"The reason there are three spirals in the logo is because the original concept was to combine three elements in one festival: the music festival scene with name acts to draw big numbers featuring a variety of genres, ą la Bonnaroo; intensive lectures and experiential workshops ą la Journey Into Wholeness, a non-profit founded by Rhythm's parents some thirty years ago that both Rhythm and I worked for; the third element was Burning Man. Our belief was that each element would have its own drawing power. Some would come to hear music, some to burn, and some to explore their own spirituality. So while attending to see a concert, you would get turned onto the gift economy of Burning Man, or the psychology of the collective unconscious. We hoped to work under the umbrella of the non-profit status of JIW, and have some seed money to book musical acts. Long story short, JIW Board of Directors got nervous and refused to be involved in the first venture, so we lost the possibility of non-profit status and seed money. We then focused on the Burner community to make this work. With limited personal investments, we decided to put the idea out to the Burning Man community via the Carolina burners (Deezl, as well as the Atlanta Burn groups), and voilą!" -WORDPLAY
" I'm the regional BBurning Man contact for North Carolina, so me and half a dozen other burners had been working on an event. We wanted a Burn closer to us that had the flavor of the area and didn't cost so much. About a half dozen of us were working hard to find a site. We had a name picked out: "CaroScene", a little bit of cool wordplay I came up with and am still proud of. Then, out of nowhere, came Theory, wanting to know if we wanted in on this Burn they were gonna throw. Our small group was aghast! Here was some stranger offering what we'd been working hard on for months! So I played the mole and made myself available at the initial meeting at Deerfields to listen to what these guys had envisioned." -VI C DIESEL
"A phone call from a friend of mine linked us to the land. Two brothers, John J. and Greg Redden, owned a place called Deerfields, over 900 acres of Appalachian paradise: a lush and verdant land of forests and fields tucked into a mountain valley near Asheville, North Carolina. The name John J. rang a bell in my distant memory. A call was made, a meeting set up, and- I'll be damned-John J. and I had met in the early '90s through my girlfriend at the time. Another relationship rekindled in the creation of Transformus, which had yet to be named." -RHYTHM
John J. and Greg don't have to share this beautiful place with the world, but they do, and we're grateful. Deerfields
"The first meeting of the seven was a catalyst. We worked off each others energy. I started out being very skeptical, not wanting to see the event become commerce-influenced. My skeptisicm grew from the fact that I was on every east coast Burn list I could join, and there was nothing on the radar as far as interest in a local Burn. So who were these guys? Why did they want to use the Burning Man community? Were they for real? Were they going to keep the event close to the Burning Man tenets? These questions were all answered that night and on following nights. And that's how Transformus was born. I'm leaving out a lot of the pain and fighting that happened daily, but that's another story." -VI C DIESEL "Damn, I wanna hear the juicy stuff!"-LITTLE SHIVA
"The name Transformus was an evolutionary process. It started as Ars Transforma, which just didn't flow trippingly off the tongue. We kept batting around a variety of names in e-mails, including Transformafest, Transformania, and others. Finally I proposed TransformUs because that was the goal. Not sure when we started referring to the community as Mysteria. Transformus is the event, Mysteria is the community." -WORDPLAY
"Initially I wanted to build a giant lotus flower for the effigy, then float a bunch of smaller lantern flowers on the lower lake. Theme the whole thing as based around 'The Lotus Eaters' from the Odyssey, but turn the notion of lotus eaters as drug addicts to the question of consumerism as addiction. But then I realized that might not get through to people and it might look like I was just promoting drug use in general, which in my opinion doesn't need any extra promotion.
The Bamboozler sprouted as soon as we put up a website and it began looking like we'd get a lease on the land. All of a sudden it looked like Transformus could happen, which meant that it had to happen, and I figured I might as well try to blow the lid off the thing. This meant approaching it on a city scale rather than a village scale, in spite of the fact that this was first year. Alot of people think that villages eventually become towns which gradually become cities and that cities are little more than an agglomeration of lots of people, but they're dead wrong. The difference between a village and a city is the attitude that the citizens have-whether they're clannish or cosmopolitan in outlook.
So the Bamboozler (and everything else about Transformus) had to draw people from far and wide to get things started in as cosmopolitan a manner as possible. The size of the sculpture makes a difference, but so did the fact that it was built entirely of bamboo. Sometime around April I posted text and a photo describing how the pins were made and explained that there were no nails or screws or any other non-bamboo elements involved. At the event, CD, who was behind the construction of the Pallet Bar, told me that seeing the photo of the pins helped him amp up the quality of his project. That was the finest compliment to receive.
My wife Katherine stuck by me throughout. It couldn't have happened without her. The main thing that sticks in my mind is that seven people, most of whom didn't know each other beforehand, came together and just busted ass to make it occur. You wouldn't believe how much friction went on, the head-butting, the wrangling...my best advice when collaborating on a project with multiple people is to abandon the notion that everyone will get along all the time. Accept the reality that different people have different approaches and continue forward. At the end of the day, the way to get something built is to build it. Simple."
-BRUCE BENDER
"Transformus was full-on right out of the gate. It took Flipside four years to get to that level. Although, to be fair, when Flipside began, Burning Man was still under 20,000. Transformus began with Burning Man at 32,000. I'm sure there's some cause and effect there."
-PHIL HOLLENBECK, veteran burner and founder of Big Puffy Yellow.
Ok, If you read all of that, you are are the kind of brand new burner we are looking for, so let's explore principles.