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Day One at BRC ~ via's blog, Sept 6th, 2007the 2007 burn was characterized by momentous celestial events, starting with the eclipse the night before we left. i only woke to see it cuz Dave got up to use the john in the middle of the night, and we ended up with our butts hanging out the door as the world plunged into darkness, the stars popped out, and the moon went brownish-red. i thought of our friends and campmates, already on the playa, and imagined a lot of howling at the moon. that part was later verified; i didn't know til the next day, driving into Black Rock City, that the Man had been set afire during the penumbra and was currently undergoing reconstructive surgery. so Captain Rainbow and i loaded his truck and headed out tuesday, by 9am. a nice enough drive, tho long and midlin' hot, a decent primer for a hot, dusty week. we got in fairly late, but beating the heat of the day turns out to be a blessing when you've got a whole camp to unload and put together in the desert. my co-traveler was rigged up with a solar panel and inverter, so we thankfully had light even after sunset. the boont camp was already well underway. a fully equipped kitchen tent, a semi-public dome, more friends as immediate neighbors. we brought the biggest shade structure, hung right off the back of the truck, and i can say it's handy having professional construction guys plan these things. heavy canvas on top and one side, hung from poles harvested from Rainbow's own property, and i'd brought reams of shade cloth to shelter my 3-room tent. we squeezed in between the dome and kitchen amid a cluster of smaller tents, and got the basics up before taking a midnight ramble across the playa. you can't plan your excursions at burning man. well, ok, you can, but it's generally pointless. the city is built for meandering, a strategy that pays off time and again as you careen into surprises everywhere you turn. i seem to remember starting off by bike, then ditching it as the familiar sore-ass syndrome kicked in; ended up doing walkabout with a smallish group of neighbors who had their own non-agenda going. with no Man to orient to, this seemed especially random, but i found myself unsurprisingly out at the temple, my home-away-from-home, the spiritual bullseye of BRC. |
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from afar, the Temple of Forgiveness looked small and rather modest, but up close the filigree and moonlight came alive. [oh yeah, the moon was still nearly full during the early week, so the pale-white playa was bright enough you didn't need to carry your own illumination. also - because this was the first year i brought a proper winter coat, a gold encrusted fur jacket from my favorite thrift store - the nights were downright balmy, a welcome pleasure that made night exploration (the optimal time to view BRC, afterall) a pure delight.]
this early in the week, the temple was still a fairly blank canvas, just the beginning scrawls of names, poems, absolutions across the bare walls. but stepping into it, it was as if the world went quiet, as if its lacy walls could shut out the grinding thump-thump of dozens of amps pumping rhythm into the night. it's a testimony to David Best and his consistently soulful offerings that these temples imbue the very air with quiet reverence. the form evokes respect.... |
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then we were drawn to some carnival lights beyond the temple; something spinning candy further out in the deep end. this year, the deep playa (beyond the V-shaped edge of the city streets) was full of artwork where usually it's dark, as if every blank piece of canvas invited expression. so we headed out, and as i walked with Anne, i wondered if those weren't people swinging from the poles of this thing out there. we got closer and it came to a stop; she thought i was nuts; she hadn't seen a thing. but then it started up again, and we got to see a marvel..... |
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it was a merry-go-round of sorts, powered by 8 or more people pedaling bikes, that had sculptures of monkeys in static poses, each slightly different, in gestures of reaching for the pole in front of it, with snakes coiling out from the inside across the top of each pole and finally down around the monkey's arm and toward its mouth. when the people worked in unison, the swing began to turn, and strobes began to go off, and suddenly, the disparate pieces became a movie of apes swinging together from pole to pole, ultimately swallowing the snake. it was so surreal, my brain couldn't cope; suddenly i was awestruck, my eyes not believing but forced to believe, watching this sculpture come alive.
(i returned to this piece a couple of times, and people said it wasn't working.....just found out that people had to ALSO play the drums that were hanging around the center of the tree for a minimum of 30 seconds, in order to get it going! LOL! beautiful! not just interactive, but a genuinely green art piece. powered by bike and drum. doncha love it!?!!) |
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a GREAT video of the piece in motion at night: so that was my first night out, and by the time i got back to camp, having been up for almost 18 hours, my feet and butt and calves aching pitifully, i was primed for a good sleep lasting almost 4 whole hours, before waking up to the sound of the chicken polka being sung by....chickens, blasting from Dougie's dome...... |
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photo of via by doug
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