Alchemy (2015)

Alchemy 2015 is a short film produced by the IVG as an attempt to retrocausally create a starting point for the vexillomantic practice. It is considered supplementary to the Vexillomantic holy texts.

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For Alchemy 2015 I brought six flags.  They were made of ornate fabric in the primary colors, (Red, Yellow,  Blue) with each flag having different fabric on each side (Red/Yellow, Blue/Blue).  They were big too, and each was on an eight-foot spiked pole so that they could be stuck into the ground.

I don’t remember when the flag madness first took me.  I was preparing for the festival, coming up with a number of art projects to bring, when the idea of covering the entire event in flags suddenly hit me.  I had this image of the hills covered in boldly flapping flag, marching them around like an absurdist game of Risk.  My homage to Christo’s Central Park Gates.

I told my friends that if they saw a flag, they should grab it, carry it around, and stick it in the ground somewhere else.   It would be a game, something to be on the lookout for while you explored the festival.

The rain that fell that weekend was legendary.  On Thursday night I uploaded directly into the mud, set up a tent in the dark and immediately got drunk.  Our camp was themed around the work of 70’s cartoonist Moebius (Jean Giraud) , so I had the foresight to construct a magnificent hat inspired by his work.  More importantly I had waterproofed it and brought a trench coat, so I looked like I was cosplaying some sort of French police officer.  I was carrying my umbrella in a tube slung over my shoulder to keep it dry.

I deployed the flags Friday night before the worst of the rain hit.  They stood up pretty well in the mud, and I invited the odd passerby in on the game.  The next morning I wandered around to where I had left the flags and found one had fallen into the mud.  I set up back up, but as I was walking away it fell over again.  A helpful stranger picked it up, suddenly pausing to say “Wait, is this one of those flags you are supposed to steal?”  He ran off with it.  The game had taken on a life of its own.

I started giving people different versions of the rules.  I told them the flags needed to be returned to one of the camps, or taken up to the Effigy Hill and placed around the Temple.  When asked why I was placing flags I would tell hippies I was pinning down ley lines, that I was with the Geomancy Committee trying to correct the chi flow through the festival and get rid of the rain.  Nonsense flourishes at the burn, it is a collective effort.

At the top of the Hill stood two wooden structures: the Effigy and the Temple.  The effigy was a large multicolored hourglass about thirty feet high, and by midafternoon saturday a crew of pirates (or so I am told) had fastened the Yellow/Yellow flag to the top.  I was ecstatic.

On Saturday night the Effigy burns.  It is an almost religious event, with the entire festival in attendance.  First a ring of firespinners, amature and professional, surrounds the effagy (the conclave) showing off their best flo arts.  Then, when the music reaches a crecendo, the effigy explodes into a pyrotechnic inferno.  The massive structure burns for half an hour of so before it falls into itself, reaching a temperature that pushes the crowd back a few hundred feet.  After an hour or more, when the intensity of the heat dies down, the “running of the hippies” begins, as a thousand people stampede in a circle around the flames, whooping and screaming.  Loads of fun.

As the flag caught fire I gave a salute and started humming taps.  It was at that moment I felt a drop of rain on the back of my hand, and realized the terrible truth: It had not been raining.  Not for hours.  Not since the flag was hoisted to the top of the effigy.  And now that the flag had burnt, the rain had been released again.

As the rain began pouring I realized what had to be done.  I had five remaining flags scattered throughout the burn.  Five flags, to build a pentagram around the embers of the effigy and banish the rain.

I ran across the field wielding my umbrella like a sword.

“FUCK YOU SKY!  I AM HUMAN!  I DAMN YOU!  I CURSE YOOOOU”

I knew were three of the flags were and rushed them back up the hill.

“HIPPIES!  FIND ME MY FLAGS!  FIND ME MY FLAAAAAAGS!!!”

I began to tell the assembled crowd my plan. The words poured from me insanely.   They laughed and agreed.  Soon a fourth flag found its way to the mound.  Only one to go.  Carrying one of the flags I set out, embarking on the greatest, most important quest of my life.

“This year to alchemy I brought six flags…”

I told the story just as I have told it here.  I swept out of the darkness, demanded every onlooker listen to my tale, and launched into the entire story from the beginning.  I would ask if they had seen the flags, seen the flag on the effigy.  “Yeah, you know, I think I did…”

“You will find the final flag, the blue/blue flag.

You will bellow ‘I found the flag.’

You will grip in in your hands… [I hand them the flag]

You will yell, ‘I FOUND THE FLAG!!”

You will run up the hill waving the flag proudly

Everyone will be like “hey, that guy has the flag!”

(because they have already heard the story)

You will approach the burn crater

and see the flags arranged in an incomplete pentagram

You will run around the crater once until you find the missing spot

And with all your strength you will stab the flag into the mud.

(you really have to stab it in there so it stays upright)

The moment you do a beam of light will shoot down from the sky

And on the ground the pentagram will start glowing.

You will stand in a shaft of light as the clouds are ripped apart

And everyone will say “wow, that is the coolest person ever!”

And the moon beams will dry out all the mud

And the burn will be saved.

...Except not because I have this flag, so send someone to find me first!

And you will have ETERNAL GLORY.

BUT ONLY IF YOU FIND ME MY FLAG!!!”

Must have said these exact words a hundred times.  I would turn from telling one person then immediately begin telling the next.  People who had just hear it would chime in:

“And what happened when you burned the flag?”

“Yes it was there! I witnessed it!”

I wandered for hours in the darkness, working my way into the deepest part of the woods, where I used the flag as a walking stick to wade through knee deep mud.

“MY FLAGS!  HIPPIES…”

It was 4am when I reached the hill.  The extra flag was nowhere to be found.  One of the flags that had been accounted for was gone.  The rain was picking up, and everyone had begun to disappear into their orgy domes or whatever the fuck people who don’t have flags do at night.  I planted my flag by the fire in defeat.

“FLAGS… FLAGS…”

My mouth could not form any other words.  I was losing my voice.  I fell into the mud

“NOOOOOO….”

In the distance was a single propane fire under a rain fly.  I slowly crawled across the mud until I was nearby.  It was a group of strangers, old hippies and beautiful women. They welcomed me to join them and offered me water.  One of the girls instructed me to do vocal excercises.  She was a voice coach.

With water, Bourbon and kindness they returned me to life.  My handmedowns loafers, veterans of several burns, steamed as they were hung above the fire.  At dawn I walked back to the top of the hill, to the temple.  Since I had returned my flag it had stopped raining

The temple burned as the sun broke the horizon, and into the embers I cremated the remaining flags.  Unable to sleep, unable to speak, I sat back at my camp as the sky broke and the sun came out for the first time all weekend.