In my now 60 years on the planet it has become quite clear to me that the average citizen of the United States can get really angry whenever art becomes even remotely political and, even more, confronts (rather than comforts) their basic assumptions about not only our art and culture but the very basics of what we call existence and consciousness.

Our festival was not only an artistic event, it was also an experiment in altering consciousness and a profound political statement which confronted every aspect of our culture and of our communal thought as it lurched unstructured from anti-war poems to wide-ranging, vicious satire to screaming rage and nonsense; and as it assaulted every conceivable "rule" in the books defining "normal" and "right" and "proper."

This approach to art (anti-art) brought on incredible anger and violence when it first appeared waving its many manifestos (side-by-side, arms often linked with the WWI anti-war movement, anarchists and communists) and as we answered the phones during the festival we found that it hadn't lost its potency even after almost 100 years.

Anyone seriously and consciously engaged in contemporary art of any form can easily recognize how much almost everything we confront in contemporary culture and art has at least one foot in Dada/Surrealism, consciously or not. Those who cannot recognize the connections are those who are entering the twenty-first century still sound asleep wrapped in their many comforting but self-limiting delusions. They almost always get very angry when someone's activity threatens to wake them.

Because I did anticipate some negative reaction (we had some angry people when we did this in 2001 as well, although interestingly not as intense as this time ... have we become more fearful and conservative during the years of Bushco?) I made sure that this year we would begin the festival (in emails, on-line and on the air) with the following manifesto penned by Surrealist Suzanne Cesaire in 1941 which says it all quite well:

"No longer is it a matter of the narrow roads where traditional beauty is offered in its clarity and obviousness to the admiration of the crowds. The crowds were taught the victory of intelligence over the world and the submission of the forces of nature to man.

Now it is a question of seizing and admiring a new art which leaves humankind in its true condition, fragile and dependent, and which nevertheless, in the very spectacle of things ignored or silenced, opens unsuspected possibilities to the artist.

And this is the domain of the strange, the Marvelous, and the fantastic, a domain scorned by people of certain inclinations. Here is the freed image, dazzling and beautiful, with a beauty that could not be more unexpected and overwhelming. Here are the poet, the painter, and the artist, presiding over the metamorphoses and the inversions of the world under the sign of hallucination and madness ... Here at last the world of nature and things makes direct contact with the human being who is again in the fullest sense spontaneous and natural. Here at last is the true communion and the true knowledge, chance mastered and recognized, the mystery now a friend and helpful."

If you aren't ready for that, my fellow KBOO volunteer/listeners, I'm honestly sorry for your life so easily threatened, so unready to be too deeply self-examined and explored. But please give the rest of us a chance to be open and to explore with uninhibited joy and wonder every now and then. Those of us who do "get it" found ourselves euphoric through those few days, especially because it was prolonged, sustained and continuous. I've heard someone refer to it recently as the "festival buzz." And after all, we do try to be very tolerant of you and all of your "acceptable" festivals, specials and celebrations. Often we even join in. So tragic that you were unable to join us in ours.