The Intersections of our Identities — Carrot Camp, Doofing, and Gratitude!
And the joys of being childlike
“Being free on the dancefloor, and once you get into the groove of dancing, doesn’t matter if you can dance or not. It just feels awesome and you just are awesome. It’s natural, its just a flow of life”
Years ago with her now ex-husband, she attended her very first doof called Earth Frequency way back before it was big. She mistakenly thought this was an environmental event where people focus on managing the environment and giving talks. Turns out, it was mostly for people dancing and having the time of their life!
She was surprised that there are people who were willing to go to the middle of the forest and dance their time away. It was not something that she experienced in her life until that point. Like a child who discover the wonders of toy stores for the first time, her world changed forever. She remembers that was also her introduction to psytrance and she was astounded and impressed by the bizarre colorful costumes and the eclectic dances she discovered. And she hasn’t looked back since then!
In her 20s until early 30s, she was traveling extensively around Australia and around the world. Along with her ex-husband, they both discovered doofs, other festivals, places to be, making new friends, and memories. Eventually, they become hardcore Burners in their own rights! Where the culture of participation, self-reliance, gifting, immediacy, and many more become embedded in their identities for a time.
Lisa sees the beauty within these kinds of Burn and festival cultures, where we can lose ourselves to the joy and rhythm of life.
It wasn’t just the dancing that she absolutely loves, it’s also the beautiful human connection she can make with fellow participants! Freeing oneself from the status quo of the world, where people can truly embrace their own self. Everyone dresses up and look like they are parading costumes, toys, stuffed animals, makeups, and dance moves. What matters for them is the now! Everyone in these spaces are seen for who they are, rather than their everyday lives and their status.
“I usually look like a walking artwork of rainbow and weirdness… as everyone else does there, everyone else gets into their costume. There’s a lot of immediate conversations on what’s happening right now… how’s the DJ? Cool Shoes!… that’s what I like”.
In many of people’s first impressions, Lisa is often ascribed as a “Positive lady”, “Hippie”, “Charming Aussie”, “Down to Earth”, “Painter”, “Free spirit”, and anything that is associated with several alternate ways of being. Lisa admits that she often gets tired of people seeking only her “positive persona” and ignoring other aspects of her. She wants to be seen as more because she talks about things that challenge the status quo of our lives. Something that propels us individually to grow, rather than advocating for positivity at the cost of denial, carelessness, and self-centrism, that could potentially be self-destructive.
For Lisa herself, life hasn’t always been this positive and cheerful. Behind the colourful, spiritual, and seemingly eclectic choices of fashion and personality, Lisa’s past personal traumas growing up, that attributed to her past traumas through her sense of loneliness and being misunderstood back then has shaped her to see life beyond the comfort of the bubbles of complacency these days.
For all of us, it’s hard for most to accept a lot of past trauma and it’s always takes time to recover and bounce back to heal. Yet Lisa realised that there’s always something we can learn from, and seeing things in the larger perspectives in relation to our place in the world. In realising all this, and reflecting upon her experiences, suffice to say that she has taken an interesting journey of self discovery and healing over the years through embracing the qualities of being childlike.
The 1990s countercultures phenomenon wasn’t simply a fad for Lisa. A lot of what she listens to, what she wears and how she presented herself was part of the coping mechanism and her ways to understand and process the world she lives in. She used to be introverted and shy because childhood and school were really difficult then. However, Punk, Alternative, and Hardcore rock music were an outlet for her anger and frustrations of Lisa’s insecurities and worries like loneliness, isolation, and the cruel things about the world, and it heals her! She felt the lyrics and sounds reached the inner core of her emotions.
No one else was like her back then in her community. She wanted friends, but wouldn’t associate with those who are mean to each other and selfish.
She admits that she was a massive nerd for heavy metal and rock. Between the age of 14–18, she wears Kurt Cobain. Tools, Nine Inch Nails, cargo shorts, anything that covers her body, and wears all boys and dark colour clothing. She also found that she had an uncanny ability to leap into mosh pits and enjoy the environment and fearlessly immerse herself in the crowd. She admits that being tall and huge means she could hold her own against the men in the middle of the pit.
Lisa remembers that those were the days she really started to find herself in dance. Although mostly it was just jumping up and down, this initial liberation from the crux of her own desolation, and struggling to find her identity was the medicine she needed then. But it wasn’t something that she could fully connect 100% to either. Lisa admits that she’s conscious not to listen to things that advocate self-destruction, and anything that suggests breaking the world itself. As these were the fundamental ideas she was trying to escape from.
“I always know that I am awesome, the world wasn’t thinking that (at the time). I’ve always felt lonely”
She still listens to hard rock these days though her taste has diversified a bit. Though, through maintaining an open minded attitude and just like a child, her undying sense of resilience, she has managed to keep the feeling of love towards others alive.
“I was walking down the street one day, really upset. I thought life would just be miserable forever… then there’s a moment where everything shines and brightens up for a few seconds, like an angelic moment… I wasn’t on drugs or anything… I felt this amazing joy, I never thought I’d feel happiness again… after that, I realise that joy can just come out of nowhere… that’s when I realise that I can create reality, through no change in circumstances”
This revelation during her late teens is when she started to explore her inner world and discover spirituality in more depth. Her discovery of the spiritual side has led her to discover the world of dancing.
As fate brings to those who seek, Lisa begin to discover the scene around the age of 20, she started to wear more colorful clothing and explore the dance and other progressive electronic music in the world of parties and clubs. Initially, Lisa started clubbing diligently. She went out alone most of the time and discovered new people and friends back then. She eventually found some lovely people and she found the capacity to love within herself once more. But this time, closer to her truth and authentic self. She considers all this a spiritual experience, like going to church but better.
