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Call him crazy, but Mayor Haristanto, an artist and event organizer born in Wonogiri, Central Java, makes a habit of putting into practice all the ideas living in his head.

“If you have an idea — no matter how wild — go with it. If you have a fully developed idea, and you keep it until God knows when, it will become stale, and therefore, useless. But if you put it into action, it will create a lot of buzz. That’s my philosophy,” said the 50-year-old, who is a mayor in name only.

Mayor was the man who wore the most outlandish costume at the Solo Batik Carnival in Central Java on June 28th — a tunic fashioned out of red and gold ribbons, patches and braid, with a matching headdress and shield and spikes pointing out like a Catherine wheel firework. Closer inspection of the outfit — which Mayor said weighed 15 kilograms and took three months to complete — revealed items including battered watches, whistles, and even garbage, nestled among the finery. Mayor said he’d turned himself into Dasamurka, a hero of his own invention. The name Dasamurka is a twist on Dasamuka, the name of a villain king with 10 faces in classical Javanese wayang drama. But Dasamurka, Mayor said, is the total antithesis of the king, and sees the need to fight injustice.

Dasamurka is just one of the many creations that Mayor has introduced to Central Java.

In 2002, Mayor appointed himself as president of Republik Aeng Aeng — in Javanese, the Republic of Naughtiness or Rebelliousness — an organization established for the purpose of nurturing “crazy dreams.”

Mayor’s favorite word is heboh (uproarious), and he says it continually, as if to remind himself of his mission.

The 50-year-old has a calendar filled with events that he intends to mark in an outlandish way.

On the anniversary of state railway company PT Kereta Api, for instance, he talked people into scrubbing trains down by hand.

Mayor also sees elections as opportunities for fun. He once decked out his neighborhood polling station like a kindergarten with children’s table-and-chair sets and toys.

On another election day, he and his family turned up to vote in Star Wars outfits, complete with swords and masks.

“The new Star Wars movie [“Star Wars IV: A New Hope”] was all the rage, and I think the tagline, “A New Hope,” expressed the ideal outcome of the election precisely,” Mayor said.

For the July 8 presidential election, Mayor decorated his neighborhood polling station using a batik theme.

The political science graduate said one of the obstacles he faced was Indonesians’ fear of rebelling against the majority.

“Some communities I approach liken calling people together to fostering public unrest. That’s a very old-school way of thinking, thanks to the decades-long regime that repressed the ideas of the crowd. That has to change,” he said.

And so, time and again, Mayor will reassure participants in his events: “As long as what we’re doing is not against the law, we’re going to be fine. No one’s going to arrest us.”

He recalls coming up with an idea to have children draw on the pavement in chalk in conjunction with National Teachers Day on Nov. 25, 2006.

The idea was initially dismissed by others as “vandalism.” But when the drawings were done, they were highlighted in a respectable national newspaper.

Mayor works out of an office on Jalan Kolonel Sugiyono in Solo, organizing events to fund his creative projects.

Certificates awarded to him by the Indonesian Museum of Records are neatly tacked on the walls and chickens scratch and peck in the dirt in the backyard.

It may not resemble a real mayor’s office, but this doesn’t hold Mayor back. “I am the very antithesis of Abraham Maslow’s theory of human needs. I simply cannot wait to have my basic needs met before I start developing new ideas,” he said.