Talking Rainbows (2 of 2)

(Part One – Click Here) The Rainbow Family has been gathering for longer than I have been alive. Freeman, who consented to letting me grill him on his experiences, is in no way a spokesperson for the group. He’s simply telling his story. While we’re focused on his experience with the Rainbow Family in general, it would be foolish to overlook the vast amount of media he’s contributed to the net on a wide variety of topics. A follow-up interview on his conspiratorial focus and his upcoming documentary will appear soon on Greylodge. What follows is the story of how Freeman initially came to live his nomadic lifestyle, and more about the culture at the gathering and the reactions they’ve encountered.

Wes Unruh:

Nobody speaks for Rainbow, you’re not a spokesman for or a contact within the Rainbow Family. What you are is a person who’s been to numerous gatherings, which is a different thing entirely. And just in general you’ve led a very nomadic existence.

Freeman:

I was a natural Rainbow, and when I finally stumbled upon the Rainbow I thought ‘Here you all are’ because I’ve thought that perhaps I was the only person who thought like this. The social engineering did not work on me. I was a little too intelligent for school, and so the programming didn’t fit in. So I don’t understand money, or the motivations of the ‘real worlders,’ I simply wanted to live. I wasn’t programmed with the fear that most have about traveling.

So I was just a natural nomad. And as soon as I graduated from high school I started living in a car. This wasn’t something that I’d thought out it was just my natural state. And I found others to join me that found that this natural state was wonderful. And it was living in this car and eventually a van that taught me synchronicity. We were beach bums. And we were always at the prime party. We were always hanging out in penthouses and jacuzzis. The van was constantly filled up with gas, beer, wine coolers… you know, wine, women and song.

And eventually after I came back from that kind of life and decided to join the ‘real world,’ which was a big mistake and I quickly quit that again, I went ahead and went to like, ITT and thought I could be a robot. But I’m not capable of being a robot. So it was this lifestyle.. when people started to ask me ‘Well, how did you keep gas in your van?’ or ‘How did you eat?’ because of course, we didn’t have a job, I had no answer for that. I was like.. huh, I hadn’t even thought about it until they brought it up.

WU:
So, in other words, as long as you didn’t work and slept on the beach, you had plenty of food, gas, and alcohol. And sort of constantly having a good time.

F:
Yes.

WU:

But when you went to go get a job and cut out all that free time you needed to find those things spontaneously, you were suddenly broke and had no food.

F:

Exactly. It finally dawned on me when I was working at Kansas University, and that was the very last job I ever had, that was seven or eight years ago. And they pay you once a month when they pay you at the University. So I would starve at least one week out of the month. And it finally dawned on me ‘You know, I can starve without a job.’ And so then I walked away from it all again, and boy where they shocked when I walked in and said ‘Hey guys, later. I quit.’

‘But, but what about your reference?’ And I was like, yeah. Like I’m going to need that. I was one of their top employees, I was serving pizza at KU. I love to create, I love to work. At one point the regional manager came in and he asked if I would go train all the other pizza hut employees how to make pizza, because mine were the best in the nation. I was the only employee, it was a little pizza hut express and I was the only employee at that location. And they came to me and they said ‘Can you please come with us and teach the rest of our cooks how to make pizza.’

And I looked these suited corporate men straight in the eye and I said ‘Love is an ingredient and I cannot teach that.’ And their jaws just hit the floor. They did not know what to do with the old Freeman. Anyway, yeah. It dawned on me at that point that I could starve without a job, and of course as soon as I quit everything went back into synchronicity, Here I am living in a house in Austin Texas and I still have yet to get a job. And every time I’ve had a job, I’ve quit it to go to Rainbow.

WU:

So what is the reception of a Rainbow Gathering by those in the local area? I know there’s been some issues, there’s even video of police expecting a face-off with Rainbow. I can’t imagine doing this kind of thing in Provo, for example.

F:

I can’t think of the name of that town in Montana, they loved us. Once the Rainbow shows up, people are damn happy we did, because we descend on these little towns, that have no tourist trade, no nothing, they’ve always been these little self-sufficient towns. And all of a sudden millions of dollars start flowing into their little town. There has not been one town near Rainbow that’s been sorry to hear us coming.

The Feds and the cops will go spread fear throughout the town. And tell em, “Oh you got these guys coming, watch your vegetables, they’ll do things…” then we get there, and they’re just like totally amazed and rich by the time we leave.
One Rainbow Gathering we were near this town, and this town had no homeless population. And they’d been paying into the food stamp industry forever and ever and ever, and not getting any return on it at all. Because they’d get like 25 cents on every food stamp dollar that was spent there. So they came down to Rainbow to the gathering and they said ‘Hey, you all want to sign up for food stamps?’ And so we were all like ‘Sure.’ So we got this huge caravan, it was like hundreds of people, there was this huge line of people, many of us without shoes on, I had my dog with me, and they just gave us all these forms, and if we didn’t have identification they gave out a second form that the person next to you could sign saying they knew you were a US citizen.. and then they gave us all a $180 some odd dollars in food stamps. We wiped out grocery stores for a hundred mile radius. You could not get food.

We were having contests to see who could get the most extravagent stuff. It was so much fun, I mean imagine just having so much money just freely given to you. I would just go up and see a whole shelf of chocolate, and just rake my arm across it and knock it all into my cart. Yeah.. so nobody’s ever starved because the Rainbow showed up. And we bring a lot of money. There’s a lot of money in Rainbow, it’s not just a bunch of hippie kids out there.

WU:

It would be kind of silly to assume that it’s all just hippies who’ve never gotten out of the sixties, it’s much more vibrant than that. There’s certainly an enactivist philosophy in that you have to go out there and experience it in order to understand it.

F:

Yeah, you can never describe it.

Kerrville and Texas Rainbow Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I find the in-breaking of video artifacts from this thriving scene, a video documenting of an event that has gone on for so long with only the faintest traces in modern media, to be one of the most fascinating events online. As more and more counter-publics document themselves, and as the tools to do so become more available, new forms of social discourse will become apparent. I find the idea of a nomadic utopia, a temporary autonomous zone on wheels, to be a powerful force for creativity in a larger social order. At least, thats the function I’d hope that it would perform. While I personally find the idea of a month or more without access to the net abhorrent, I’m thankful for the glimpse into this afterculture, this post-modern tribalism that Freeman provided. For more of Freeman check out his Google Video director account. I’m closing with the thirty minute program Freeman himself did on Rainbow from his first season on the air: