There are some experiences that are life-altering, and that defy articulation. Experiences like finding your first love, or having communion with the universe, or accidentally catching your nipple in a router. This is one of the handful I expect to have in my life, and I think I ended up with an extra nipple from it.
Around Labor Day, I joined Joey X and some friends from NYC, London and San Francisco for the 14th Burning Man. This year, like every year, the fourth largest city in Nevada rose out of the Black Rock Desert - for one week. Stretching over 9 square miles, Black Rock City reached a population of 25,000+, on a desert so harsh that there is NO indigenous life. The flat, white, prehistoric lake bed serves as a blank canvass for anarchy and unbridled personal expression.
Pulling up to the Dead Media Cargo Cult compound, I was hammered by sensory overload from all the nudlies, techno kids, hippies, metalheads and other freaks. The only unifying force seemed to have been psychic marginalization, and a desire to fun con mucho gusto. Alarmingly, our camp sat between Elvis Yoga and the camp of King Jupiter - a French freak who wanted people to have sex in his giant croissant. However, we were around the corner from the Satyr bar, which was run by people who wore ram horns, and played a relentless mix of chacha and Waits.
The city is rendered as a vast semi-clock shape, running from 1 to 10 o'clock, around the Playa (which in turn opens up to the flat, dusty horizon). The nightclub districts are away from town center (from 1:00-3:00 and 8-10:00), where you can find the 24-7 raves. They range in material construction from tarps, PVC and christmas lights, to really expensive arrangements with astonishing video art. At night, with all the fires, industrial lasers, Tesla Coils, video projectors and assorted theatrical lighting ablaze, Black Rock City looks like a cross between a two-story Blade Runner set, and a county fair. A REALLY BIG and REALLY LETHAL county fair.
Through the week, the Man towers over the Playa, waiting to burn on the final night. A lot of other works appear and disappear throughout the week. One needs only stumble around to be amazed. Ånd all that stumbling and dancing left me with a strange museum of cuts and blisters on my feet and legs. So while I lick my wounds and deal with the sudden intrusion of "reality," why don't you check out some of the things I experienced. I took these photos with the only cameras worthy of Playa dust: a disposable and a Holga (the almost disposable). A word of apology, however: much of my film has gone missing. So these are all the shots that remain of my adventure.
