmare. It was a small community, and there was no hiding it from the landlord, and we never had another party at the shop again. Instead, we'd have to find other spaces, and it never was the same.
It was time, in any event, to get heading to the playa.
We'd built all of the trusses, deck frames, horse drive mechanisms, horses, catwalk, masts, and suspension assemblies, but never bolted it together. There just wasn't room. I'd designed everything to bolt / unbolt - like a touring theatrical set. We did assemble the deck, in order to fit the wood, and it filled the shop from wall to wall. Rich had just done a job where they had put a new hardwood floor in a big West Village apartment, prior to its sale, and then torn it out to replace it with a different wood when the new buyers moved in. So thanks to him, and them, we had a big pile of boards, oak and maple. Beautiful stuff. And in one drunken night, we screwed them down to the steel frames, stem to stern. The uprights on the trusses, transitioning to the rear deck, were interfering with the last row of frames, which was going to require an annoying amount of re-fabrication - so I handed a sledgehammer to a drunken Irish pirate - and he hammered them out of the way. Both hands, up over his head, full railroad spike driver style - WHAM WHAM WHAM. It worked. They're still caved and bent to this day, I saved that detail on the rebuild.
The next day, we had to take it all apart to make room for working on the next pieces. And it was quickly apparent that the deck frames with all that hardwood on them were too heavy to move. So we tied all the boards together from underneath, and pulled out all the screws we put in the night before, so the panels could be separated from the frames. So much overkill. So many pieces.
We had the horses done, and we chained them around the neighborhood with 'tag me' on them, but I think the taggers thought it was a trap, because nothing really happened to them. It wasn't until we brought them back to the shop, and word had got around, that the graffitti kids showed up - and everything got tagged. It was a glorious cloud of spraypaint vapor all down Van Brunt as they set to it - taggin all the parts and pieces laid out on the sidewalk. It really made the car look great, tied in the Brooklyn roots in a very visual way. Which was an unexpected artistic moment.
I love building art, working to my own aesthetic, letting things evolve freely without the preconceived constraints of someone else's vision - keeping all of the details up for grabs. Letting spontaneous energy flow. Another favorite moment, when things were at a low point, everyone defeated, I looked around, saw the horse with the heart design in their forehead, and in a mad release of frustration just started smacking it around with a hammer. Everyone jumped in, getting out that love frustration. Just to see how far we could take it, we chained the horse up to the back of the van and drug it around the neighborhood - to no real effect. The horses are very, very strong. Too strong, really, and too heavy... everything was too heavy. This is still true.
We did put together most of the structure out on the street, prior to leaving, to test the masts & figure out the rigging (I couldn't do it in the computer, 2D, remember? Rigging is 3D). I had another conceit - radical self reliance - and the deal was going to be 'no support required' - we'd bolt it together ourselves, raise the structures, rig it up, no equipment needed, no outside help. So I thought we'd better try. The sequence was assemble the trusses, build the deck over them, block traffic on Van Brunt, set the catwalk sideways on the ground (in the middle of the street), stuff the masts through, and hinge their heels to the deck. Then, push up as a mad group, while another mad group pulled on lines from the other side. It kind of worked. But not very well. We worked all day and got a pair of horses going up and down... I realized that Xs were they key to the rigging, and measured for cables and ropes. And then took it all apart again. While hinging the catwalk back down to the ground, we nearly pulled Dan & the upstairs crew out of the shop window... one of the many, many times this car has given someone that special feeling, that 'I am about to die' feeling... holy shit was it all too heavy and huge. And then, with no time left for anything else, we stuffed all the parts directly into the box truck, in an elaborate packing job that used all available space. I actually drew that pack in 3D to figure it out.
