Profile-Ellery-Seither

Brett Packer

An inhumanly tall creature with blonde curls exploding from his silver helmet strides through the festival as if in slow motion, due to his extremely long legs. He walks up to people and puts a helmet over their head, turning an eggbeater and pretending to extract the gray matter from their brain and into a canister on his back. Throughout the day, he spreads everyone’s gray matter evenly in an attempt to give the festival a homogeneous mind.

“I’ve been helping people clear out their excess cranial matter - got too much on the mind, I can help them, or I give them a little morning scramble. Miss, why don’t you step forward? You look like you’ve had a stressful day. Had a rough day? Tough day over the hill? Just relax a little, we’ll put the brain scramble on you and give you just a little bit of...

Oh yeah, a little bit of leftbrain, little bit of right-brain.

How’s that feel? Uh-huh… very, very good. Now I noticed you’ve got a little excess gray matter; we’re going to remove some of that, just so we can put it in our brain evacuate canister back here... and then we can share it with other peo-

ple around us, you know, those who are lacking a little in the cranial department. That way it helps spread the good vibe, and helps create the one mind that we’re going after. There we go, how’s that feel?” (Packer).

Brett Packer, stilt artist and festival performer. He paints us this picture of himself and gives us an example of his act, explaining how his costume allows him to interact with people in a different sort of way, “touching hearts and getting people to crack their brains open a little bit” (Packer). Brett plays in a Grateful Dead tribute band, builds beautiful houses as a contractor, and is an active father of three. His early life consisted of adventures to find his personality and save the planet, using the unique art of stilting as a means of communication.

In his later years he has continued stilting and performing

n costumes as a creative outlet with his community of friends in Santa Cruz, California.

Brett grew up in Los Altos, California, where he attended Springer Elementary School and Blach Middle School, and Los Altos High.

His younger sister, Kelly Seither is a witness to his personality shining through as his played his friends as a boy. “Whether he was building something, or playing monopoly, or playing cowboys, or army guy, he was very creative and very fun. We had a great backyard, so he and his buddies would put together these big montages of army guys, and model ships, and play out full wars with firecrackers, and all sorts of fun stuff. And I think that’s just how he did most things - they were pretty much just on a grand scale” (Seither). Brett got his introduction to playing music in second grade, when he chose

to play the clarinet, but then “transformed from clarinet to saxophone to bass clarinet to baritone sax, played all the way through ninth grade” (Packer).

In high school, Brett became restless in little Los Altos, graduated early, and escaped to Oregon with his friends in a van. After Oregon, they drove through Montana and somehow managed to get across the border into Canada, where he picked apples for money. Along their way they picked up a hitchhiker and made new friends who were “mostly hippies from the East coast who had moved to the West coast of Canada… who end up in little hippie homes in Vancouver Island and raise families in the woods. And then aspiring hippie kids like me go up and join them.” “I don’t know if he was searching for himself, or searching for something to do. But the traditional path was really not a good one for him” (Seither).

Brett got his start to building things and costuming at a young age, being partially influenced by his mom and dad, according to his sister Kelly: “My dad was a doit-yourselfer, so if there was ever a project that needed to be done, like building a deck, or anything, he would do it himself. So, Brett learned how to build things from a pretty young age. And my

mom is a seamstress, and she sews a lot, so we spent a lot of time doing arts and crafts when we were little” (Seither).

While he learned the fundamentals from his parents, Brett definitely strayed away from the traditional lifestyle of his parents. He claims that his mom and dad (nicknamed Tita and Dooda, respectfully) were “a little too proper.

Tita was always sewing and making clothes, and it probably rubbed off on me. I’d say the way they affected me was making me become a hard worker and creative with my hands” (Packer). The first time that Brett really dressed up in an extreme costume was the time he went to a Pink Floyd concert in high school, and wore an entirely red outfit, complete with a huge red wig.

After that he began to “pick up frilly things… and started wearing pirate gear” (Packer).

When Brett was in his twenties, he and his girlfriend began a dance, music, and theater troupe where they would dress up in elaborate costumes on stilts and give performances related to politics and the environment. He also involved himself with the environment in more professional, but still serious manners. On his excursion with his friends into the Northwest and Canada, Brett stopped at one point to volunteer to help fight forest

fires. His love for the wilderness followed him to his current hometown, Santa Cruz, California, where he and others sat in circles around the old growth redwood trees in an attempt to stop the destruction of these majestic trees. Other protesters such as Brett feel deep connections to the trees, like park ranger Gary Strachen, who claims that the trees “they do give off a spirit, and they inspire.” Brett’s other protests include those against nuclear testing, the destruction of the Costa Rican rainforests, and Iran Contra affair, in which the head of the National Security Council sold weapons to Iran that could have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

Whether or not Brett has used

his skills in stilting and performing to draw attention to and help these causes, he has volunteered much of his time to helping the planet and contributed within the community of those dedicated to trying to make the world a better place.

In recent years, as Brett has continued performing in his new community of friends and neighbors in Santa Cruz, but now uses stilting and costumes as a creative outlet. He and his wife create extremely elaborate costumes and attend festivals such as the Oregon Country Fair and Burning Man. Kelly Seither recalls a costume, “There’s a beautiful picture that was taken of him at Burning Man a number of years ago, and it was published in a magazine. He was on stilts walking through the desert, and he had made these wings that he wore as a

backpack, made out of copper pipe. And they were beautiful wings. He had somehow rigged it so there was gas flowing through them so he could light them on fire, so they were these flaming wings, and then he had, over his head, these bells. So he was walking through the desert with these flaming wings, on stilts, and ‘ding…’” (Seither). Characters such as this and the creature with the eggbeater-brain-extractor allow Brett to become someone new and affect people in a memorable way. “I am almost not a human anymore, so I can get away with being ridiculous, and a little bit rude, and very silly. And I can really touch peoples’ hearts in a way I can’t if I’m on the ground.

Stilting changes everything, and the costumes change everything. And that is actually one of my favorite things

- to inhabit that space as that person, as that other part of my other person” (Packer).

In his early fifties, Brett has found wisdom along with age. “I’m just loving the world around me, and not just here in Santa Cruz, but everywhere I go. I’m finding it interesting, and fun, and beautiful and funny, and sometimes painful.

I’ve been noticing that and attributing it to getting older and having been through a lot, and a lot of the things and stuff drop away, and you have a lot of experience under your belt, and you’re more comfortable with yourself, and therefore more comfortable with your environment. And that’s a really cool thing” (Packer).

Brett’s love for his ‘tribe’ is definitely a two way street, even noticed by those outside of his Santa Cruz community. “He is definitely well respected, well loved in that community. I think one of the reasons he is so well liked is because he helps people, he has a huge heart” (Seither).

Brett’s unique journey to find his personality and clear passion for his many eccentric hobbies make him an inspiring figure to everyone searching for their own way of life. He hopes to continue participating in his community through the creative outlet of performing on stilts in extravagant costumes. “I want to

give more, and share my own love and joy amongst everyone I see. Because your gift to the world is to give yourself – give your light. And that’s what we’re here for, to give our light. And we can do it a lot of ways; one of them is just showing up and being present with people, and being nice. When I’m performing I can do that in a huge way; I can touch couple hundred people a day and that’s why I love doing that so much, because I get to touch a lot of hearts and minds and that feels good” (Packer).

By Ellery Seither