[PREV - RULING_OUT_RULERS] [TOP]
September 5, 2007
wild mind = spontaneous intuition?
RYDING_THE_BURN
But then, what has that
to do with wilderness?
Another fantasy
Animals follow their instinctive rote, of the animal...
intuition is a human thing.
ANIMAL
Music on the Playa:
Imposing order on desolation.
The David Best "temple":
Claiming territory, Simple, elegant outlines
declaring tribal affiliation. with a complex texture that
emerges on closer look.
bird song
A subtlety: viewed from
the correct angle (22
degrees off-axis) you
could see an outline of
The Man in the circular arcs.
I'm told the texture was
achieved with off-cuts
from Mesa Boogie amplifier
construction.
When it burns,
it looks dark with
glowing outlines and
shimmering pillars.
No fireworks.
No propane fireballs.
[ref]
Dangerbaby's favorite:
a narrow three storey
building with walls of
There were many, tinted glass panels
many smaller covered with swirling
pieces scattered patterns.
There were here and there that
also many were very We stand next to it
medium-scale impressive, so many while watching the
projects it's hard to hold temple burn, listening
that were them in mind. to the sounds of a
left un- group of people inside
finished. Honorary mention: chanting and playing
a sculpture off large quartz singing
I approve: to the side by bowls.
they took the entrance to
chances on the center camp:
beginners. metal plant vines
with writhing
flowers of glass
tubes emerging "Big Rig Jig" by
from each stalk. Mike Ross was quite
good: two tractor
trailer trucks upended
and bent into an
S-like shape.
A common feature
of Burning Man art:
There's something about
being confronted by the
existence of this large
scale piece of weirdness
that really can't be
In theory, I prefer conveyed by any photo
art with more theory or description.
behind it: I like
the *idea* of art It sounds like a silly
with a Message. idea, doesn't it? Would
*you* spend a year of your
But that giant life making it happen?
oil-rig with huge
metal figures in And yet, some people did,
positions of and there it is, and I'm
supplication: glad that they did...
it's so
*heavy-handed*...
Everyone seems very
enthusiastic about a
structure that uses a
zoetrope-like effect
to create the look of
"Homouroboros" a stream of monkeys
aka "The Monkeys" swinging around in a
ring.
It leaves both
Though, I guess it's possible Dangerbaby and I
we didn't hang around and look cold. Nice trick,
at it closely enough: but so?
"If a group of people rode
the bikes and play the drums
at juuuust the right speed
(talk about interactive
art!), the monkey and snake
'animated', coming to life to
swing from branch to branch
right before our eyes."
-- "Jack Rabbit Speaks"
September 25, 2007
But then, I
almost forgot:
the steam punk
It's hard to tree house (Sean
maintain your Orlando).
jaded posture
when you start (with topless
adding up the women cavorting
details... on the tire
swing...)
One of the funniest sights:
A water truck needed to back up,
but was prevented by a few naked
hippie couples that refused to
move out of the way.
Spotters standing behind the truck
tried to yell instructions to them;
the truck sat there beeping in reverse;
and still they stood there:
"Hey... you turned off the water!"
There are increasing
numbers of people driving
around in "art cars" Translation:
playing "classic rock". More often than not,
"art car" = "party car" (Burners: anti-
A giant birthday cake with silly decorations. establishment
parked across the street kids who never
persisted in playing got to do a
the same set of John football float
Denver music every day... for the pre-game
parade.)
It makes one wish for
some sort of musical
curation... or at
least more rigidly
enforced volume rules.
Before going out to the event,
someone in my family had sent me
an article from Long Island's
"Newsday" talking about a
Brooklyn-based group going to
Burning Man.
It turns out that their
camp was located next
to ours. They had a
huge troupe of people,
with some major amounts
of funding, and a New
York "we've got our act
together" vibe. Their
main project: an
At least one of enormous art car of "A Cavello"
their bands was welded steel horses
really excellent: that pivot up and down [ref]
violin-based, ala as on a carousel, with
Rasputina or the a large stage up front
Dirty Three. to carry live bands.
People-- largely
I need to find women-- do pole
out that name. dances, standing on the
heads and saddles of
the horses while the
music plays.
This year, I tried to contribute a
chill-space party with Sun Ra music Dangerbaby and I have
and an old-fashioned oil and water gradually realized
psychedelic light show. that the "smoothie
camp" we hang with
The acoustic pollution from neighboring most often is located
techno (not to mention the execrable in perhaps the worst
disco bus) made it a near impossibility place possible, on
to get it to work right -- and my the edge of the most
"light show" gadgetry had it's moments, low-brow horn of the
but was just "adequate" at best. horseshoe.
