Burning Man photojournal
Dec. 16th, 2005 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iridiumfinally got around to uploading a bunch of photos from Burning Man. so here's a bit of a story, with many pictures and a few words. (warning: it's long.)
arrival, around 10pm on the Saturday evening before Burning Man officially begins. note the enormous solar-powered tricycle.
the next day: hiding out in the shade in the back of the FoodLab truck. see the white Hengehold truck? that's the Krotus truck; i slept on a pile of tarps and dust-soaked carpet just behind it, on Saturday night. fell asleep under an amazing black starry sky, with the wind keeping up a constant susurrus over the makeshift windbreak (aka enormous pile of crap out of the truck) behind my head. woke in the middle of the night to an awful car alarm 15 feet away, but otherwise slept reasonably well. (wasn't that your car,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
signifier?)
Monday. i'd given up on finding Jonestown, so i went ahead and cleared space for myself in the Irrational Geographic Society. the Phoenix Gazebo and my cheapass tent: my home for the next almost-week. note the glaring sunshine. there was lots of that.
Tuesday. out exploring the playa,lyonesse and i came across La Contessa, a gorgeous art-bus that looks exactly like a pirate galleon. on the upper deck, the captain (that fellow with the goggles and banjo) declaimed The Walrus and the Carpenter for us, then did a version of "White Rabbit" and a song of his own. we danced, and had icey-pops. whee!
the bowsprit of La Contessa...
...and a broadside view. she was amazing. several days later, i ran across her again late at night, with a serious repair crew at work. they'd gone driving out past the trash fence, going fast and dark, and had hit "a dune the size of a VW Bug". she broke an axle and had to be towed back. that's the kind of surreality that makes me grin: when your pirate ship breaks an axle because you hit a sand-dune, you have her towed back over by the Thunderdome. welders go in to repair the axle at midnight while the fire-trucks shoot 20-foot gouts of flame right next to you, and the crowd climbing all over the Mad Max dome goes wild to "Punk Rock Girl".
costume expedition success #1!lyonesse's kickass kow dress and leopard fedora. (from where? why, Kostume Kult's enormous gold lamé dome, of course.)
costume expedition success #2! green, argyle, and sparkly! and also the sweet silky blue robe. i win. (the bandana is not so much my style, but the top hat was too hot for daytime.) story: on our way out to The Mortician's Closet (where i picked up the blue robe) we came across the Black Rock Bagel Shop (at 4:20 and Fetish), and talked awhile with the people there. they baked us cookies, and said to come back early the next morning for fresh-baked bagels. so we did.
either sunrise or sunset, over the mountains that border the playa. the city is still relatively unpopulated. ...i'm very glad that i went out early, had a few days before things got really crowded, got to see the building of the city. the land there is beautiful, in its desolate way; very often i wished i could be there alone, just me and a campfire, stars and mountains. i rode out away from the city my first few nights there, all the way out to the fence; pedaled as hard as i could and then turned my lights off, tilted my head back, and coasted, staring up at the sky.
the Life-Size Game of Mousetrap. the existence of this piece of art makes me very happy. unfortunately, even though it was right close to IGS, i never actually got to see it run.
we finally locatedlyonesse's personal avatar of the goddess. he does, in fact, rock, and later gave us both chocolate and extra hot cocoa mix. whee!
Wednesday morning, at dawn, on our way to the Bagel Shop. we were the first ones there, and were handed two hot sesame bagels straight out of the oven, and there was hot water to go with my cocoa mix. (having my cocoa & cognac at hand made Burning Man a much better place, and it was a good thing to be able to share. banzai for Tasty Hot Beverages!) we talked awhile with the people running the shop -- it was their first Burning Man, and they had a little bakery somewhere in Colorado, maybe Grand Junction. so they'd made a whole bunch of bagels beforehand, boiled and par-baked and frozen them, and then brought them out. they woke at dawn each day, started baking, and handed out bagels and cream cheese and coffee until they ran out for the day. the little things like that amaze me even more than the huge fantastic art projects.
Center Camp: a shaded ring with benches and people-doing-stuff and a long bar where you could go get iced mochas or electrolyte replacer drink. the center is an open circle, and looking up above it you see this layered geometry of tension-wires, holding everything up.
outside Center Camp are bike racks, radiating away. sometimes you show up and there are hundreds of bikes filling the racks and spilling outward into the roadway. when we parked, our bikes were in the midst of a tangled crowd of others, but when we came to find them later, the mob had moved on and our bikes stood alone. lyo's is the little one with the basket; mine's the blue one with shiny tassels. (sadly, my sweet old blue Schwinn disappeared in the first day, before i'd managed to pitch my tent and unpack my bike lock. despite having my camp, bike, and water bottle all go missing in the first 48 hours after arriving, i managed to have a really good time...so thank you, tolyonesse and signifier and everyone else who gave me good company and made my life a better place to be for that week.)