And time was really out, and I had pushed it as far as I could... spent every dollar, worked every hour. Made every list. The lists are amazing. I had shoved so much build off onto the playa, all the wiring, the sound, the rigging, the lighting ... so much. We finished loading big truck, finished building the trailer, crammed all the remaining parts inside and on top, and sent it and the Sprinter van off towards Black Rock. Finished maxing out my credit cards and jumped on a plane to Washington state, to borrow my dad's old Diamond T, which was at my brother's house in Moscow Idaho. I think it might have been more epic than that, actually. I can't remember. Oh, that's right - there was a stopover in Las Vegas to check in on a show - probably Blue Man Group - and then I drove an RV with Daniel up to Reno, and then we flew from there to Spokane, yes. That's right. Danny and I met my brother at the airport, and borrowed his pickup to tow the Diamond T back down to Black Rock. What an amazing trip that was.
We loaded up the old truck, and we were off, down the rivers and through the valleys, my first trip towing a trailer to Burning Man, the first of many, as it turns out. I've only been to burning man without a trailer twice - once in 2006, and again in 2016, when I took greyhound and brought no art. Every other time, and I've only missed one year, I've had a trailer. What a life. Back to the story:
Here's an adventure! We were leaving Idaho, about to hit Oregon, it was midnight, and I was desperate - I turned to Danny, said "I need weed to do this" and he said "Well how would you get weed, if you were back in NY?" I said, "I'd call my friends." He then asked, "How did you meet these friends?" I said, "probably at a bar" thinking about the friends I'd call. And he said "Well, lets find a bar!". We asked at they gas station, got directed a few blocks to a bar, that was just closing. Danny rolled down his window, yelled out "Hey, anyone got any weed?" and one of the characters hollers back "Sure, why don't you come upstairs?" So upstairs we went. It was entering a strange world of bachelor meth-dealer, with his ol' pals - and I can't help but use stereotypes here, they were of course nuanced characters, but they have distilled over time in my memories to archetypes. Big breasted, brassy, dark haired woman with big rings, big curves, a loud laugh, full of life. Old crusty host, cowboy jeans, boots, t-shirt. The other guest was younger, and very gay, but in an Idaho way, sidekick to the dame. We laughed and laughed until tears flowed, their stories were so insane - she was a dealer, too, back in the day, got out of prison and found her stash untouched, still in the bag under the sink in her bathroom - right back to business. She was unbelievably funny. The whole situation was unbelievably surreal... the apartment had never been cleaned. Nothing was messy, everything tidy, everything arranged - tarantula in the tank next to the TV (beauty pageant, Miss something or other, sound off), nothing ever cleaned. Dust. Dirt patterns. Bathroom ... toilet a grime crusted art installation, ditto the shower, the sink, I will never, ever, forget it. I was lost in detail. I could write a chapter on the bathroom alone. We shared our story, listened to theirs, laughed until tears came, got a bag of leaves. Yep. Leaves. They had found a grow on a mountain hike, harvested the leaves, they'd been in a bag for a while but I tell you what. That got me through Oregon. Leaves is all I needed.
We decided to take the shortcut, the dirt road across from Winemucca, rather than driving all down the freeway and back up again to Reno. I grew up on dirt roads, how bad could it be? Almost died. That's how bad. We had the first flat on the pickup about an hour in, 2nd flat tire another half hour later, no more spares. Uh.. ok. Unload the Diamond T, then, right? it was freshly restored, ready to drive. Drive to burning man.. . . . it must be just over the ridge... no gps... no water, gas tank rust busted loose by bumpy. This part of the story can be told in the greatest detail, because it's so ridiculous. All that work and it came down to Danny riding on the running board, blowing into the tank whenever the truck stalled... I'll get back to that later.
We finally arrived, as the sun was going down, in a cloud of dust, and crawled in to find the camp and get some sleep. They'd put us on Esplanade (they continued to do that for a couple of years, until they finally figured out that we should be as far from Esplanade as possible). The box truck had arrived, not without a struggle, there was some difficulty with the trailer I'd designed - so the crew had to rent another trailer to put the trailer on. The sprinter van made it too, and the rest of the crew were there. It was get up and go time, and it was Saturday morning, the day before Burning Man opened. I can't even begin to think about the logistics involved in getting that far. But the hard work was about to start, and a hard lesson about to be learned.
