2003-05-10 - 6:04 a.m.

the psychogeography conference is turning out to be incrediby fun. the opening party on thursday was a total blast. yesterday, i went on a tour of lower manhattan bookstores and assisted in slipping free books into the shelves. f and i dominated a visual scavenger hunt on the lower east side. and last night, we grabbed makeshift instruments made from trash and joined toyshop's acoustic noise parade.

boys and girls dressed in trash handed out sashes, patches, hats, umbrellas, buckets, drums, and horns to everyone who showed up at abc no rio. everything in the parade was created out of materials that were dumpster-dived. a giant banner that read "your fear of looking stupid is holding you back" led the parade, held by swoon and other toyshop luminaries. swoon graced me with a lovely bent black umbrella cut half to ribbons, and dana gave me a sash that read 'love'. at least a hundred happy, noisy people took off from abc no rio and we were joined by many more people as we pranced through the streets of the lower east side making a joyful noise. most people cheered us on. a few motorists were perturbed at the interruption of their friday evening, but most were excited and took pictures.

shaking a rattle made of large aluminum washers and twirling an altered umbrella really brought out the five-year-old in me. the noise generated by the parade careened in and out of actual musical rhythms. everyone around me was whooping and shouting and dancing. on my own, i would probably never do something like this. i'm a real rule-follower (i blame my fundamentalist upbringing!) and i kept having thoughts like 'shouldn't we have applied for a permit for this event?' and 'is this really the type of publicity we want to attract?' and 'am i going to be arrested?'. but once i really let go and started prancing and shouting, i realised that a little anarchy every once in a while feels really, really good.

swoon led us down houston towards the east river. we had generated a police escort by that time, but the cops seemed really mellow about the whole thing. toyshop made a barbeque out of a 55-gallon drum which was perched on a shopping cart. we marched to the east river park near the FDR onramp and bonfires were lit. fire dancers and other jugglers began to play. it was one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen.

it didn't last long, though. the barbeque broke the good humor of the police force, and they shut us down. everyone marched peacefully out of the park, but the parade had lost much of its thunder at that point. a few brave souls vowed to march on to brooklyn, but most of us broke off to do our own thing.

an hour or so later, i looked out my window to see a couple dozen marchers, with banners and barbeque in tow, marching past the sugar factory in williamsburg. thanks, toyshop, for one of the most fun evenings i have ever had!