page 3 of 6
The greatest concentration of art
activity seemed to be in the immediate vicinity of Center Camp,
along the outer periphery of the dirt 'roundabout' surrounding
the giant tent. A large green alien sculpture with a huge erection
looked on while little multicolored buggies wandered by, drawing
the eye to various institutions like Media Mecca, Radio Free Burning
Man, and the Black Rock Gazette.
Center Camp was the nucleus of the city, similar to
last years layout with the giant shallow conical tent open to
the sky in the center. Huge areas of the interior were devoted
to comfortably accommodating people in couches, easy chairs and
pillows laid out upon layer after layer of overlapping old carpets.
Additional covered space of declining height was provided by many
radially arranged 'petals' extending from the main round tent.
Often Center Camp seemed crowded but always fairly relaxed. It
seemed to be a place to socialize for some, to quietly take refuge
from the elements and sensory overload for others.
On one end of the huge tent someone
was reading poetry, on the other a performer half sang and half
chanted in startling multiple tones as do some Tibetan monks.
There were stages scattered through the interior, and along the
southern periphery drinks were sold ranging from fruit juices
to various caffeine preparations. There was even an electrolyte
replenishment drink offered. I had brought bottles of the stuff
for use the night of the burn. Just outside the tent hundreds
of bicycles were laid out in an intricately repetitive mass of
overwhelming metal detail. The streets were covered with an inch
or two of light powder but water trucks periodically wetted them
down and prevented a lot of dust from being kicked up. A large
rather elaborate camp was named 'Azteca' and featured a multi-stepped
pyramid, abbreviated models of various features of Aztec life,
and a map of Mexico with numerous symbolic models and toys placed
at some landmarks. A serenade from a speaker repeated a theme
song 'It's an Az-tek world' to the tune of 'It's a small world'.
'Tethered Aviation' was periodically visited and their colorful
grand kites were visible across wide distances.
After striking out towards the village of Disturbia
various remarkable diversions cropped up along the way. I saw
a large plastic tarp and a nearby wading pool filled with playa
mud with which naked people sitting inside were rubbing themselves.
The watery mud was smooth and settled into a slick layer a small
fraction of an inch thick. A few dozen people had done this and
were gathering in the center of the tarp, which I was next to
at that moment by chance. The women gathered in the center, facing
outwards and leaning against each others backs. The larger number
of men were instructed by someone with a megaphone to lie on their
stomachs, head in. Their legs extended outwards from the center
like the tentacles of a huge sea anemone. This was one of the
few times when it felt all right to be using a video camera around
a group of naked people, all in the open and with no self consciousness
whatsoever. 
Over the loudspeaker the roles and rules
were laid out, the men were to be spermatozoa, the women were
to be the collective egg, deciding among themselves which of the
inwardly squirming fellows to admit to their zone. The men were
not to use their arms, they had to wriggle like snakes. They proceeded
to form a writhing intertwined mass of humanity, all the same
glistening gray wet pottery color. Finally one lucky fellow was
chosen and the group got up and briefly paraded him on their shoulders.
The mud on them began cracking as I moved along.
Thursday disturbing signs of a further 'closing in'
of officialdom on the freedom of the event took place. I heard
of these events by reading the Black Rock Gazette and hearing
descriptions after the fact. One camp which projected explicit
sex videos onto a large projection screen visible from streets
was ordered to 'tone it down' by police, and thereafter they only
showed 'soft core' material. At the 'Jiffy Lube' subdivision of
Camp M*A*S*Hcara, where a sign declared the motto "Get In,
Get Off, Get Out", a mechanically animated billboard of anal
sex between two men was ordered removed by a deputy claiming the
image was in violation of prevailing community standards. This
soon attracted a good deal of attention and outcry by the camp
members and others concerned with the 'radical self expression'
ethic traditionally associated with the event. The police withdrew
and let the Rangers and Burning man staff work out the implementation
of the order. In a series of discussions culminating in a Friday
meeting between the BLM, police, and Burning Man officials some
argued a stand should be made for free speech, but Larry Harvey
saw the short and long term continuation of the event as the primary
concern and assisted in working out a compromise where the sign
was placed where it was visible from the 'Jiffy lube' camp but
not the street. Eventually the sign was passed to Harvey's camp
and finally to the rear of a truck. Larry underwent some verbal
abuse afterwards but both parties managed to save face. A court
case may have vindicated the camps position but the authorities
could have closed the event in the meantime. A protest march in
which the offending sign was to be taken to center camp was allowed
by the police at the heat of noon Saturday.