Anything we really
wanted to go see
LIGHT_OF_RA seemed to be
located on the
4:30 or 7:30
plazas. These
were set far
enough off the
Esplanade (and
away from Center
Camp) that they
could form a
different vibe
from the techno
party scene.
And the dance-music
freaks in our camp
were continually
Around the 4:30pm plaza: crossing over to
the other horn of
One afternoon we the horseshoe.
dropped by a Moroccan
theme camp there, in
hopes of hearing some
live music. Nice
place to hang around,
though only a few of On another visit,
the musicians showed. a different camp
was passing out "IlluminIces"
We then went next door to frozen popsicles.
the Iron Rose for a
Monkey Chant session, We hung around
which was interesting in a bit, some of us
that it took an entirely cavorting on their
monkey-see-monkey-do trampoline.
approach toward training
the crowd. There were no
lectures: a leader stood
up in the center and
started the crowd going,
then an inner circle of
lieutenants turned
around, and started
leading the segments of In the middle of the chant,
the crowd that could see there was some half-time
them in different entertainment that I don't
directions. Getting the believe was scripted:
sounds right was as much
a matter of lip reading A guy with a didgeridoo
as memory, and the (a black guy in convincing
leaders understood that, guru/shaman wear) stood
making exaggerated mouth up and said "I'm about to
gestures for us to pick to take off, but would anyone
up on. like a sacred quickie before
I go?" He moved to the
center and played didge for
five minutes or so, then
we resumed...
Around 7:30 or so:
A brief glimpse of an
art car playing
Vietnamese music,
decorated like a Junk
from Ha Long bay.
VIETNAMESE_MUSIC
This year, the Hare Krishna's were
moved off the esplanade and
placed next to the fundamentalist
christians, I believe in the hope I've no great love
that they would annoy each other. for either group,
but the Christians
at least were
giving away bottles
of water to passersby.
Always nice to see
someone walking the
walk (and not
sinking too quickly).
The problem with Paul Addis burning
the man during the lunar eclipse...
(a) you can make a case that Paul Addis seems
this really was arson: the Though Addis to be a fine example
pavilion under the man was claims that he of someone using
open to the public at the and un-named an anarcho-punk
time. co-conspirators stance to justify
carefully behaving like a dick.
(b) the Burning of the Man engineered an
has become the focus of absence of by- Or, it could be a
obnoxious yahoos, and standers fine example of
having some yahoo step hipster internecine
forward to fuck with the wars.
process seemed strangely
appropriate. CONTRARIAN_WARS
I considered going around The "Puzzling Evidence"
the Burn with a placard: crew suggest that
"That's not the *real* Man". Addis was playing
Oswald to John Law's
But the Burn at the heart of CIA: the mad-man
Burning Man is at this point fall guy.
as ridiculous as professional
wrestling: it begins with a
Las Vegas light show; this
year they threw in a propane
explosion to get a Hollywood
fireball; and then when they
get bored waiting for the
over-built structure to burn,
they yank the whole thing down Maybe that's more like
with a cable. a boxing match: paid to
take a dive in the fifth.
I speculate on what the
next step might be:
what could possibly be
done to make the burn
even more inauthentic?
Massive television
screens so you can "That arm drop-off
watch from the was reminiscent of
comfort of center the 2003 burn, Chuck."
camp... a Burning
Man TV broadcast, so
everyone can watch
it on their portable
sets inside their
RVs.
Perhaps the Man's head
should be replaced by
a TV screen.
And up and down it's RULING_OUT_RULERS
arms and legs: paid
advertisements, ala But for *politically
car racing uniforms correct* companies
and so on. of course.
This year's
man featured
what looked
like an ad
for an
electric car,
albeit sans
logos. It
stood on
a respectful
little
platform,
reminiscent
of a shopping
Near the end of the event-- we were mall display.
already starting breakdown-- some
people in our camp were making heroic
efforts to keep the smoothie party
going, and our dome was accumulating
some of the Burning Man die-hards.
I was busy disassembling my gear
when I over-heard a woman say she LIGHT_OF_RA
had been working on a project
called "Swarm" -- I looked up:
"*Does* it swarm?" I realized she [ref]
didn't have that ungrounded look
that a lot of Burners have. She
said "No, but it *will*. We didn't
get all of the software done on A younger woman in
time, so for now it works by remote a translucent dress
control." I asked about what kind was hanging around
of sensors it uses she replied it a lot just then --
had GPS-- obvious enough, but it's another rescue operation
a trick that had never occurred to by one of the single
me-- and also had some sonar guys, though in her
capability. case her main trouble
was she had lost her
shoes.
We made some effort
A fortyish fellow was going finding shoes for her,
around in a white robe doing but she apparently
palm readings, and lecturing on turned up her nose at
mystical esoterica. them: they weren't
pretty enough for her,
Notably he seemed to be fond of so she'd rather let
reading the palms of women. her feet dissolve.
