I was a hippo at Coachella 2015

Fans outside one of Coachella 2015's most popular art installations on Sunday saw a hippo in a suit sitting at a desk with its feet up, looking casual and serene. In actuality, that hippo was tilting his head back to try and discourage the abundance of quickly-pooling sweat from entering his eyes.

I know this because I was that hippo, and because the sweat was becoming a problem. A quickly approaching blindness problem.

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Let's backtrack a touch: The installation, called The Corporate Headquarters, is a three story structure made to look like any other office building, except all the employees are hippos instead of people. The hippos destroy the office as the day goes on, and a variety of nonsensical music and sounds blast from the sides of the building. The installation is wildly popular with festival goers this year, both because it's interesting and because it provides shade from the desert heat.

I happened upon this hippo transformation after interviewing the creators of the piece, Derek Doublin and Vanessa Bonet, for a longer story I'm writing about the recent art scene at Coachella. We sat in a trailer behind the structure and watched a huge screen with more than 15 camera feeds showing the views both inside and outside the installation, chatted, made some jokes, had a nice little afternoon. I was just about to leave when Derek turned to me and said, "Do you want to be a hippo before you leave?"

Well, yeah. Who doesn't want to be a hippo?

Outside the trailer, an assistant rounded up some clothes that would fit my 6-foot-5 frame. The shoes were too small and the pants too big, but we made it work. A bystander looked at me, raised her cup of beer, and said, "Yes, a hippo virgin!"

Next came the hippo mask and the fight to get my unwieldy beard underneath it, which resulted in a mask that fit over my head without much wiggle room. The only vision I had came from a small-ish hole that doubled as the mouth of the hippo. It was like trying to see the world through a Pringles container.

After being hand-led near one of the doors of the office building, I entered the first floor and quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. It's one thing to say yes to acting like a hippo working in an office building, but it's another thing entirely to act like a believable hippo working in an office building. I stalled for a couple minutes by hanging out near a red phone that was a direct one-way line to the outside world. Festival goers called, I picked up and made general hippo sounds, which I suppose resembles something between a grunt and a guttural scream. In between calls, I picked up paper on the ground and threw it at the other mostly-blind actors. My mom would be so proud.

The amazing thing was how detailed the entire installation was. The paper inside the office building was actual business forms, things like W-2 forms and license permits. The TV monitors on the back wall played a running loop of stock market information. The monitors at the desks displayed things like google image searches of hippos and imaginary email threads between the animals. It was more intricate than some actual office buildings I've been in.

I answered the phone for a while until Derek, on a loudspeaker, told me to go up to the third floor to work with the CEO. I, of course, couldn't see anything, so I was led up the stairs and brought into another office setting. This was one smaller, with just one other hippo employee at a desk. I walked over to the other desk and began to throw a stapler at a wall. The CEO entered right after I did.

This room wasn't cramped, but the problem was that I was one of three hippos on the top floor. There wasn't a cluster I could hide behind. People were watching. The other hippos had all done this before. They were mostly artists, creative types, people who could visualize what it meant to work in an office building as an enormous mammal. This visualization did not come as easy for me, so I tried the one thing I knew how to do — make a fool of myself.

I took a mouse and began swinging it above my head like a lasso. I ripped up paper and made it rain on the other employee. I chased the CEO around with a Rolodex, then tried to eat a keyboard.

This is where the sweat comes in. It was hot at Coachella on Sunday even without wearing a suit and a constricting latex mask. Moving around meant a rapid increase in sweat. Soon, I was blinking away the salt.

I couldn't take my mask off. I'm not an artist, but I imagine revealing yourself as a human would ruin the exhibit. We were also relying on non-verbal communication in the room, since staying in character was important to the authenticity of the piece. So I sat down in a chair, slouched, and looked up and out to the crowd.

It was amazing. People laughing and pointing, taking pictures, or making a face I can only describe as, "I can't tell if this is real or if the drugs have finally kicked in." It was like acting on an improve television show that somehow offered a view of the people watching at home.

Post-mask and sweat removal, that's what stuck with me. This is my first time at Coachella, so I still haven't gotten over the novelty of how happy everyone is. The crowd jostles from stage to stage, exhibit to exhibit, in a constant stage of the feel-goodies. I'm sure the drugs help, but happiness is happiness.

Being on the other side of that relationship, the one seeing the smiles instead of the one being among the smiles, was really just the coolest thing, sweat and all.

Everett Cook covers food, spirits, and general human interest stories for the Desert Sun. He can be reached at everett.cook@desertsun.com and on Twitter @everettcook.

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