If you watch the news, where 30 second sound bytes is how everything is conveyed, Burning Man is about partying, lots of music, drinking, drugs, some art, and lighting things on fire. Each of these things is an aspect of Burning Man, which some people find important, and help to define their "Burn".
There are those people that go with expectations - they want to "See Everything" (good luck...), want to try this or that experience, find romance, or whatever. That can be part of Burning Man to.
But for me, most of all, Burning Man is a series of individual experiences - each unique, each remarkable - strung together over a period of days... It is a moment by moment existence, of fully appreciating and consuming each moment - living IN that moment while it lasts, and moving on to the next moment - to live it in, as it lasts... It is about being wide open to experience - to sights, sounds, tastes, talking, discovery, being ok with emotions and letting them flow through you. It's about absorbing experience without judgement, but more in wonder of the diversity of humanity - of what people find interesting, what drives them, what is their passion...
Every year is different. Every day is different. If you go with an open mind, and a child's wonder, with a healthy dose of adult reason and planning, you will have a remarkable, even for many people, life changing experience.
For me, this year was the best "burn" ever for a number of reasons:
* The weather was cooler in the days, and warmer in the evenings than most years. Though there were some sand storms (really, more like dust storms - since the playa sand is more like talcum powder in consistency), there were no "white outs" this year.
* The ground was "hard packed" - a rain relatively soon before the arrival made for a mud crack consistency to the ground, which was very easy to push bikes over, compared to the deep sand of some previous years.
* The Temple was absolutely stunning this year. This is only our 4th year, but this structure was by far the most amazing Temple ever.
* We had no significant technical glitches. Even the blown bike tire (and wrong size spare) didn't happen until the last full day.
Some highlights of the experience - moments that bubble to the surface...
Line on the road
Line in the sand
Though officially, Burning Man doesn't start until 12:01AM on Monday, for the lat few years, and again this year, they let people in early - starting about 6PM on Sunday night. We anticipated this, and so arrived a bit after 7, and made it through the entry line in just over 3 hours - another record. They added additional radial roads on the outer ring roads, so it was easier to find our preferred camping location this year at 7:30 and the outer ring - this year "Liminal"
Monday, wandering around, in our early explorations, we wandered into a Bar (a western getup, complete with the swinging gate doors, etc), and found us a bunch of interesting folks - including a gal that seemed a little down. Being the friendly folks that we are, we started chatting with this gal, found that it was her first Burn, that she couldn't find the camp that she was supposed to meet up with, was missing her boyfriend, etc - also found she was from San Diego, and especially since the folks that were going to come with us didn't this year, we decided to offer to adopt her. She promptly accepted, and Rachele became our camp mate for the burn.
From there, a ride on a double decker art car and some of the fun sights:
View out from near center camp
And environmental pictures
A stunning sunset
One of the few structures with enough light that I could get a good pict with my cheap digital camera. Cheap cameras are good in dust. Not so great for night shots - but that said:
One of the "big" parts of Burning Man is the Art Projects. There are many significant installations - if one wanted, they could spend their week just touring the art. For me, the art is a lovely flavor of the whole experience. A few highlights:
Aliens on the far Playa
Pool, anyone?
A typical (whatever that means) Burner at an "Art Plant" installation
Many of which you could walk inside of, climb on, ride, or otherwise interact with.
This one was sort of a "prison" that you would lock your self up in.
An amazing Human Powered Skeleton Zeotrope. At night, a strobe light fires to Sync the skeletons which is the River Boatman on the river Styx, pushing along with a stick... Amazing, mesmerizing and creepy. I spent quite a while staring at, and interacting with this, night and day.
A stork made out of petrol products
A favorite returns - the cupcakes
The Nautilus
A Land Speeder
A Conestoga Wagon
Various art cars creating a micro traffic jam
The "Homohito" Stand was actually two cars - one for the fine drinks, and one was their DJ.
Unicyclist. Obelisks, and Trojan Horse (which was like 4 stories tall)
Another aspect of Burning Man, is the Burning. It's intended as a cathartic process - of letting go of stuff. Grief. Expectations and dreams that didn't go. Relationships. The Temple is a structure that is built, with the intent of receiving these messages - either written on the structure by hand, or pieces of paper shoved in the cracks, carvings left to burn, pictures pasted to the wall. In The Temples brief life (remember, it only exists for one week), it receives these, it is so imbued with feeling, with intent, that it is a holy place... It is profound how much feeling - love and loss and hope and wonder - is pushed into its walls.
This years Temple was spectacular. It had elements of many cultures, wound aesthetially into one stunning structure. It had many elements - different towers connected by bridges, each tower multi level, and each level ornamented. It had dozens (perhaps a hundred) laser cut pieces depicting different aspects of life "Right of Passage" was this years theme.
This years temple was the largest temporary structure ever constructed...
Inside, was an e-gamalan that played music on dozens of cymbals, bells, gongs, and drums. As each instrument played, an LED would light up - it stayed lit for the duration that the instrument contributed sound to the performance.
View from the second story of the temple. Note one of the wires going down. This was part of the "Earth Harp" - they designed the Temple to also be a Resonator for a giant harp that sounded like a cello on a grand scale...
This was the "head" of the Earth Harp, where the fellow played it from
And here you see some of the wires going from the head to the temple, with weights on them to tune.
A detail of the center tower.
And of course, Burning Man is about the people.
Matching his and hers propeller pasties
Sunset
Our camp mate Rachelle being modest, as usual
And of course, me :)
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing this year's Burn so vividly through words and pictures. (I'm sure this wasn't the best Burn ever because of our absence! Ha, ha!)
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