It was beyond my ability to see more than a good fraction
of everything, all I can do is try to indicate the expansive variety
in the background while focusing on a few things here and there
of what I experienced or heard about. Often it is the natural
settings I am amazed by as much as what has been brought there.
Certain moments hang in the ether like the dust floating over
the open Playa when the winds subside.
The low lying clouds of dust wash
over the tent city and far beyond. By late afternoon one has to
shield the eyes from the pale yellow glare when looking westwards,
but doing so reveals brilliant ground hugging shreds of dust glaring
as they drift along the line of sight with the sun. The foothills
beyond are partly clothed in this luminous golden patchy mist
which glides uphill, outlining portions of the mountainous contours
within the dark silhouetted ridge.
The deeply rutted dust around me glows light orange and dark turquoise
in overlapping stripes like an abstract work of art furiously
dashed off in radiant paints. The unbearably harsh disk of the
sun is just above the mountains and I turn around to get a last
look at the surroundings in this wonderful lighting. The textures
are deeply shadowed except in the distant bright region around
the shadow of my head. It is breezy but the last warmth of the
sun can still be felt on my back. Here and there rippled
little dunes of dust have formed in the last few days over other
ruts and footprints. There is now no windblown dust nearby, although
portions of the valley are hidden by local white-outs. It is peaceful
and also exhilarating to be out there. The Sun slips behind a
dense bit of low cloud beyond the mountains and the light steadily
dims. The daylit scenery is quickly restricted to the Eastern
mountains for some time until the sun actually sets. The drumming
steadily escalates as the day ends, the loss of the sun is a kind
of signal of the transition to the night time incarnation of the
event. The background cacophony somehow provides a sense of the
pulse of this immense group entity. It is as if the kind of pagan
presence one dreams of invoking in Halloween emerges, but in a
celebratory not creepy manner.
Some flattened cloud masses hang along the western
sky after sunset and I position myself to see the Man in front
of the clouds about to be lit by the sun from beneath. A dusty
'white out' washes over us at the start of the critical moments.
The sparse but blazing clouds steadily emerge dramatically from
the tan fog as it is carried along by gentler breezes. The dust
hangs in a low pall above the ground like a 'tulle fog' and lightens
the scene below the stark border of the silhouetted Man and mountains.
For a few moments I compose and capture pictures, run about, and
grab more images before the red under lighting in the clouds fade.
As the daylight retreats to the west the remaining blue twilight
is bordered by the dark purple mountains, and the carpet of lights
at their base steadily turns itself on. All night long the vitality
of Black Rock City is displayed in its imported brilliance and
multiple musical rhythms which phase in and out of each other.
It is a fantastic thing to see in its full development, at least
as long as the dust will allow. As a local storm bears down on
me the approaching masses of dust resemble in the soft light a
ghostly herd of stampeding animals. I turn just in time to avoid
a face full of powder and the ground hugging winds make my pants
legs ripple. Larger aerial mounds of dust join the fray and for
a time I cannot see a single structure, only a dim pale green
nearly full Moon high in the foggy looking sky. Not thinking I
would need my mask on this walk, I breath for a time inside my
pulled up shirt and close my eyes until the wind dies down.
As the visibility improves I see
the Mausoleum softly silhouetted in the retreating pall by the
diffused colored glow of a brilliant light in the distance. The
closer mobile 'Bone Tree' sculpture is lit a bright red. The intricate
pagoda appears dreamlike as the light passes partially through
it. Along the horizon brighter light sources spread their color
through the local walls of airborne dust, and I try to head towards
the directions where I see the most lights, indicating less dust
to pass through. For a little while I rest my feet while watching
a video projection of '2001-A Space Odyssey'. Finally I get to
camp and shake myself off, watching a dismayingly thick cloud
of powder fly away from my clothes as I swat them. I decide this
is the last night I will be able to go without washing my hair.
