I have been mixed up with
The Flaming Lips for more than 18 years now--living with the crazed Irish-American pirate leader singer Wayne for sixteen of them.
I can see the picture in your head.
When you think of
The Flaming Lips, you think underground-lifestyle-gone extreme;
a kind of Hell's Angels-meets-Ringling Brothers with guitars and computers. You think drugs, you think endless all night freak-outs, you think of obsessive mad scientist artists, you think of loud punishing guitar orgies, you think of flying around the world on nonstop red-eye flights from Tokyo to New Orleans hanging with all manner of personalities from Justin Timberlake to William Burroughs.
Ah yes, it is all that, and some of it is very unglamorous, and some of it is very boring, but all of it is wonderful.
The idea has always been to entertain ourselves in as colorful a way as possible.
I’ve been taken along, kind of like a hitchhiker being picked up by an understaffed ambulance. I wanted the ride; they needed some help.
That has meant being a lot of things over years: friend, photographer, cook, wife, gardener, handyman, blonde, brunette, redhead, bricklayer, plumber, painter, electrician, seamstress, hairstylist, colorist, personal shopper, craft service, go-go dancer and therapist..but the most
exciting of all my roles may have been when I was a
GIANT INFLATABLE SUN.
I love to shop for anything except for plumbing fittings.
So, when in the fall of 2002, Wayne decided to dramatically increase the intensity of the stage show (they wanted to have up to 30 furry animals dancing on stage while they played), I was sent hunting for more costumes.
As I shopped on the Internet, I happened across a masquerade shop in India who not only could run up some furry creature suits fast, they also made inflatable costumes.
While I really didn't have any need for such things then, I knew these were worth making note of for future
reference. It was spring and we were planning for the Saturday night slot, right before Radiohead, at the Glastonbury Festival later that summer. Wayne wanted something big, new and colorful. The giant inflatable suns came immediately to mind, so I ordered two of them late
one night as I sat up watching "Sex In The City".
The suits were sent straight to London and arrived the day before the festival when the band was at the BBC doing a radio show. We weren't sure what to expect. The excitement was palpable when we tore into the boxes for the first time.
After we made it past the initial distraction of a perfectly preserved dried Indian frog that fell out of the box (it must have jumped into the box while in the warehouse? The
frog now resides on the wall in our kitchen), we quickly put our nephew, Dennis, in one of them and blew it up. In a rare un- "Spinal Tap" moment, these giant round wearable sunrise balloon suits had exceeded our wildest expectations.
Looking at them just made you feel happy and hopeful.
We arrived at the festival the next afternoon and began to do all the normal preparations for a Flaming Lips show. It became clear that there wouldn't be a test run for the new sun costumes. It would be a panic, seat-of-the-pants kind of deal. At this point I should say a bit about the logistics of being inside one of these suns. The feet in these costumes are a lot like snowshoes. The bottoms are flat pieces of
board that are strapped to your foot, and fit over your shoes. The suit is then inflated by a humming blower motor that you wear like a parachute pack on your back and then attach to the inside of the costume, behind your back, with a flexible dryer hose. It was decided that the festival wanted us to come out in front of the band and their
animal dancers and jump down to a platform in front of the stage that was about three feet lower than the stage, but still about five feet or so off the ground. This was also the platform where the cameras, that were filming the festival, would have their dolly tracks set up. Just to give you an idea what they were like, they're sort of like very
narrow train tracks. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
The time had come for Rick Gershon, the band's American publicist and other sun costume wearer, and me to make our entrance. This is when the contrast between the relative ease by which one can walk, hear, and kind of see when inside a quiet flat studio at the BBC and the not so
much relative ease of being in front of a crowd of 50,000 at a festival with all the obstacles and volume that come with that. What was once a little disorienting was now like a bad-ass blindfolded carnival ride that had swallowed me whole.
We were blown-up, zipped-up and pushed into place. I went first, with Rick close behind. It was immediately clear that no one could hear me from inside the suit and I couldn't hear them. I could see through a small square at about eye-level, with visibility through the fine mesh
that was about thirty or forty percent. I couldn't see my feet at all.
As the bombastic intro music began, the roar of the crowd was all I could hear. As I'm being pushed along, I'm thinking to myself, "Where is the drop-off to the lower ledge? You know, where those camera tracks
are. Will they stop me before I get there? I have to just let go and trust them."
I'm going down over the edge and it feels surprisingly smooth until I feel my foot (snowshoe) catch on the camera dolly rail. I'm hoping that the crew has seen this and will stop Rick, who's right behind me, allowing me a pause to pull my foot out and reposition myself. Not so
easy a task when you are 6-feet wide and can't see your own feet or where you are going. I wince as I feel Rick coming down behind me and then it happens--the hose is pulled off the motor, when Rick hits me, and I begin to deflate. The crowd lets out a giant “AAAWWWHHHHH,”
(That’s crushing disappointment).
I could faintly make out Wayne and Steven's voices saying, “Oh no!”
Frantically I tried to position myself in a safe place and begin to reattach the hose, all in slow motion, all
in a panic. Here I am the symbol of the magnificent summer sun, of glorious summer youth and I have wilted. I have become more than a prop, I am a mascot for the team, I’m the ambassador sun, and here I am instead of lighting the golden path, I’m clogging the red carpet. I
must reattach the air hose, and like a desperate drowning scuba diver who has mistaken his ass for his mouth, the air begins to do its job.
At last, my synthetic sunshine is regained. I take my place and my sun burns brightly. The triumph of the reattachment was amplified by 50,000 cheers of “YEAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” All is right with the world.
I bounced and danced around for three magical minutes of pure joy. It was my joy, it was the Flaming Lips joy and it was the audience's joy. We were hoisted up and cheered without a hitch.
I would be a sun many more times that next year, but none as memorable or as precarious.
To wrap up a perfect evening, darkness folded in around the mass of soggy English campers as the ritualistic bonfires that were lit throughout the site cast a magical orange grey glow. Wayne and I watched as Radiohead began to play accompanied by 50,000 voices singing
along on every word to every song in transcendental unison under the summer stars.
Standing there together in that moment, reflecting on this perfect day was something I'll always remember. So often perfect days are filled with surprises and unexpected diversions but these things allow us to live only in that moment, and that's a good thing. Being in that
moment reminded me of all the years of the fun I’ve been lucky enough to have. Even now I get goose bumps just thinking about it, and perhaps you will too, as some of those sublime experiences, the ones I've photographed anyway, are reflected here for you to enjoy. Throughout
this collection, I think you’ll see that the Flaming Lips, along with their fans, are a parade of optimism. They are a traveling spectacle of enthusiasm. They are a great trekking light of hope. They are, as an entity, as they go from place to place tearing down and setting up
their shining courageous show, truly an inflatable sun.
Really,
j.Michelle Martin-Coyne
Spring 2005
