Flipside 2009

I came to FS this year with so many challenges to face, I wasn't sure whether I was walking to mecca or climbing into a volcano.

Resurrection wasn't just a camp name for me, it was about getting back up from an experience that completely destroyed my previous concept of self and made me question everything about who I was; Facing the hardest facts in my own experiences and life, and climbing to a new level of presence and potential as a human being.

Last year I began working with friends in DFW who I've been involved with in different camps and projects over the years, with the goal of not just creating a theme camp, but of building a core group of artists, skills-persons, visionaries, and performers who could collaborate through and beyond burn events to expand all of their creative and productive potentials. I was inspired through camps like PEX and Ish, and burner collectives on the east and west coast who seemed to think beyond the goal of creating a one-time temporary community and laid out plans for doing what they love while being able to sponsor new matrices of inventiveness with ideas like sustainability, modularity, open-source collaborative environments, art, music, fire, and toys that make our inner twelve-year old go batshit.

All of this I wanted to do with absolutely no concept of how to actually achieve it, so on this journey toward my obsession I worked to develop the skills necessary to construct something from nothing, learning how to network individuals, resource manage, share responsibility, and work hard to be deserving of the trust of others.

Guiding me was the belief that if I could get enough people together who I knew were brilliant in their own endeavors, we could make something that would be a seed for that dream. With the strength, knowledge, and hard work of everyone who came together in our camp this year, we did something that left all of us smiling like fucking idiots at the end of the weekend, gibbering non-stop at each other about what fun projects we saw next on the horizon... and in it all I finally learned how to organize a filing cabinet.

This is why I love Flipside. Yes, it's a hedonistic five-day rave that encourages the most base and debaucherous behaviors in it's participants, seeming at times to be nothing more than an intoxicant-centered fuckfest for the gleefully and voluntarily impaired. I know I always mark the moment when I find myself watching the sun rise for the third day in a row, probably covered in mud, glitter, and pink fur, and look around at everyone stumbling sunken-eyed and dry-lipped toward whatever solace they might be seeking at that hour, wondering what the fuck is wrong with me.

Then, beyond this moment of self-doubt and insomnia, I encounter something amazing. It could be someone with whom I instantly develop an incredible creative rapport or a type of performance art I've never seen before, some installation or production that inspires new ideas for me, or art that leads me to uncover notions of beauty and symbolic meaning hidden within myself.

The potential is endless, and endless potential is something this world needs more of. Something I want to find a way to provide, to individuals as much as the world. All it takes is one chance of seeing what we are capable of with the right resources and collaborators, one manifestation of a dream that carries forward the hope of others, and then we have no reason to stop believing in the potential in ourselves or each other.

After everything that I did this year leading up to (and at) Flipside, finding strength in myself, finishing school and finding a career path that inspires me, exploring a kind of love-life that defies convention (and sometimes the expectations of others), and having the opportunity to work with people who inspire me in so many ways toward a mutual goal, I feel that burning culture has granted me the gift it hinted at six years ago when I first showed up at Rec Plant with a two-man tent and some peanut butter and bread.

-Sean