Desert Daze

Nadia Bent
Oct 26, 2016
3 min read

I met so many kind people at this festival it was so great. This is the only festival that I've been to where every single person seemed to be in good spirits. All of the performances were well decorated and well performed. Cherry glazer's clem mooned everyone. I crowd surfed four times. Twice to the sonics. And the lineup was set in such a great way that I didn't feel I was missing anything.

This year desert daze was held at The Institute of Mentalphysics. This institute never holds festivals this land is used for spiritual development, and for this weekend it was used for that as well as for music and art.

My friend Melissa and I camped out in a tent large enough to fit ten with two inflatable queen-sized mattresses. We were very comfortable. During the day the heat was significant and so was the dust that eventually filled my lungs enough to make me feel very sick, but tequila helped. At night we danced with all of our friends until the music was over, and there was this tent were we could watch movies and relax and they also had classes during the day like lessons on astrology, different yoga classes, ceremonies and a tarot class. One night the directory said that they would be screening "The Antibirth", intrigued by the title I went to the tent with a few new friends but the actual film that was screening was "Orange Sunshine" so I learned about LSD instead of the antibirth but I was pretty content about it.

Connan Mockasin played one night and he was magic. He wore a pale jade japanese pantsuit that looked like pajamas, with a baby pink beret and blue cowboy boots. He performed with two screens of the Blindspot Project, projecting along side and the entire tent held some sort of angelic pink glow with a large disco ball in the center.

Anyone that met him that weekend just talked about how nice he was. I met him once about a year ago at Babe Rainbows surf film premier in Venice and talked to him and his girlfriend for about an hour or so before I asked what his name was and then realized that it was him. I was actually a huge fan of his music and had no idea it was him.

The last day of the festival the only things that I had in my system were tequila, vodka, beer and one pb&j. That night we all went to a full moon ceremony wasted where we meditated and my friend Nick and I fell asleep and woke up needing to go to the music. By the end of the night I lost sweet Melissa and was with the boys when I needed to go back to the tent for the cacao ceremony. Cacao is an ancient medicine that was used by the mayans and it is psychoactive. I ran into the tent alone, parting from my friends and was waived down with holy smoke with a feather. The Shaman covered me head to toe and front to back with this smoke before I could join the ceremonial circle. When we could all sit we passed the cacao tea along and bowed to it as we did so with our third eyes. when it went all the way around we all ingested it and the shaman had us all lay down and follow a Tibetan breathing technique. With my dusty lungs it was hard for me to keep up and I quickly fell into a deep hallucinogenic meditation. I had never done a hallucinogen before so it may have hit me more than most. I got up and the shaman asked me if I was finished. I lyingly nodded and he asked me to stay, I ran away from the shaman in search for my friends. I wandered the desert for about 20 to 30 minutes alone before I walked up to a group that was still posted around their tent with a few brews. It was about 3 am and all the music was over. So I walked up to the tallest man in the group and hugged him. He welcomed me and helped me calm down from my trip until I was able to return to my tent.