The Man Burns for Real


Reprinted from Mercury News:

The Man Will Burn (For Real)

By Mark Boslet
Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 1:43 pm in Burning Man, General.

Tonight the man burns - for a second time. After a miscue earlier this week when an arsonist set it aflame and partly destroyed it, the refurbished, wooden man - from which the Burning Man festival takes its name - will go up after dark. The festival awaits in anticipation.

A night long celebration will be a welcome relief for burners, who this week have had to endure two fierce playa dust storms. White outs were common.
But the fun didn’t stop. “I wanted to stilt through a dust storm…naked,” said Corvus Woolf, who stared down from a pair of 4-foot stilts, his mohawk fluttering in the breeze. “I didn’t get to the naked part.”

Two more standout pieces of art:

1) Big Rig Jib: two 18 wheelers standing almost suspended in air, practically wrapped around each other, their trailers curved behind them like scorpions’ tails.

2) Steampunk Treehouse: A tree and tree house made of scrap metal, curved trunk, gaslight tree hideaway, branches extended like fingers. At night steam shoots into the sky.

One sad note: A Burning Man spokeswoman and a Bureau of Land Management official say there has been a death at this year’s festival. A man in his 20s was found dead in a tent, an apparent suicide. The word is he hung himself. We all grieve.

The Flavor Of The Festival


Reprinted from the Mercury News:

The Flavor of Burning Man

By Mark Boslet
Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 4:31 pm in Burning Man, General.

You know Burning Man as the communal festival held every year in the Nevada desert. This year’s no different - though maybe the event has grown a bit. It seems immense. The official tally lists 44,000 people in attendance as of Friday.

As always there are many reasons for going. “I think a lot of people come here for spiritual reasons,” said Gail Haley, an author and a first burner from North Carolina. Haley has studied the role of the Green Man in religion (often seen as a symbol of fertility and fecundity) and when she learned of this year Green Man theme, she couldn’t stay at home. But even for Haley, the festival is not without play. She and her man came to “have all the fun we can.”

You’ll be happy to know the festival’s absurdity is as vital as ever. Just drop in on Aaron Selverstan of San Francisco, who decided served “high tea” from his tent in the sandy wastes of northwest Nevada. A Victorian couch in beige stood next to a print of an English garden party. “We wanted to create a comfortable, stylish, sexy, relatively cool space where wandering people can some in,” said Selverstan, who goes by Guv’nor on the playa.

Welcome

The Monkees Draws Raves At Burning Man


Reprinted from the Mercury News:

The Monkees Draw Raves At Burning Man

By Mark Boslet
Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 4:05 pm in Burning Man, General.

The most talked about piece of art on the Playa this year is “The Monkees,” a sculpture formally called Homouroboros. It is simply awe inspiring to see at night. It has a strobe light and a merry-go-round of branches that spin in a circle. Once in motion, a posse of monkees seems to leap from branch to branch and a snake slithers down each curved limb.

Of course it is an illusion and a very convincing one. Each time The Monkees sculpture comes to life, the crowd roars with delight, and then the most altruistic of the viewers takes their turn on stationary bikes to generate enough electric juice to start the operate again.

Mark your calendards for 10 pm tonight. A wooden oil rig - a wooden sculpture standing about 40 feet high - is to burn. Expect the crowd to be large. Everybody it talking about it

Burning Man Takes Early Burn In Stride


Reprinted from the Mercury News:

Burning Man Festival Takes Early Burn In Stride

By Mark Boslet
Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 8:55 pm in Burning Man, General.

The unexpectec burning the “man” has done little to dampen the annual Burning Man festival here in Nevada.

True, the ceremonial combustion of the wooden effigy of the man is central feature of the week-long event that has drawn 41,000 people so far to the desert north of Reno. But some “burners” say the annual ritual - always held on Saturday - is an event for everyone to interpret in his or her own way. So the fact that it took place several days of ahead of schedule isn’t consuming much thought. It’s meaning on Tuesday isn’t much different than on Saturday.

Besides, the party must go on.

:I feel no less shattered by its loss on Tuesday than I would on Saturday, said Aaron Selverston of San Francisco.

Others said the premature burn offered the opportunity for a rebirth. (A restored man was erected on Thursday.) This year’s theme of the Green Man lends itself to that interpretation, said Bill Dimmick of Seattle. The man was destroyed and rebuilt in much the same way as the Green Man in ancient religions dies each winter and is reborn again in spring, said Dimmick.
“This week is our spring and summer,” said Dimmick. “We get to live a full and fruitful life for a week.”

In some cultures, the Green Man deity symbolizes fertility and fecundity. Perhaps he will again for a brief period in Nevada.