John & I went to the Smithsonian folklife festival a bit on Saturday. It was mostly shut down at the time we got there, but we grabbed a bit of Hatian music and a nice talk with a Hatian art gallery guy that knew the artist that painted John's big painting (Hector, a guy who lives at the mansion of Issa in Port-a-Prince).
We also encountered not one but two faux folklife festivals.
The first one was a group who had "Atasteofindia.org" on their van, and had a garish but cute set of tents up that were focusing on the Bhagavad-Gita and vegetarianism and other random religious aspects to their specific cult of Hinduism. It was fairly small and not too obviously a faux festival.
The street after that, the mall was filled for a long stretch with an elaborate mockery of the folklife festival, complete with an Appalachian area with goats, a Colonial area with cheesy reenactors, a ring with seats that people wearing dinosaur masks were rounding up viewers to, a 20' Collosus of Rhodes with pamphlets about the culture of the people of the Collossos, home made apple pie, a giant display board next to a crashed and burned airplane comparing the Bible to the Black Box of an airplane, a spirtual pavilion covered in quotes about god from many folks including Mister frederick nietzsche himself that bespoke a question and answer session, ethnic bands, artisans and crafts, a coffee house two stories high called "Common Grounds", and other weirdnesses that are right now slipping from my mind. Everywhere there were very clean tidy people bustling about and tourists that seemed very accepting of the random place they were in.
I haven't figured out what it was. Scientology was my best guess, because of the really high production values. The Twelve Tribes seems to be a small group of neo-Christians, though. But I am so intriged by the cargo cult festivals! Obviously they work...I wonder how the Smithsonian Institution feels about them :)
We watched fireworks on the fourth at my friend Todd Roberts' house. He engineered some Mexican-style whirligig spinners in an elaborate stage show, which required him to make fusetape from scratch. Ah, genius. I am so proud to have him as a friend. Here's a nice shot of them grinning over a box of kitty litter (and I will explain that to you no further, innocent reader). The fireworks were a real triumph of creativity, including the new "super-low" mortars that add excitement and danger to our night. Must have been those crazy people down the street doing that. :)