We dumped everything out onto the ground - Generators, lights, cords, tools, fasteners, shade, propane, fittings, hoses, tanks, speakers, tires, more wires, trusses, frames, boxes of hardware, tires, tools, ropes, tents, more tools, more poles, tubes, and brackets. Just a huge mess all laid out on the ground. I drank some coffee, and got to work, organizing the volunteers into sub-groups, dragging all the pieces to where they would go, starting with the trailer as a core (the one that broke onthe way) and the horse drive mechanisms, bolting the trusses to them, and attaching the wheels fore and aft and on either side. It was clear, immediately, that I'd gotten the offsets wrong in the drawing, and the tires were going to rub badly. Uh.. that would suck later. Then the deck frames, then the deck panels, then the masts, the catwalk, the speakers, the stage, the bike racks. The rigging, the wiring, the plumbing... by Wednesday? Thursday? we had it together enough to mobilize. Not done, by an means, but horses and a deck on wheels with some speakers hitched up to a truck.
Our first 'cruise' was an organized debacle having to do with the Honoraria program, everyone could not believe what we were doing over there in that dusty pile of parts, and everyone showed up fancy and ready for a ride. We loaded them up, and headed out, and... well. I was up in the cab of the truck and could see nothing behind me - I had one mirror I could get adjusted to see one of the horse cranks, up by the catwalk, and if it was moving, I knew the power was still up. I could also hear the subs hit, so I knew that system was still working... otherwise, no idea. It's heartbreaking, really, that lonely moment up in the cab, pulling out for the first time with all that work behind me. So nervous, exhausted, scared. But despite all the incipient artist melt-down, everything rolled. As long as I didn't hit the brakes (the trailer hitch assembly would jacknife bad and jam all the wheels) and didn't turn very sharp (tires rubbed hard enough to stop the truck) it would roll. So off we went. We got out on the playa and things started going to pieces - the speakers were falling off, the truck was overheating, the tires were rubbing on the side frames so bad they were smoking, and when the side wheels started peeling off, welds coming apart like a zipper, I called it. And in what was to be the first of many, many times, I shut everything down and kicked everyone off and sent them walking home in all their finery while I crawled around under the ship trying to figure out how to fix the party. This has become a tradition with her, Acavallo has reliably broken down every year since. It is a challenging environment!
But, we'd established a baseline, and drug the barge back to camp, and set it up out front, and turned on the party while we worked in the background on flames, lights, and the rest of the rigging. Lord. The sex factor was incredible, the ship was just unbelievably sexy, everyone feeling good and getting their jazz hands on, climbing all over, dancing on the horses, hanging from the ropes. The sound system drew in the hordes, and the ponies were full all night long. And I was curled up somewhere, either getting a nap or re-wiring a control box. Days blurred into nights into days. There was an interview about half-way thru, which I'll link to - if this is ever a website- what a mess I was. I played it all confident and even had my shirt off, which I never do, maybe just that once at Burning Man, but there I am. And in a head-dress! What was I thinking? Oh, that's right, I had no idea. I was reaching for a persona, digging into my childhood fantasy box, who was I? What was I trying to do? I was trying to channel my roots, growing up with Apaloosas and native friends, surrounded by native stories, I was culturally appropriating at a fundamental level. I'd imprinted on chiefs as role models very early on, thats what I wanted to be - a tribal leader. I bought that head dress off ebay, and I wore it throughout the project, it was tatters when I was done, and no wonder. I was tatters as well. Tatters and moop. I apologize, I didn't know what I was doing. I know better now... or I think I do. I'm always coming up against my blind spots. But there are always more. You can hear the mania in my voice on the video - the desperation, even. I was in way over my head.