back to the art, and the fire! this one was called "Angel of the Apocalypse". an enormous bird, half-buried in the playa. the flaming metal spears are its wingtips; the pile of driftwood in the center is its body.
the existence of the Thunderdome makes me grin, and i ran around withsignifier one night, jumped and climbed up high on the dome, shouted and yelled and cheered along with the mad mob. (and yeah, they played 'Punk Rock Girl', and a couple others i recognized...thought of you, sholladay.) i watched one match where a girl with long blond dreads, lots of makeup, a white lacy frilly short-skirt outfit, and knee-high white patent leather platform boots beat the shit out of this ripped guy in vest and dusty pants and boots. it was great.
also note that the shiny thing in the middle of the picture is a mirrorball skull, with a green laser playing off of it.
more art and fire! these are the three windmills; there was some performance bit with fire-dancing and knights fighting nightmare-dragons beforehand, but really it's all about setting big wooden things on fire. mmm, catharsis.
Balinese Monkey Chant in Center Camp, led by a bunch of people in black&white gingham check headdresses. to quote the internet: "The Balinese 'monkey chant', or kecak, is a powerful spectacle, but also a fairly recent artistic invention. Created in 1932 specifically as a tourist attraction, the kecak is a mix of music and theatre that draws on the folkloric Hindu myth of Ramayana, which tells the story of Hanuman, the King Of The Monkeys and his alliance with Prince Rama, who faces an Orpheus-like challenge to recover his beloved wife. The German-Russian artist Walter Spies helped synthesize the modern kecak performance, and since it's Depression-era debut, it has become an exceptionally popular art form. You can quickly see (or hear) why: the distinctive chak-chak-chakachakachakachakachakachaka-chak-chak-chak of the full-on kecak chorus is one of the oddest and most arresting musical sounds you'll ever hear; it's almost like a sonic strobe effect, an unnervingly insectlike, unhuman-sounding vocal chorus."
the wooden Clockworks by day:
and at sunset:
[also, because i like the picture, concept art for the clockwork tower.]
incredible huge metal art, with water and fire, called Passage.
and finally, the flock of cupcakes:
there was so much i wasn't able to get pictures of, and so much that my camera just couldn't do justice to. (but then, the most important thing was to be there, to be present, to be laughing and in wonder at strangeness and beauty. there were bits of being-there that were difficult for a variety of reasons, but i'm very glad i went.)
arrival, around 10pm on the Saturday evening before Burning Man officially begins. note the enormous solar-powered tricycle.
the next day: hiding out in the shade in the back of the FoodLab truck. see the white Hengehold truck? that's the Krotus truck; i slept on a pile of tarps and dust-soaked carpet just behind it, on Saturday night. fell asleep under an amazing black starry sky, with the wind keeping up a constant susurrus over the makeshift windbreak (aka enormous pile of crap out of the truck) behind my head. woke in the middle of the night to an awful car alarm 15 feet away, but otherwise slept reasonably well. (wasn't that your car,
signifier?)Monday. i'd given up on finding Jonestown, so i went ahead and cleared space for myself in the Irrational Geographic Society. the Phoenix Gazebo and my cheapass tent: my home for the next almost-week. note the glaring sunshine. there was lots of that.
Tuesday. out exploring the playa,
lyonesse and i came across La Contessa, a gorgeous art-bus that looks exactly like a pirate galleon. on the upper deck, the captain (that fellow with the goggles and banjo) declaimed The Walrus and the Carpenter for us, then did a version of "White Rabbit" and a song of his own. we danced, and had icey-pops. whee!the bowsprit of La Contessa...
...and a broadside view. she was amazing. several days later, i ran across her again late at night, with a serious repair crew at work. they'd gone driving out past the trash fence, going fast and dark, and had hit "a dune the size of a VW Bug". she broke an axle and had to be towed back. that's the kind of surreality that makes me grin: when your pirate ship breaks an axle because you hit a sand-dune, you have her towed back over by the Thunderdome. welders go in to repair the axle at midnight while the fire-trucks shoot 20-foot gouts of flame right next to you, and the crowd climbing all over the Mad Max dome goes wild to "Punk Rock Girl".
costume expedition success #1!
lyonesse's kickass kow dress and leopard fedora. (from where? why, Kostume Kult's enormous gold lamé dome, of course.)costume expedition success #2! green, argyle, and sparkly! and also the sweet silky blue robe. i win. (the bandana is not so much my style, but the top hat was too hot for daytime.) story: on our way out to The Mortician's Closet (where i picked up the blue robe) we came across the Black Rock Bagel Shop (at 4:20 and Fetish), and talked awhile with the people there. they baked us cookies, and said to come back early the next morning for fresh-baked bagels. so we did.
either sunrise or sunset, over the mountains that border the playa. the city is still relatively unpopulated. ...i'm very glad that i went out early, had a few days before things got really crowded, got to see the building of the city. the land there is beautiful, in its desolate way; very often i wished i could be there alone, just me and a campfire, stars and mountains. i rode out away from the city my first few nights there, all the way out to the fence; pedaled as hard as i could and then turned my lights off, tilted my head back, and coasted, staring up at the sky.
