Another way to put what I was trying to say about the genuine uniqueness of living in a culture of plenty, instead of scarcity, is that it was a particularly af

Another way to put what I was trying to say about the genuine uniqueness of living in a culture of plenty, instead of scarcity, is that it was a particularly affecting variation the experience of immersion in a different culture. The closest comparison I have in my own life is what it's like when you're somewhat self-aware and find yourself in a culture where the social norms and expectations are different. In the case of my own experience at BM, I consistently found a hybrid synthesized culture which clearly emerged from the people who chose to be there and put themselves 'out', but also, transcended any particular subculture or precursor. I used to randomly encounter and take long walks with another artist who'd started going around the same time, and a recurring topic for us was what happened when the ravers colonized. My take was that if it was a choice between them and their MDMA-fueled energy, and the much darker FSU punk acid/speed/alcohol faction which was the primary counterbalance for a long time, I'd take the ravers. But that changed thing and dilluted the weird equilibrium and skewed it a lot more towards "conventional" (sic) rave culture. Which is a fine thing but not the same exactly. Yet a different take would be to simply observe that never and nowhere have I experienced what it means to live in a city for a week, year after year after year, which is intentionally constructed by and for and populated by a lot of people who take their psychedelic experience seriously (c.f. Pollan's Changing Your Mind). That sounds hokey or derisively dismissible, and it absolutely meant a lot of superficial edges which were... ...but it also created a social space that is truly a foreign place, not least, when it's inhabited not for a night or a weekend but for a week or more. Totally unsustainable, under the requirements of current civilization, and not advisable IMO even if it were. But as a place to suspend the norms for a week and be reminded that this is all of it a collaborative consensual construction and what we assert as "normal" is merely the artifact of our own limitations and historical moment? Unspeakably valuable and unique in my experience...