I actually walked up on a group of people talking about me, saying good things, and it was very disturbing... my first brush with playa celebrity. I quickly backed away before anyone noticed me and disappeared to work on something, keep the hands busy, the chapped skin and broken nails keeping the brain from over-thinking. Just do it. Figure this out. Tie knots. Run cables. Drill holes. Find bolts. The real thing going on inside was too deep, too dark - me as talented Ripley, always pretending to be more than I was, always scared of losing it, being found out. I was, inside, just a poor dirty hill-kid with crooked teeth and a chip on my shoulder so heavy I didn't even know it was there. Acavallo is what healed me, and it did it in such a brutal way. More on that later, perhaps. There was the party, and then there was the work, and then there was the camp - little baby Marina, Michelle, a safe place to curl up and sleep, in the madness. I was so broken, though, that I couldn't accept that love, either. It's another story I could tell. If anyone's interested. Back to 2007, and the easier stories to tell:
One of the horses had a very nice set of stained glass panels that my friend Susanna had built, custom fit into cutouts in the head and neck. They were in for about a day, maybe two. I woke up from a dead sleep at about 3 AM, sleeping through the pounding bass from Dj Douggie Styles, who had an epic rager going on - the ship was thumping, muscular booty babes in hot pants and boots kicking the shit out of everything - I climbed up on deck and saw the stained glass bits everywhere, broken to pieces. I looked up in rage, so angry, and was confronted with blank eyes, all pupil. There was nobody to yell at - they were gone, on another plane. I folded, I dropped down to my hands and knees and crawled around until I'd found every piece, and bagged it up and put it away. Susanna rebuilt the glass, but I've never fit them back into the horse - maybe someday. At a lower key event than Burning Man! It's too fun to dance on the horseheads. That was one nocturnal adventure, there were many - things kept breaking.
For example, when horse-dancers all get into sync, their surging power broke the welds out of the differentials that drove the horses, so they developed a large lurch and clunk at the top of the stroke, when they went over-center, which got worse and worse as the week went on. We tried re-welding them, but didn't bring the big welder, and the little one we borrowed made no difference. But they did keep going, even if they were clunky. So round and round they went. Mostly. The electric drives would also randomly fail. The horses were static more than they were carouseling, but nobody minded. We got the side wheels reattached with the borrowed welder, just pass after pass until it stuck. I could go on and on. It was a blur of generators failing, motors overheating, circuits blowing, metal bending, welds breaking. Thrown to the wolves on a trial run.
And that was true of camp, as well, we had things stolen, bikes, jewelry, our shit trashed by the savages - Esplanade is no joke. It's the worst out there, unless you are militantly prepared, which we weren't. It was very stressful. But the parties were awesome. But all the stolen cameras - they had all the images, the video. None of it exists as far as I know, other than the photos that Heather took - thank you Heather, without you, there would be no documentation at all. It takes a team.
The best party of all was Critical Tits, when we showed up out at the afterparty, and had the biggest sound system going, our stage turned into the main stage for a party that reached to the horizon. Dust storms, double rainbows, afro-beat orchestras, metal, hiphop, one after another the bands kept coming. And I kept turning them up. I spent the Oakland hip hop set under the stage, laying on a pile of leaking beer cans and fur coats, and holding the reset button on the breaker for the sub power... every time the subs hit, the breaker would blow, and that sucked. So there I was. Missed the rainbow, missed the show, just laying there, in the spilled beer, eyes closed, fingers pressed on the switch. A beautiful moment, I was completely at peace. I'd finally found a shitstorm big enough to calm me.
The stage worked. Linus had booked a bunch of bands, and they would show up, and I'd wire them in, and away they'd go - what a great feature! I had gotten that part of the design right - the angled stage, the maximum awesome. It is still my favorite part of the experience - when a band is playing, the horses going, the ship rocking - it is so wonderful. We had bands of every genre... and some of them were great. The one band that was not great - well, they showed up looking like a head-shot press release, all pointy shoes and suits, gelled hair, the works. And the music was flat, lifeless, without the studio they didn't have it... so I drove them to center camp, aimed the big speakers at the camp where all the important people lived (all those burning man organization types), and well, we got in trouble for that. Big sound cars were banned in town after that. Sorry y'all. The other thing we never did was go to DMV, I couldn't meet the requirements (the car was totally unsafe, not lit up, it met none of the rules) and so I just drove around with no stickers and no problems. I think they didn't want to know. My relationship with them has been... tumultuous, but in 2019, I finally, for the first time, filed every paper and met every rule and that was the first time. But in 2007, I didn't. I just leaned into that chip on my shoulder and drove around.
