Booking of the dead

>> A reincarnated Noah Kole brings fresh fire to Montreal nightclubs

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Bad news for those of you who enjoyed events like Free Bamboo Butterfly and Just for Laugh's Circo de Bakuza: fire-wielding masseur Noah Kole is dead, following a "flaming motorcycle accident" in Indonesia. The good news is that his gaunt cadaver now houses Kit Carson, "famous New Mexican gun-slinging sand shark from Bali Hai."

Kole/Carson's low profile over the last year is explained first by a stretch touring with the likes of Jane's Addiction and Perry Farrell, Primal Scream and Bauhaus' Peter Murphy. He also joined DJs John Kelley and Brian at the famous desert raves in California. But after all that, he found himself at a spiritual impasse.

"I didn't know where to go," says Carson. "I wasn't able to understand what the next step was. Everyone wanted us to do what we'd done before. I found that people found us extremely predictable--and they liked this. They were comfortable with it. They expected massage, fire dancing and shows with outlandish characters. I was losing the sincerity of what I was doing, becoming a used-car salesman.

"At that point I said, 'I want to destroy everything.'"

Metaphorically speaking, of course--Carson's too much an incarnation of positive, life-affirming energy for any threat of destruction to carry weight. With a fistful of cash and a thirst for the mystical, the exotic and the inspiring, he began a journey of seven months through Asia, through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taipei, Singapore, Japan, Australia and Indonesia.

"Since I was a child I've been dedicated to the idea of magic, that ritual is an act of worship, that you can prepare a space for magic to happen in your life, events you can't control. At the point when I went to Asia, I felt I'd gone as far as I could go. The next step was a parody of myself. I was becoming Elvis in his Vegas years. So when I left, it was with the idea of the Bali in my heart, which I'd kept for 15 years through people telling me stories. I was going to meet that part of me that believed in magic and wanted to be born into magic."

The apple of his eye

Cue the rude-awakening theme music right here. "T.S. Eliot has a nice poem where he says, 'Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow.' When I first arrived, it wasn't what I expected. I was shocked and petrified at what I saw. The American dollar had saturated everything. No longer was the vision of the Asiatic internal. It was now external. The whole land was tourist stands."

Undaunted, Carson traveled into the less familiar rural areas, still not blighted by golden arches and Visa stickers.

"I met shamen and witch doctors and people that channel the dead. I saw cockfights, ceremonial calf drownings and cremation floats where the dead have diamonds on their eyes, flowers sewn in their mouths and fruit in their noses."

But it was the simple, dignified presentation of a single apple, delicately wrapped and boxed by a street vendor amid roaring music and cascading fireworks that was the diamond bullet in Kole's forehead. "Less is more" became a mantra. Risk became its own reward. The collapse of the ego became a concrete goal and the Japanese theory of wabi--where a tiny hairline fracture can elevate one teacup among a hundred other perfect ones to a state of aesthetic glory--a code to live by.

"I learned a lot about the simplicity of an act. To repeat a simple act to infinity with devotion. I stopped looking for the spectacular and started looking for the simple moment, and having the courage to allow that moment to manifest itself."

Gathering the tribe

Refueled and ready to rock, the reborn Kit Carson returned to North America and began assembling a tribe of others like himself, beautiful misfits who'd channeled their uniqueness into art and expression. He presented them with the challenge.

"What are we doing but transmitting inspiration to an audience? Transmitting dignity and the idea that they make a difference? Are you so insecure that you need to have people looking at you? You need the heat because you don't have enough in your own body? For me, the idea is to look at someone and see that they can see in me something that's in them. And poof! Bring it out. If it's the insanity of a child, so be it, because that's beautiful.

"I like it when a show blurs the line, and the people who are dancing and those who are performing are just one big ocean. I strive for this--it's my failure, it's the thing that I like the most. To see that you can inspire people beyond their own reservations, so they enter a state where they are no longer conscious of their minds, bodies or emotions. They're in something larger, lost in that ocean. It's the idea that everyone has a place, and that place is profound."

Rogues gallery

And so the tribe came together, loosely. "These are people that I've worked with in the last few years, in a very fragile way. They're people like Stephen Pagan, a DJ who works with Perry Farrell. Or Piki Chappell, a cellist who does sampling for Jane's Addiction. He did the songs for all our events at Just for Laughs--Mystic Supermarket, Circo de Bakuza and Initiatic Car Wash. Kip Rollins is a champion surfer who now does body-piercing and Indian sun dance rituals, rituals for initiation into manhood. Like the Torture King from Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, he walks on glass and sticks needles through his cheeks. He has, imbedded in his chest, a Teflon screw for rods and flagpoles.

"Shayla is my girlfriend, I met her in Malaysia. She's been part of the Burning Man shows. She does batons of fire, fingers of fire and chains of fire. Danielle Hubbard, from the Brou Ha Ha troupe and the band Bodybag, is a Montreal institution. She does a lot of punk shows, she's a professional dancer and trapeze artist. Adrianne is a tantric chanter who's worked with Mercan Dede and Peter Murphy."

The list goes on. "Fernando Velasquez is someone we've worked with for four years, a kind of Mexican shaman. He works with Talvin Singh, did a video for him. I met him in India, he'd done a documentary on the Maha Kumbh Mela festival, where 7 million Hindus bathe in sacred waters. He'll be doing video projections and some shamanistic stuff. Layton Kelly is the one who hooked me up with Perry Farrell and all them, he's an amazing Balinese fire dancer who travels all over the world. Rafi Mackay is a female percussionist from Barcelona, who'd studied here with Michel Seguin and his father, who started the tam-tams."

Once in place, the tribe needed a name--or many. "Because of my idea of not doing stereotypes, we have a different name for ourselves at every event." The Pearl Apostles of Myth, the Gathering of the Lost Tribe, Window Washers of the Blue Highway, the Umbrella Dwarves of Tahiti, the Vertical Vampires of Allahambra Halmahera, Bali Death Tribe, Infinite Seashell Riders, the Diamond Nile Refugees and Magic Infinity Total Eclipse--Carson's notebook is brimming with them.

"My idea is to never do something static. Keep creating and destroying. Never allow the image to permeate people's minds. I tell the performers, don't do it long. Do something very beautiful for yourself and disappear. I want people to use their imaginations."

With DJ Laflèche at Illume's Tuxedo Moon party on Saturday, Oct. 27, with DJ Loco Fern at Living's Dream Theory ov Malaiya party on Tuesday, Oct. 30 and with DJ Mark Dillon at Lychee's Myths of Ancient Rome party on Wednesday, Oct. 31