This video is really black metal. I keep expect the hobo or mark twain to try to sacrifice Diamond Bessie. They are The Unseen Ghosts Brigade.
Some of my friends are joining in the fine anarcho tradition of building giant strange rafts out of dumpstered materials and floating them down the Mississippi to New Orleans. In this case, they’ve put together an ecological road show of music and puppets and all the finest in zaniness, but are of course reacting to rather serious circumstances.
From their press release:
The Mississippi River has been controlled, restricted, and polluted by the forces of industry. This has caused the cultures along the riverbanks to die and the River to become mostly a highway for barges, making it deadly to drink its waters or eat the fish and swim in its depths.
As the regulation of the Army Corps of Engineers has become more intense and increasingly prevalent, it becomes less and less possible for the average person to travel the River. With this focus comes a cost of a way of life: pollution has increased dramatically with industrialization, and whole communities have ceased to exist because life has become just another highway. Attempts to harness and control the power of the Mississippi have resulted and continue to result in decrease of wild flora and fauna, the relocation of numerous indigenous communities, and the loss of innumerable lives due to flooding and the failing of infrastructure.
We are taking a stand. Since 2009, the Unseen Ghost Brigade has been working to resurrect the ghosts of the past; they have come back to haunt the living with laughter, storytelling, and clown. We come to share a dream that things have not always been the way they are now, and that the present does not need to be the future.
What I like about this is the earnest nature with which they tackle the realization that our lives can be a fucking hell of a lot more interesting than they are now, if only we actually recraft reality to suit us by fighting against the monstrous, droll world that is killing the shit out of the planet.
They’ll be stopping in a ridiculously ambitious number of cities along the way, just check out their website.
In my next life, I’m going to be more than one person so I could have gone with them.