Andy Lewis at Burning Man -Burning Man is the largest leave no trace festival in the world!~ Last year we hooked up with decadent oasis who let us put up a volcano high line and a few slack-lines... this year we had an entire slack camp! WE had many lines, a trampoline, as well as our own glow in the dark palm tree forest! There were also slack-lines all over the playa in other places. We had tons of people just come to our camp to walk the lines in our camp, and probably many more that i didnt see because most of the time i was roaming the Playa. The Playa is a massive expanse of just dusty white dust for miles. When the festival has its time, people erect the entire black rock city in a matter of days; fully equipped with a post office, hospitals, streets, signs, a massive temple, tons of art, and of course a 100 ft MAN READY TO BURN! Over the course of a week you meet some of the most inspiring artists, lovely people, and experience some of the most awesome scenes for dancing, exploration, and partying that ever exist on earth. During the day you can bike around and really take the art in personally, but at night everything morphs into something that either glows in the dark, plays incredibly load music, or spits balls of fire... The best really is all three! While you are discovering the art, the people, and the playa you realize that a lot of the art moves! Many of the coolest things to see and experience are the art cars. Art cars are otherwise known as mutant vehicles and they all follow strict rules of the DMV. Department of mutant vehicles. Once you are registered you can slowly roam the Playa all day and all night. Until there is a dust storm. Dust storms happen occasionally and when they really go off you cant see anything! The entire festival disappears except for the 100 ft around you. You lose all concept of space, you have already lost all concept of time, and the scene at the burn becomes very post apocalyptic. All mutant vehicles pretty much have to stop until they can see... which isnt a bad thing because sometimes they cant move for hours and you just end up having a massive dance party! You have to bring all your own food and water because there is nothing for sale at the burn. Well you can buy ice, and coffee but thats about it. So when you go out on the Playa to explore you have to bring food, and water, and warm clothes cause you never know when you are getting back to camp. And when you do get back to camp it will probably be morning and you will most likely eat a little breakfast and sleep for most of the beginning of the day while its hot. After you rest you joke with your friends about what you saw, who had the best night of partying, where the coolest art is, the loudest music, and the funny and crazy shit that happened in such a short period of time! After you get food and coffee, you plan your costumes for the next night, put them on, and then escape to the burn one more time! By the end of the festival everyone is incredibly stoked to burn the man! Most of everyone at the festival shows up for the event and the energy becomes visceral. All of the mutant vehicles make a huge circle of fire, lights, and music around the man, and inside of the art cars are all of the costumed, drugged out, dancing, raging, lovely humans that have built the entire city. Anxiously this year we all waited hours!!! The sand storm had entirely eaten the man and no one could see anything. We argued even if the man would burn or not. And then it happened. The sand storm just stopped and the man was there, standing proudly, clear as the clearest day we had had all week! Then we saw the lighters!! They carry torches, and are dressed in seemingly 15th century garb, and as they walked towards the man the music got louder, the lights got more intense, everyone was exploding as much fire out of their mutant vehicles that they could and then BAM!!! The man exploded into flames!!! As the man burned the energy was incredible. So many humans all cheering, dancing, smiling, and releasing the best energy of the entire burn. Over 2 hours everyone kept crowded around the man until he collapsed, and upon collapse the entire show cheered and again, just like before, the man ceased to exist. This sparks the most insane party, all night, until sunrise. But, this is not the only feeling at the burn. The temple is almost the exact opposite. The temple is a place to forgive and forget. It is a place of silence and memory. A place of pain and healing. And this palace, this temple... it also burns, the night after the man. The energy is just as potent as the burning of the man. Over the week the festival is going off thousands of people place pictures, and letters, gloves, cages, many random things that mean the world to people who have usually lost a friend, a lover, a pet, or are trying to forget a lost love. When you walk in you realize how much pain there is in the world and how everyone has their own struggle. I personally put the ashes of 3 dead friends, and the ashes of 1 dead dog into the temple. When the temple burns it marks the end of the burn, and the dawning of a new era, a new mindset, a new life shed from the pains and hardships that have now burned away in-front of your eyes. This burn does not have music, it is not a party, and thousands of people sit in silence and release the negative energy they need to, usually in the form of tears. AS the temple fell this year, it collapsed quickly and in one fell swoop, BOOM! straight to the ground the entire temple fell. Eerily metaphoric to how my friends lost their lives i felt an outstanding calm pass over me. No tears needed, no smile either, just calm and acceptance. I sat with my friends in silence and watch the fire eat away at the mangled pile of wood, metal, and emotional toil. I stumbled to my bike afterwards, road back to camp, and got ready to be back in the real world.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:49 +0000
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