the Life-Size Game of Mousetrap. the existence of this piece of art makes me very happy. unfortunately, even though it was right close to IGS, i never actually got to see it run.
we finally located
lyonesse's personal avatar of the goddess. he does, in fact, rock, and later gave us both chocolate and extra hot cocoa mix. whee!Wednesday morning, at dawn, on our way to the Bagel Shop. we were the first ones there, and were handed two hot sesame bagels straight out of the oven, and there was hot water to go with my cocoa mix. (having my cocoa & cognac at hand made Burning Man a much better place, and it was a good thing to be able to share. banzai for Tasty Hot Beverages!) we talked awhile with the people running the shop -- it was their first Burning Man, and they had a little bakery somewhere in Colorado, maybe Grand Junction. so they'd made a whole bunch of bagels beforehand, boiled and par-baked and frozen them, and then brought them out. they woke at dawn each day, started baking, and handed out bagels and cream cheese and coffee until they ran out for the day. the little things like that amaze me even more than the huge fantastic art projects.
Center Camp: a shaded ring with benches and people-doing-stuff and a long bar where you could go get iced mochas or electrolyte replacer drink. the center is an open circle, and looking up above it you see this layered geometry of tension-wires, holding everything up.
outside Center Camp are bike racks, radiating away. sometimes you show up and there are hundreds of bikes filling the racks and spilling outward into the roadway. when we parked, our bikes were in the midst of a tangled crowd of others, but when we came to find them later, the mob had moved on and our bikes stood alone. lyo's is the little one with the basket; mine's the blue one with shiny tassels. (sadly, my sweet old blue Schwinn disappeared in the first day, before i'd managed to pitch my tent and unpack my bike lock. despite having my camp, bike, and water bottle all go missing in the first 48 hours after arriving, i managed to have a really good time...so thank you, to
lyonesse and signifier and everyone else who gave me good company and made my life a better place to be for that week.) back to the art, and the fire! this one was called "Angel of the Apocalypse". an enormous bird, half-buried in the playa. the flaming metal spears are its wingtips; the pile of driftwood in the center is its body.
the existence of the Thunderdome makes me grin, and i ran around with
signifier one night, jumped and climbed up high on the dome, shouted and yelled and cheered along with the mad mob. (and yeah, they played 'Punk Rock Girl', and a couple others i recognized...thought of you, sholladay.) i watched one match where a girl with long blond dreads, lots of makeup, a white lacy frilly short-skirt outfit, and knee-high white patent leather platform boots beat the shit out of this ripped guy in vest and dusty pants and boots. it was great. also note that the shiny thing in the middle of the picture is a mirrorball skull, with a green laser playing off of it.
more art and fire! these are the three windmills; there was some performance bit with fire-dancing and knights fighting nightmare-dragons beforehand, but really it's all about setting big wooden things on fire. mmm, catharsis.
Balinese Monkey Chant in Center Camp, led by a bunch of people in black&white gingham check headdresses. to quote the internet: "The Balinese 'monkey chant', or kecak, is a powerful spectacle, but also a fairly recent artistic invention. Created in 1932 specifically as a tourist attraction, the kecak is a mix of music and theatre that draws on the folkloric Hindu myth of Ramayana, which tells the story of Hanuman, the King Of The Monkeys and his alliance with Prince Rama, who faces an Orpheus-like challenge to recover his beloved wife. The German-Russian artist Walter Spies helped synthesize the modern kecak performance, and since it's Depression-era debut, it has become an exceptionally popular art form. You can quickly see (or hear) why: the distinctive chak-chak-chakachakachakachakachakachaka-chak-chak-chak of the full-on kecak chorus is one of the oddest and most arresting musical sounds you'll ever hear; it's almost like a sonic strobe effect, an unnervingly insectlike, unhuman-sounding vocal chorus."
the wooden Clockworks by day:
and at sunset:
[also, because i like the picture, concept art for the clockwork tower.]
incredible huge metal art, with water and fire, called Passage.
and finally, the flock of cupcakes:
there was so much i wasn't able to get pictures of, and so much that my camera just couldn't do justice to. (but then, the most important thing was to be there, to be present, to be laughing and in wonder at strangeness and beauty. there were bits of being-there that were difficult for a variety of reasons, but i'm very glad i went.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 01:19 pm (UTC)thanks again for being there and doing all the stuff you did :)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 03:40 pm (UTC)(And I _still_ say that car alarm wasn't our van, but...)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:42 pm (UTC)didn't bother me too much, anyhow; i never woke up enough to put coherent thoughts in order, and went right back to sleep after the howling stopped.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-16 08:24 pm (UTC)*squeeze*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 09:15 pm (UTC)absolutely.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 09:16 pm (UTC)