What I did in August (and some of September) 2019

[squirmelia]

I made a mind controlled kaleidoscope.

I went to see the AI exhibition at the Barbican with Leeky and smelt the scent of an extinct plant and saw clouds scurry across my hands.

I ate ice-cream at Darlish and tried the mango and sumac ice-cream, and the pomegranate molasses and tarragon ice-cream.

I visited Harwich with my mum. I climbed the high lighthouse, wandered around tunnels at Beacon Hill Fort and walked on Dovercourt Beach.

I went to deathboy's birthday celebration at the Gunners.

My family came to visit and people played in my ballpit and we walked around Marble Hill Park and by the river, played in the playground and walked to York House gardens and into Twickenham.

The rest of the month was taken up by my trip to San Francisco and Black Rock City:

I visited pyrokaren in Oakland and fiddled with my mind controlled kaleidoscope and stared at doseybat's giant cabbage a lot.

I spent a day sightseeing in San Francisco and went to the ice-cream museum with Coffee Thistle and Tutti Kalutti. (My ice-cream name was Nitro Crisp.) We slid down a slide into the museum, avoided stepping onto the melting floor, learnt a bit about the history of ice-cream, jumped into a pool of sprinkles, made up an embarrassing story about wearing a bee costume and falling into a pool to get ice-cream, rode a unicorn, swung on a swing, made a bracelet, read about people's crushes, and ate various ice-cream. I learnt that the top 4 ice-cream consuming places are New Zealand, US, Australia and Finland. We searched for geocaches after that and ate espresso rubbed vegan burgers. A Knightscope robot moved around us. Apparently it's a security robot that patrols the area.

I then did an Ingress banner of the Golden Gate Bridge, which took me for a walk along the piers. I ate Secret Breakfast flavour ice-cream, made from bourbon and cornflake cookies. I ended up at Pier 39 saw the sea lions and got lost in Magowan's Infinite Mirror Maze. I took a boat trip that took me to the Golden Gate Bridge, which was, of course, foggy, and circled around Alcatraz. I saw dolphins! I then wandered back through Chinatown.

The next day, I took the Burner Express bus to Black Rock City!

These are some of the things I did at Burning Man:

When I arrived, I made a dust angel and rang the bell.

I swung under a cloud that glowed.

I jumped on a bouncy castle by the trash fence, with a naked man.

I got people to control a kaleidoscope with their minds! I set up my mind controlled kaleidoscope at Math Camp and it actually worked and people tried it! It did fall apart a bit, but I was surprised I managed to actually get it working there at all!

I was given a beautiful tiny kite from Weifang in Shandong, China.

I ate Thai Tea ice-cream at the Iceberg camp.

I did Rage Yoga with the Wastelanders. This involved some yoga to metal music, shouting “fuck you” and sticking up my middle finger.

I went to the opening party of the PlayaRPG: Be the hero you were meant to be at the Nightcrawlers camp, and got given the role of “Tech bro”. At first I thought it was a real augmented reality game, but then things didn't quite make sense and I realised it wasn't quite real, and the company and the game were made up.

I ate various kinds of snowcones. They were so good!

I made a necklace at Space Rock Jewelry Making at the Something Spacey camp.

I went to the Tiniest Camp and ate different kinds of yeast paste – marmite (Australian), vegemite and promite, and discussed yeast pastes, at the Yeast Paste World Championships. Still have yet to try Cenovis though.

I danced at a Goth Night at the Society for Temporal Preservation. This was difficult to find and I met some other people going and ran beside them as they cycled there.

I wore a purple tutu on Tutu Tuesday.

I listened to Cory Doctorow talk on Surveillance Capitalism Monopoly. It was an interesting talk and I was glad I went as a large reason I wanted to go to Burning Man was after I heard him read a passage from one of his books at Eastercon one year and thought it sounded amazing. He welled up talking about a departed friend and people shouted, “welcome home”.

One of my highlights was the New Tool Album Listening Party with Alex Grey. I cycled amongst a crowd following a giant gold dragon art car, and we cycled from the playa and then around the streets and then back to the playa, where the Abraxas Dragon parked, and then the new album was played. Alex Grey does art work and stage design for Tool and he stood on the Abraxas Dragon looking very happy and danced and smiled as the album was played. I danced in the desert then too, as the sun went down, and listened to the new album.

I visited deathboy and Kirstine at Shinetown and was fed pancakes, and played a game where you had to throw dicks at a board. I managed to actually get one on the board!

I camped with Math Camp and met some lovely people there. I ran the bar for a while one evening in the Sierpinski pyramid and gave people drinks and tried to give directions. I tried Ada Lovelace gin and ate candyfloss. I listened to various lectures on topics such as: Measuring Infinity, 3D printing, audio synthesizers, modelling the data for an art work that used death counts. I met people from other camps who came there for a drink and told me about their art works and their experiences. I ate pie at 3:14! I listened to mathematical tales being read.

I visited the Boeing 747 with doseybat and pyrokaren and danced briefly on the deck there.

I travelled back in time! I found the Time Machine MVP and got inside, and whoosh, time travel happened.

I climbed a ladder up into a cloud and looked out over the playa.

I wore a hard hat and wandered around a construction site themed art work with hoardings and warning posters, and climbed a ladder to view some art in the middle that had some graffiti and said “Banksy”.

I stared up at the sky and saw a sundog one evening. The sky often looked pretty, particularly around sunset.

