I got back to the UK the other day, and after a long period of sleepless flying and jet lag I'm catching up on my neglected tasks. One of which is this blog and one of the major reasons of neglect is writers block.
I've been trying to write about Burning Man for over a week now with little success, it seems that the whole event is beyond my ability to describe, I'm a Photographer not a Writer.

That being said I only took out my camera 4 times during the event and snapped off around 200 pictures which is pretty damn low for me considering I usually take more than that in one day and I took enough storage and battery life to choke a donkey. I think Paolo said it best with "You can either capture it or be in it, you can't do both." So there you go, I was in it, I was in it hard.
Even Jay Michaelson's description of:

"It's a temporary city of 50,000 people, devoted to radical self-expression. So you'll find anything you'd find in a regular city -- art museums, dance clubs, yoga studios -- only in the middle of the desert, with no money, and with more creativity than you've ever seen."

seems to miss out a bit, so of the few photos I did take, I will let them tell a bit of the story.
Abby and I made the trip together, and as I had lost the truck we took a bus to Seattle and got a ride down with some people that were found on the internet, Whitney and Tahir. The drive down was long, I will stick to talking about BM, America is still a crazy story thou. We arrived at around 12am on Saturday, and were gifted early passes, set up the tent in the dark not knowing where we were and had our last taste of normality.
We awoke to the stunning vista which is Black Rock City, in the middle stages of development. We had hooked up a camping with "Red Lightning", a group mainly from the bay area consisting of assorted new age/gender alchemist/spirit healer/fire and lightning performer/spiritualist types who have come together to build one great camp. There were a lot of tipi's, 2 healing domes, a Sun and Moon Lodge, the lightning temple and the Entelechy (said in-tel-le-key) where various events, activities, workshops and performances were held. As we were virgins and had also arrived early we were at a bit of a loose end and tried to help were we could without getting under everyone's feet.
I helped a bit in the Entelechy helping Jo-Free and John with the final stages of setup, it was hard to feel like part of the group and for the first few days there was a lot of stress and sort tempers which we were not expecting, but things began to change as the final pieces began to slot into place and fresh people arrived with fresh energy.
There were massage tables being set up so I took the opportunity to practice some therapy on a couple of the super stressed "leaders", one of which (Evonne) later introduced me to people as an "Amazing Healer" which is possibly the nicest thing anyone has said about me, and it really made me feel welcome at camp.

Friends began to arrive and exploration took on greater distances, made easier by the bike given to me by the Campo Allegro crew for helping with their setup, and we hooked up with the Scotians and their crew at Storybooks and Alleyways, meeting more great people in the process. Greg and Natalie et al arrived for the Solar Sonic contingent, and our campsite and crew were finalised, the party could begin.

The Gypsum/salt/sand/dust storms were frequent early on, temperatures were hitting 35-38 (I think), David's poor cooling system could not cope. During these times I hid from the sun and wind as much as possible (not very much) and in the late afternoon headed out into the throng. The gift economy was a little tough to get used to, and as a person who rarely says no to anything I ended up getting caffeinated, spanked, ass branded and drunk on the way to Storybooks, all within about 10 minutes. Saying no to people became the hardest thing, I found myself wanting for nothing, I even got given some clothes!

Days beautifully swept into nights, the desert itself is a beautiful place in the twilight, I don't think I have seen a sunset or sunrise with a greater spectrum of colour, sadly I only captured one sunset and no sunrises, but the moonrise during sunset (right) was rather beautiful.

Night brings a change to the city, from the time that the lamp lighters finish hanging the lanterns until the rainbow dawn, art cars, bikes, art bikes and people navigate the playa, moving between displays, music, parties, art installations and home, it was like being in a movie all the time. Saturday night was the climax of the entire thing with the burning of the man (sorry no pics) which was so incredible I can't describe it. Really.

The temple burn on Sunday was a more somber affair, and the week came to an end. Abby and I parted ways, I headed up to Seattle via a hot springs in Oregon with some new friends and hung in Seattle for a couple of days exploring before tripping back to Vancouver for the weekend and the flight back to the UK.

Photos, do your thing . . .


More photos on Flickr

Labels: festival