The driving rules were simple - go in straight lines, very slowly. Don't turn. I couldn't see anything behind me. I had a spotter, sometimes. I would listen for yells, I would listen for snaps and breaking sounds. If I had to turn, I'd have to stop and make everyone get off. Then turn. But nobody would get off. Any stationary and invisible object was an iceberg, an impassable object. We'd be stuck there for hours. Waiting. Another favorite moment - we were trapped by a generator for an installation (they are the worst, never lit up, I've since learned to see them but was new to the art-car driving thing), not far off Esplanade, sound system pointed into the tents. After an hour or so, a person came running out of the dark, screaming, naked, climbed up onto the back of the truck and started unplugging things, raging. Everyone was ready to fight, I jumped in, shut everything off, agreed with the protestor. Time for a break. Everybody go home!
The biggest trouble, mechanically, were the goddamn generators - my credit was used up, and all we could afford were no-brand chinese 5000 watt screamers. They died. Repeatedly. I was able to keep one going, by using every hill-kid trick I knew, but it would only run for a while. And then the party would stop while I rebuilt it again. We borrowed one, for the last night run - burn night - and Sunday morning, they came back and got it, the smoking remains, anyway. It's still the only engine I've ever destroyed so completely that there were the insides laying on the outside, a pool of oil with fragments of connecting rods and pistons. I'm still grateful, especially that they took all the broken bits away, another good gennie gone.
Saturday night, some folks showed up with a stack of envelopes, with posters and medals. I immediately gave away all the medals, to everyone I could who helped, I kept only the posters. I have a hard time with accolades. I still do. I had no idea - I've been given a few more medals over the years, burning man art medals - I have a couple. I've learned that they matter. But they still make me uncomfortable.
And then, all too soon, it was time to start packing it all down again. Just like that, the party was over.
That packing it up job lasted for another 5 days, we were one of the last groups of people to leave the playa. This was the good old days. Nowadays they rush you off in a hurry. Back then, take as long as you need, which was too long. It blew dust sideways the entire time, just hot as blazes, gusts and wind-devils shaking through the piles, while we packed and sorted and broke down the mess. Everything was trashed, we tried to lower the catwalk like we'd put it up but no way, it just dropped to the ground and smashed and bent the masts and wrecked itself. This project has never been easy, but those 5 days were the hardest, by far. I can't even remember it, let alone forget it, it exists as a solid block of experience in my mind - a cube of dust, wind, and despair.
By the last night, we'd rung every drop of energy from eachother, just pushed and pushed and pushed until there was nothing left. And we were done. Everything loaded. We packed into the RV, about 12 of us, if I remember right. Laying everywhere and anywhere. The wind howled, the truck shook. There was a knock at the door. A lady with a bagful of weed, looking to give it away, on her way out. And I say bag, I mean a shopping bag, full. Dan used a newspaper to roll the biggest blunt ever rolled, or at least that I've seen, and we just got high and fell asleep... one night of rest, before driving back to Brooklyn, back to Idaho, back to the world of a economic collapse, back to losing the business, losing the marriage, losing it all.
But that would take some time. We met Andy Jones on the way off the playa, and that resulted in the drum-cars, which were built in 2008. That is another epic story. There are so many!
We brought the horses to Decom, trashed the place, and set up Acavallo once more, for All Points West in New Jersey. And then, after that, the parts went into Shawn Patrick's barn, in the Catskills. It was just shoved in every whichaway, and the barn eventually collapsed over it all, like a sad, broken dream scape. Steel bones buried in broken boards, weeds growing over it all. And there it rested for the next 5 years. I was able to keep the shop for another year, but ultimately, it was over for me, in Brooklyn, lights out and goodbye. If anyone reads this far, email, and I'll send you a free pendant!
So, Acavallo. Born in a frenzy of sweat, sex, and tears, and blood, and dust, flesh scraped against steel, the smoke from burning hair... all of it. And joy, and laughter, shouts of hallelujah, total spiritual release. This piece of art has defined the arc of my life in such an incredible way, and I wouldn't do it any different if I had the chance. It went the way it did for too many reasons, and there's no way to change it, and it's all worked out in the end. So onward.