Around this time, she started meeting “hippies” and other “spiritual” people and started to hang around with them. Lisa and these people were having fun adventures, spreading “love” by giving hugs, and performing random acts of kindness. The idea was to bring joy and positivity to people when they were all out dancing in clubs. They would dance the night away, all the way to the morning after till everyone else was dead tired. She admits that they were all real nerds about it.
But what Lisa discovered is that sometimes, these self proclaimed spiritual folks can have illusions of grandeur and other delusions. Some feel the “love” so strongly to the point where they feel like they are the embodiment of Jesus. Lisa called these behaviours out and some people have been receptive to the criticism
“It’s just trying to make sense of what you’re feeling, you’re feeling these amazing things… and I try to tell them that you don’t need to be Jesus to be awesome… You’re just awesome”
A divorce, a nomadic campervan bush road living for the last couple of years, a few episodes of trough and lows, and yet another life revelation later, Lisa remains true to her core of embracing unconditional love and non-judgement. Time and time again, she chooses to embrace the strengths of joy and wonder through accessing the inner childhood, and persevere through with life decisions in order for her to find meaning and love in life again.
Lisa’s not afraid of living with just the basics, it taught her a lot about what she really need and don’t need in her life. She is grateful that her ex-husband taught her how to save money, and that her level of resilience and determination will always push her to be in a better state of being, whether it is physically, mentally, financially, and so on.
Lisa heals through creating. She sees creation as a reflection of one’s effort and progress.
Her rich nomadic existence gave her the inspiration to paint. Dot art to be exact. Although most of artists who works with dots focus on geometric shapes, Lisa’s works are more based in natural shapes and nature-inspired. She admits that it’s only natural for her to start painting more nature based things after years of living with nature. She shares and sells them on Instagram and festival circuits. Since then, she has established a lot of connections and networks with artists and art students from around the world, and her work has inspired many others!
“People are messaging you saying that it makes my day, and I’m starting to do dot art, and this girl in England is doing her final art exam on my art… She had to choose someone who she’s inspired by”
She began realising that art, across the world, is just a big connector of people. Not only art she believes that creating art access into our inner creative flow, and rekindle the magic of joys and wonders like when we had as a child. It’s an amazing way of sharing ideas and inspirations with one another. Also in recent times, Art creation has essentially restored her sense of self that was lost through recent times too! And to her surprise, many of her artistic pursuits and freedom pursuits she displays have inspired many of her friends to do similar things in life, an inspirational domino effect.
Although, she admits that sometimes she has to be careful with her dot art paintings. She has never been extensively exposed to Aboriginal art, nor she was inspired by them to create the style she is doing. Rather, she got the idea through seeing dot painting at festivals where painters often paints geometric and abstract colours in the canvas.
She wouldn’t want to offend and appropriate anyone’s traditions. She highly respects all the various Aboriginal arts because it meaningfully tells their own cultural and historical stories, symbols and patterns. Hence, Lisa always tries to make her work as removed from all these various references as possible.
Her dot painting focuses on creating the aesthetics and abstracts of living forms like rocks, trees, and natural swirl patterns found in nature as it soothes our senses in finding shapes and patterns. Differentiating those of the geometric shaped based styles.
“People now have something to say to me… like before they don’t know what to say… now they said, I love your painting!”
The only time she socialises these days are at doofs, otherwise, she mostly work on her paintings. And more recently, she brings with her stuffed dolls, made of fruits and vegetables when she goes to doofs. Part of embracing the inner childhood is allowing the self to be more approachable. Lisa often dress modestly, and tries to engage everyone with childlike enthusiasm in these spaces.
“Magic is in the childhood, that’s where we create and… learning, and trusting, and… you get hurt by things in life, and close down, and… I think if you can reconnect to the childlike energies, that’s always within you… it’s just joyous and fun… it connects lots of people and it makes a safe place, especially at parties…”
Lisa’s Carrot dolls brings people together! She was introduced by the concept initially introduced through carrot camp at Burning Man and later at Burning Seed. She was surprised that plenty of people cuddle these stuffed dolls. Some when they were dancing, some when they were chilling, some brought them with them to sleep in the tents. She managed to get them all back by the next day, but to her surprise, all of them have some sort of extra decorations like necklaces and so on.
Lisa named some of her favourite stuffed vegetables and fruits “Carrot of unconditional love” and “Walter the Watermelon”. She believes that all of this stuff reminds people of the childlike safety love, joy, stuff, not to take anything too seriously when the world gets tough.
Lisa reminds us to be more mindful from fear mongering and judgements. She wants to see more people acknowledge the good in everyone and not judge them based on superficial things. An example of how this pays off, Lisa would have lost $500 on her holiday trip in LA when she almost left her wallet in a park had she not befriended the homeless guy near her hostel who was with her at the time. Being friendly and present, and acknowledging that everyone is worthed will certainly help shape the way we see others.
“If you’re kind to people, in a situation where you normally otherwise wouldn’t be because they’re scared (of those people)… then that person… that would touch something in them… and they may be going to change a little bit (for the better)”.
Practicing gratitude and recognising how extremely lucky, Lisa is, to be able to live in Australia, to have the ability to travel, access to nature, family is a blessing that helps her to be mindful about how she sees herself in the world. It keeps a healthy check of her ego, and how she treats others, especially those who are less fortunate than her. There is a lesson in her mindfulness for all of us.
Lisa embraces being a hippie! She sees the term to mean nature-loving, colourful, unconditionally loving, and authentic human beings. But she refuses to be boxed in. She’s not just a painter, or an animal lover, or a nomadic traveller. In a sense, Lisa sees that everyone as cosmic travelers, and we are all in this together. So make the most of it, and work together to make living on this planet just that bit better.
— This article acknowledges the Traditional Owners of this land, the Darug people where this article was written.