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Our camp |
Black Rock City |
The teeter-totter |
Flower people |
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Burning Man is really an exercise in randomness. It's hard to describe it - anything goes except real life. Participate or be ejected. It's hard to not have fun and harder still to see everything there is to be seen. You can't take enough photos to remember it by. Days and nights both are spent wandering the city in an attempt to experience it all. People are scurrying around. Some are wearing elaborate costumes, others are naked, a school of neon fish-bicycles wheel past. You see a friend juggling fire. You say hi to someone for the first time and are greeted with a big, meaningful hug, then you turn and pet a camel. Walking down the road on a hot afternoon, strangers give out slices of watermelon and squirt you with water to cool you off; you run over and jump onto a teeter-totter and try not to fall off.
Our camp theme this year was Ancient Egypt. Susan, Ashley, Marya, Bernd, Stefanie, Tim, Stephany, Amber and I dressed up as Egyptian Gods and Goddesses and lived inside an 18' tall pyramid (located at 3:45 and Jupiter), decorated with carpets, pillows and palm trees; the pyramid was lit up at night with flashing strobes and black lights that drew in others from nearby camps. We offered beer and s'mores to travellers who stopped by the pyramid to say "hi".
When you see Black Rock City by day, it could pass as some sort of middle-eastern tent city, especially from a distance. A jumble of assorted vehicles and shelters thrown together for the sake of survival. But by night, ohhhh...Black Rock City by night is the most surreal, most incredible sight I have ever seen.
You're in the middle of the desert with *nothing* around you; in fact the only semblance of civilization within a hundred miles of you are a couple of backwater towns, and they're miles away. But you're standing in the middle of a few square miles of organized chaos. All around you are spectacular art exhibits, neon lights, bolts of electricity coming off a tesla coil, high-powered lasers lighting up mountains on the far side of the playa. The soundtrack to it all is the music from a half-dozen techno clubs drifting through the air and blending in your ears in a way that's more than perfect.
Sunday night was surreal in a slightly different, post-apocalyptic way. The Man burned on Saturday night, and by Sunday evening, about half the city had cleared out. The mood was a bit subdued, but that only seemed to draw people together. The central playa area was ringed with the fires of dozens of burning art installations, punctuated by fireworks and large-scale flame throwers. You'd walk from fire to fire keeping warm and observing the art that was created by the destruction of art. One ring of fire had a succession of firedancers within; as they performed, various audience members accompanied them on drums (everyone is a participant). More so than any other night, Sunday was very primal. That night, I fell asleep to wonderful trance music wafting across the playa.
The most amazing thing about Burning Man is that it works! You can throw thousands of like-minded people out into the desert with a minimum of rules, and not only do they get along fine, but they crave more! When you finally leave the desert, you've been touched. There *is* culture shock when you return to Real Life (tm), and you wonder how Everyone Else can go about their business when they don't even know what they've been missing. You want your friends to share in the experience with you; but you want Everyone Else to stay clear away. Not everyone belongs there.
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(L-R) Slave, Bast, Anubis, Ma'at, Nuit, Thoth, Osirus (front) Isis |
(L-R) Nuit, Thoth, Bast, Selket, Osirus, Ma'at, Anubis (front) Slave, Isis |
Bruce, playing with fire |
An exercise in randomness |
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