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Burningman 2000, Gallery
Two - More images from Black Rock City |
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Gallery
One
Click
here for Burningman 2001 photos
August 28th - Sept 1st 2000
Burning man was loneliness.
Next year I will do things differently. I will not go by myself*. I will camp further from the center of things so it may be possible to sleep well at night. I will bring better food.
The loneliness of the performer, the loneliness of being out in the dark, riding a bicycle through the dust storms, the loneliness of seeing seeing seeing and then not knowing where to put the images...
The music jams at night ... small cauldrons of fire, me playing a flute first just by myself, then drummers walk up, then dancers, then fire dancers. Then a crowd -- too many spectators -- who aren't talking, just collecting. The loneliness of performance hits those of us who are putting out like this: sounds and sights into the air, into an eather, but too much a one-way connection. Drained. And after there has been enough playing, at three in the morning or four, each night, the exhaustion of the performance, the green laser light in the dust 30 feet above our heads, I ride my old bicycle back to my old pickup truck, and crawl in among the cans of food and books, and try to sleep.
Morning is reading, no talking. But even near dawn there are already sounds and sights and wind and dust and drumming already. In my five mornings at Burning man, I read these books: "My name is Asher Lev," by Chaim Potok; Stienbeck's "Sweet Thursday," and short stories by Tobias Wolff . Without this grounding, the loneliness would have been too much.
You see, I did not want to talk with anyone at Burningman, I did not want to meet anyone. I just wanted to be alone with the 30,000, alone with the sights, alone with the sounds, watching and collecting, and performing when the times were right.
But eating canned food, not even bothering to heat it up, just yuk. If I had been camped with others, someone would have said to me, 'hey steve, this isn't a survival thing, you're' not bivouacking...' and I would have said things like, 'let's go over to center camp and have some tea.'
Still, it was also just a lot of zany fun. Found myself laughing at what I saw, what I took pictures of, at the entire absurdity of much of it. And having fun, real fun. Next year, though, I will bring perishables. There is ice at Burningman.