Zozobra/ Old Man Gloom

In 1924, before Burning Man but after the Wicker Man, a man named Will Shuster started a festival in Santa Fe to kick off the festival season.



Tomorrow night (Thursday, September 4) is the 84th annual burning of Zozobra, a grotesque 50 foot tall marionette also known as "Old Man Gloom". If you and I were in Santa Fe, we could follow the luminarias out of town, a frito pie in our hand and mezcal already in our stomach, and we could stand around the huge bonfire and be amazed at the spectacle: music, dancing, and art everywhere we could look. We would write our personal tales of woe on a piece of paper and drop it into the Gloom Box. At dusk, we would be edified that our problems would disappear into the orange ashes trailing up into the night sky.



Check out:
http://laughingsquid.com/the-83rd-annual-burning-of-zozobra
http://www.zozobra.com/
http://www.zozobra.com/history.html
http://www.jetsettersmagazine.com/archive/jetezine/fests/zozobra/zozobra.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zozobra
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/legacies/NM/200003356.html

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