The electric snowcone

Burning Man was brutal this year. We had duststorms every day. More like sand storms. In one of them, the whiteout was so thick that you needed a GPS to navigate through it. You couldn't even see an inch in front of your face. Some people wandered lost for hours at night in the chill winds. It was an ordeal, but we survived!

At one point, at the depths of my dismay with the weather and the dust, sometimes so loose and sandy that it was impossible to bicycle (or even walk) through it, I started ranting: "I hate Burning Man! I'm never coming here again!"

But of course, all that misery will fade and by next summer all I will remember are the highlights. Like this moment, when I told a new story, "The Electric Snowcone" on the main stage. I can't tell you if the audience was in rapt attention, or just so exhausted they couldn't move. It was a rare, calm sunny day, but the dust was so thick that I wore goggles on stage.

Now if I could just make sure they don't have a drum circle pounding away while I tell a story, it would be perfect!

Bumping it up to the next level

This month, I started studying with Rebecca Fisher, founder of Tell it on Tuesday, the Berkeley- based performance series. I saw Rebecca perform her epic one woman show, "The Magnificence of the Disaster" twice at the Marsh. Rebecca puts her entire body into the storytelling performance and uses unsual props and sound effects. She's an up and coming talent, a rising star in the performance art world, but is already teaching and mentoring others.

There are 8 storytellers in our class. Each has a different gift, a different angle, a different life experience. I'm probably the least theatrical in the group -- my storytelling comes from my experience as a writer and journalist, and it's based in the narrative, the craft of the word, rather than the sound, expression or the movement of those words. Some approach the story from the art of theatre -- I approach it from the craft of writing.