(Our lady of the Swarm
seemed faintly amused
by her reading.) Back behind the scenes,
in our kitchen, I commented
that that guy was starting
to irritate me-- and I
got some assent from people
complaining about the
guru come-on shtick.
I hadn't realized that
the shoeless girl had
also joined us "backstage".
She commented "I thought
that guy was okay."
Dangerbaby responded "I've
just met him too many times
before."
Shoeless Girl didn't
understand-- she
thought we meant we
literally knew him from
somewhere. We tried to
explain that he was a
Type, but I don't think
it sunk in.
Robert Crumb had been
satirizing the guy back
before she was born...
Every generation
starts anew:
a blessing
and a curse.
The "yellow bike" concept worked
no better than it ever does...
The Yellow Bike's ended up Realistically: would you ride
horded, squirrelled away on a community bike several miles
a "finder's keepers" rule. out onto the playa, and then
leave it there, in the hopes
that you could find another
Did they think that Burners one in a half hour when you
were different and would wanted to ride home?
rise above selfishness?
Myself, I wouldn't be willing
to horde a community bike, but
if you didn't they'd be nearly
useless... so I didn't even
try to use them.
That is, I wouldn't have,
even if I'd seen one
free, which I never did.
I did see one go by
in the back of a
station wagon, however.
To be absurd is easy,
but to be absurd *and
practical*...
o riding home with an ice-bag tied on my head
o swigging sun tea made in an empty whisky bottle
o towing dangerbaby around in a bike trailer
(because we were short a bike).
We were serving smoothies
one afternoon to a large Spinning Sun Ra disks
group that entered the dome for the afternoon
and spread out widely having smoothie crowd, I
a loud conversation about turn the sound down
celebrity gossip. for a man that wants The next day,
to perform on the flute. I'm working
After a while, Captain elsewhere
Smooth interrupted: around camp,
but hear him
"Could you guys talk about in the dome,
something a little less doing a repeat
inane for awhile? I mean, performance.
what do you think happens
to you when you die? How
about you, what do you
think? And you, over
there?"
Later, he heard from some of these
folks again... about half of them
were deeply offended, but a number BURNING_IRRITATION
of them thanked him for the little
wake-up notice.
I watch the sun rise on the playa
one last time before walking home
to break down. I was thinking about
things like this:
I was wearing my inevitable
bikini underwear, and in the BURNING_WILD
chill of the morning I'd
grabbed my grey tweed suit Some years ago, I'd
jacket. put a large black
patch on the back
A woman in our camp of this jacket,
("Miss SnailPail") a silhouette of an
mentioned watching me angel-eagle (hooked
return: the jacket, the beak and halo).
slow deliberate pace,
emerging from a misty I wear it with a
layer of dust with the grey fedora, which
sunrise behind me: for the Temple burn
I'd tricked out with I sometimes
"it was like a a silvery-checkered call this my
scene from a band and a flashing "Mister
movie". hologram disk. Inbetween"
outfit.
(But she noted that
in a movie the mist I'm perpetually
would've been a in between
little heavier.) tranforming to
that identity
from my usual:
THE_VOICE_OF_DOOM
Dancing to space cowboys
out by the outer-fence,
to the light of a lunar
eclipse...
Multiple, massive dust-storms,
which we played or worked in Riding Dangerbaby's bike,
as we liked in goggles and towing her in her trailer,
respirators. I repeatedly dodge out into
the white out and back toward
the Esplande, checking my
After one of them, a gigantic, progress: approximating a
perfect rainbow stretched curve with a series of chords.
across the sky.
I pointed toward one
end of it, on the far
side of the playa.
"Hm... so that's around
2 o'clock, right?"
At 2:30, on the Esplanade:
Entheon: a 90ft geodesic dome,
with strange projections on some
filled-in hexes; a gigantic
inflatable alien looming at one
side; green argon laser flashing
patterns in the dust clouds
And we leave with yet another
long list of things missed...
Naked Misting Twister
Lorin & Freq Nasty at Root Society
Foot Massage for Two
Vietnamese Iced-Coffee Camp
In our travels
around the playa,
I looked for
interesting
symbols I was
unfamiliar with:
Four lightning
bolts radiating
from a square.
On the way home,
we stopped off at
a hotel in Reno. The lamps in the restaurant
were decorated with a row of
symbols: crescent moon, wavy
The torrent of lines, star, and so on...
water from the
bathroom faucet If someone at
is alarming. Burning Man had
made lamps like
this, it would be Astrological
I wake in the taken as meaning ESP tests?
night, thinking something.
I'm in a theme
camp that built As an architectural
a mock hotel detail in Reno,
room. they're presumed
to be meaningless:
mere decorations,
"symbols" chosen
for their neutrality.
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