We prepare and eat a canned dinner before going out for another
adventure.
Going for a walk in these conditions
becomes an adventure in itself, preceded by a several step process
including putting on the breathing mask and goggles if the wind
looks especially bad. Dust is relatively easy to shake out of
ones clothes but it should be kept out of the hair if at all possible.
It is great to stride unflinchingly into a dust storm and hear
the particles rattle on the clear goggles as you continue on your
way. At times these measures can be a mixed blessing. The clarity
of the goggles is hard to maintain and the times you really need
them tend to also be the 'white out' periods where there was little
to see anyway. Because of the breathing masks virtue of achieving
a good seal, speaking is impractical when wearing it.
While I am between destinations the wind
picks up around me. A moment ago the Man was a distant but bright
neon landmark. Now it is only a dim violet glow in an otherwise
invisible faraway dust storm. Intervening bright lights reveal
several layers of ground hugging playa dust racing by, seen in
locally illuminated bright areas as well as in intervening unlit
regions. I keep to the roads and look for the closer partitions
of dust gliding along the ground so as to avoid them. Above the
misty lights in the distance the starry sky still shows something
of the benefits of being in the desert and the nearby mountains
stand as a subtle moonlit backdrop. In one region the enormous
green laser forms spots and wavy patterns on a mountainside after
playing across the intervening dust overhead from the other end
of the sprawling tent city.
I notice a quarter of the heavens is soon covered
by a mountainous dusty mass rising from the South, but the sky
above is still dominated by the Moon and stars. These are steadily
being covered by what looks like a tall sharply defined storm
front enveloping us in slow motion across the sky. A vast 'cave'
forms over us, clearly modeled by the moonlight and the warmer
colored illumination from below. The darker uppermost overhanging
edges are brightly back lit with bluish moonlight, well defined
but with ragged rolling details. It is like the ghost of the 'Dust
Bowl' of a lifetime ago, with rounded vaguely billowing walls
towering up and over us to form a partial dome over the silhouetted
tent city. The brighter curving cloudy walls reach the ground
somewhere far away. I watch the stars disappear behind the silvery
diffuse edge of the dust and wish the sight could be photographed,
but some things are simply for our eyes only. The ghostly cavernous
grotto is softly lit from below so as to be brighter than the
sky, and the Moon is being covered and afterward contributing
less to outlining the advancing edge. A kind of overcast then
ensues, but for a time there is little ground level dust to deal
with, at least in my location. Reaching the less dense outer western
streets I see a brilliant dust cloud lit at its source by all
the headlights pointing my way from the incoming traffic. This
is the source of a constant plume delivering ragged tan clouds
to that portion of the horizon by day, and a pale diffused headlight
glow at night.
People walk and ride by in all
stages of preparation for the elements to none at all. Dry wheezing
coughs can occasionally be heard, but most people are walking
in groups and conversing cheerfully through paper masks. Again
I walk out into the central emptiness and marvel at the multicolored
celebration along the horizon. The tall emerald citys crystal
towers are lined with green neon, and from near their base the
5 watt laser scans vivid green patterns through the dust clouds.
The rapidly probing pattern of light displays dynamic thin sections
of the dust laden wind currents. 
One diffuse white beam in the distance towers over everything else, and a long walk well past earlier familiar landmarks brings me to a cluster of lights similar to the isolated work I saw last year, directing a dozen brilliant white lights straight up. For a time I admire the portion of the air currents shown by the lights, with eddies of dusty air alternating with clearer layers folding into itself while rolling along. A very dense dust cloud arrives and the beams turn into a lighter glow in the grayness around me. Occasionally the return trip is delayed until I can see where I am going. Thursday evening truly deserved to be known as 'the night of the dust'. Finally I settle down in my tent and listen to the faint indirect rippling of the mylar fabric over my tent through my earplugs until I glide into a deep sleep until late in the morning.
page 3 of 6