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Back from another
Burning Man.
Whew. Feels weird to drive, get water from a faucet, wear clothes again... Actual nakedness on my part was rare, because I was costumed in a satyr outfit, complete with furry legs to my calves, with a pair of fuzzy coconuts and an obscenely large bunch of grapes for genitalia. I also was walkin' around a fair amount in a sarong and a t-shirt on the days leading up to the burn. Wearing next to nothing that is, when it wasn't freezin' cold or blowing dust at 70mph or raining... yeah, it was a time of extreme weather out there. Had to hide in my car for hours, and had to sweep out 3/8" of fine playa dust that settled in my tent and sleeping bag. The final day of the burn, Saturday, was fantastic. Everything clicked, and while it was cold, it was calm, and clear at night so everyone could see the moon and the stars and the burning man and the lasers. The lasers. Yup. I worked on the crew that created the image of the beaming man: the burning man logo 4000' long hovering 30 feet above the playa, encircling the art and the man to be burned, and the focus of the city's arc. All lasers and mirrors and beam splitters and servos and electronics and radio signals and ones and zeros. Except the ones and zeros never happened, and we controlled the laser's path instead with telescopes and connecting two wires together at the right time... crew from Lawrence Livermore, Nasa, special effects houses, mechanics, engineers from around the country and a few car mechanics thrown in. And me. Arrived at Black Rock City outside of Gerlach, NV on Monday the 28th and began helping the crew with projects I had already created weeks ago, and doing some retrofitting on projects others had done, and also creating new boxes and soldering for on-the-spot creations. I pretty much had a complete hardware store in the back of my car, and ended up being a source for many things that they just thought up or plain forgot. Lots of craziness on the part of the crew. Lots of craziness on the playa as well. The crowd that appears at Burning Man early are the hardcore folks: the artisits, the Survival Research Lab types, the Drum circle folks, and the freaks. The last minute Friday, Saturday night folks, the dot-commers, the frat boys and the locals people show up long enough to walk around and stare and laugh at the freaks, watch the burn, drop their beer bottles on the desert floor and then head back to their motor homes to blast out of the extreme environment we were in. After the dust had settled from their departure, the regular folks - the hardcore folks and the techno/ravers - had a wonderful Sunday just cleaning up and reveling in our sense of community. Lots of volunteer spirit in each others eyes when we were working on the playa, collecting cigarettes butts and bottles and stray bits of costumes that had blown around... turning the black rock desert back into a uninhabited expanse of nothingness. Had some great random sex in my dusty tent just the same. Cool things at the playa: the sense of connectedness with the other folks. Guy in Devil outfit, horns and red tux with extremely long extension cord madly vaccuuming the dust with his Dust Devil Vaccuum. SImple pun, hilarious results. Lots of folks using EL wire (electroluminescent) to create glowing outlines at night: clown loaches swimming in choreographed schools, bouncing kangaroos, running cheetahs, lumbering elephants and beating hearts surrounded by expanding lungs on someone's chest. People deciding that to beat the cops at their increasing reefer madness quest, that for everyone to run around with decoy handrolled oregeno cigarettes was a fun answer. Ancient female form mannequin with propane torches jutting from each dumbed down breast. Paper-mache fish mounted to go-carts spawning at 30mph. Giant plywood Sumo wrestler of Andre the Giant quality staring out past the desert. NASDAQ's crash and the weather scaring onlookers running home. Met many great friends from work and on the spot. Ran into my friends at the Alternative Energy Zone and saw the myriad non-generator options for power at the desert... damn trippy to see towers of propellors and solar arrays churnin' away. Coolness incarnate. Next year already promises to be better. The well placed grapes got me photographed by many folks and even the Supersnail camp with my friend Randall. Me? I only photographed with my film camera: an ancient Bell & Howell Super-eight camera using three, one-year old B/W film cartridges. Being the only apparent sober and clean inhabitant of the playa other than the few children gave me time to think. Actually, mebbe the kids were freakin' too... dunno, the place kind of lends itself to experimentation I understand... So, I thought up next year's possible project fer me: the mars or moon lander crash landed nose down in the desert with the silver suited skeleton survivor crawling holding a flag to a waiting news camera team. Lots of possiblities and room for refinement in the months to come... or complete rewrite... heh. But, then early monday, labor day morning at 4:30 in the morning I swept the last bit of dust from my tent, pulled out the 3 foot rebar stakes that kept my tent from becoming a victim of the playa winds, packed up things and headed out to the "real world" leaving "home" for another 50 weeks... stopped outside of Gerlach to wash all the windows and to empty the extra water jugs I brought along in case. Then, on to the road through Reno and Sacramento onto Richmond and my bed & driveway to offload my gear into the garage for some other day, to run upstairs, take a shower, read MUCH mail and answer Waaaaaaaaaay too many phone calls. Back to work doin' audio and makin' sets/ props for the masses... Hope all is well, and that your past week or so was as fun or cooler. Lemme know. Peace. |