Salton Sea IV - Everybody Screamed

I went to the Salton Sea. I drove out with Borfo in his little truck. We filled it with wood and tied our bikes and big bags and stuff on top and I sat with three other bags in my lap and a cooler sat bitch. We stopped at the Ski Inn at Bombay Beach and had a drink with Jeff, Jenny, and Kel. The Ski Inn is my favorite bar in the world. Not only is the general ambiance plain awesome, but they serve Fat Tire on tap in mason jars for 2.50. Fucking A.

It never rains there, but now it was going to rain. The forecast on my smarty-pants phone showed a 100% chance around 1 am. Fortunately, everybody had time to set up camp, even Dak and Stephanie, who showed up later than expected because some of the Tomatoes memorial blew out of their truck on the freeway. The bar got set up, and I was bumming beers because I thought (foolishly in hindsight) that there was going to be beer available, certainly to me, since I was providing the sound system. The rain started, and of course people congregated in the bar, which provided a good deal of shelter. Dak didn't want the sound running yet for whatever reason, but everybody was pretty hyped, and there were megaphones all around, so you didn't really miss it. Etc. Etc. Nice to see you. How's it going? Did you hear? I've been doing such and such. I'm gonna do this and that. Isn't this great? Blah Blah Blah, Yadda Yadda Yadda.

At some point I sat down at the center table. I forget who was sitting there with me. Maybe Stephanie, Shues, Chynna, July, I don't really know. It was getting pretty loud, then it was getting REALLY loud.

I had my small megaphone with me. I love that thing. It's really all you need in most situations. That evening I had been experimenting with feed-backing the thing by placing it horn-down on a flat surface and pulling the trigger. If you lifted the horn up a little you could alter the feedback and do rhythmic/melodic stuff.

It was so loud in that bar. It was getting SO FUCKING LOUD. I don't know how it started, but I feel like I helped. At very least, I felt it coming and pushed it, kind of like surfing. You see the wave coming and you guide yourself into it and there you go, not that I'm a surfer, but I get the concept. So it was loud, and I felt like some kind of crazy energy was pushing the sound, like everybody was so hyped from being all crammed together in this weird place with the rain and all their interesting lives intersecting and I started feed-backing my megaphone, right there in the middle of the table, just a steady stream of noise. It was getting louder and louder. Other megaphones were feed-backing. Then it really started. People started screaming. Just yelling, steady, strong. It seemed like everybody was screaming, and then I screamed, too, as strong and steady as I could. I closed my eyes. You could feel the sound. It was so loud you couldn't even hear anything anymore. There's a certain point where your ears just give up and it all turns to noise.

As all things do, it stopped after a while. I had stopped feed-backing my megaphone. Someone was standing behind me, holding their megaphone over my head and feed-backing it or yelling into it or something. I was just smiling. Nobody was yelling anymore, just laughing and talking or whatever. The others at the table were looking at me and laughing because of whoever behind me with the megaphone. I didn't care who was holding the the megaphone over my head. It felt nice, and I was smiling a lot. I just liked the attention, I guess. The noise certainly didn't bother me. It was music to my ears. It stopped pretty soon.

I asked around later, and I am pretty well convinced that everybody screamed. Every single person in that little shelter, in the rain, lit up with christmas lights in the desert. There must have been at least 50 people. Everybody screamed together and made the most glorious sound. Its echoing off somewhere in space now. Im sure Tomatoes heard it. I'm also sure he would say that that's sentimental bullshit, that he's dead and can't hear a gosh darn thing, but fuck that. He heard it.

I did a lot of other stuff, too. Might write about it later.