I played a Sputnik shaped theremin and listened to the sounds out there in the desert.

I saw a snail art car and later realised it was the same one I had seen a decade earlier when I was last in San Francisco.

I went to a pirate party at the Temple of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I enjoyed seeing everyone's fabulous outfits. While I didn't wear anything too outrageous, I was glad I didn't have to care about whether my top was too low or my skirt too short.

Everything looked so pretty at night, glowing.

I felt free cycling across the playa, with the wind in my hair, and that felt great. I might even try cycling in London sometime as I really enjoyed the cycling in the end, despite being nervous about it to start with.

I spent time with doseybat and pyrokaren and they were great, lending me a bike, mattress to sleep on, giving me a lift back, introducing me to Math Camp etc! Thank you so much for everything! I had a wonderful time!

I enjoyed trying pyrokaren's bellyracer and zooming across the playa.

I got lost in a dust storm just after my bike got a puncture, and sat next to a metal flower sculpture for a while, until it cleared.

I was gifted a laminated card, which said “I am mind-blowing”.

I found an emergency ukelele on the playa and played “hello” as instructed, and then a person joined me and played a much more exciting song.

I ate blood orange cupcakes and they were delicious.

In one art work, I strummed strings with forks and knives and whatever was around, and afterwards was told it was made out of deconstructed pianos.

I found a telephone box and dialled the number and listened to messages people had left about who they missed.

I spent a lot of time in the sunshine! Only slightly burnt and suntanned, due to constant reapplication of sun cream.

I was hugged by many strangers.

I stood before a giant Maneki Neko (lucky cat) and there were a big pile of fortune cookies at the bottom so I took one and ate it. I can't remember my fortune exactly now, but it was something to do with art being important. It is.

I watched people from a nearby camp dancing with fire.

I visited a church made of gun parts.

I stumbled across Dorothy Gale's house! There were some signs it had been through a tornado, but it was mostly in tact. Toto's basket was still sitting there. I laid in her bed for a while.

In most of Black Rock City, you can't buy anything, but you can buy coffee at Centre Camp. One day I queued to buy coffee there and danced while waiting. My name was misheard as “Journey”, so perhaps that's my playa name now.

I visited the Temple and found it moving. I found myself starting to well up being there and reading the walls.

I saw some wonderful art cars! Cupcakes and Pacman ghosts and baths and beds and dragons and boats and elephants and fish and pineapples and robots with moustaches and so on.

I was chased by a washing machine! A washing machine was moving around after people outside one of the camps.

I mostly navigated my way back on the playa by a green inflatable elephant and some bright red lips that you could climb.

I looked at photos of people lying naked in the dust, forming an artwork and spoke to the artist there. I was tempted to join them, but lost track of time. The Human Harmony Gallery.

At one point I became a butterfly. There was an art work that let you stand in it and look out, with your body in the place of a butterfly's body, and the giant butterfly wings still there.

I watched the man burn and it was weird to think I had been under that structure earlier. Everything is temporary. The embers flew through the air and the sky looked pretty. There were fireworks and fire tornados.

I sat on the ground with members of Math Camp and watched the Temple burn.

On the way back, we stopped by the side of the road as pyrokaren's friends were having car troubles, and the stars looked amazing! I saw two shooting stars!

I read a booklet of dirty secrets and wrote down a secret to be burnt.

I climbed up steps and sat in an arm chair amongst branches and books and read books from a library that had somehow made their way out there.

I sat inside a fish sculpture, being shaded from the sun.

I read a board that said: “I was not ready for this change”, “And now I'm changed.”

I sat on a throne and wore a crown that said “Divine Feminine Warrior Goddess.”

I saw Cathenge, a henge made of cats!

I saw a giant robot arm made from Stop signs and other discarded metal.

I saw a glowing rainbow unicorn.

I walked by gold coins and mushrooms and piranha flowers and felt like I was in Super Mario.

I rode a carousel horse.

I stared up at doseybat's sky cabbage and used it to navigate my way back to the camp.

I visited a petrol station out there in the desert, but only later realised it was a game or interactive or some such.

I visited the Church of Bees and listened to the buzzing.

I'm sure there were many other things I saw and did too, out there in the desert, in Black Rock City, at Burning Man, but those are some memories I have for now. There were also many things I didn't get around to doing.

On the way back, pyrokaren, doseybat and I spent the night in Sparks, and then had a wander around Truckee and ate delicious Mexican food and rainbow sherbet ice-cream.

I stayed another night in San Francisco and then did an Ingress banner in Japantown and wandered amongst the Japanese style buildings and the shops and resisted buying kawaii Studio Ghibli stuff, and then went for a burger and doughnut and cold brew latte at Vegan Picnic. I then visited the Antique Vibrator Museum which was interesting, particularly some of the adverts they used to use. I was feeling sad that I didn't have time to visit the Pirate Supply Store this time, but then stumbled across King Carl's Emporium! I bought some unicorn polish and a keyring that says “key to an alternate reality” and opened up cupboards and looked inside, and bought a book of stories written by kids. I also bought a mushroom badge, which may indicate that I am a member of the semi-secret society of woodland creatures & ocean loving monsters.

Now back in London, where it seems grey and cold and trying to remember how the Default World works.

I spent some time at Burning Man worrying I wasn't doing it right – I didn't participate in any orgies or take any drugs or even party that hard most of the time and didn't really connect with people that much and felt a bit lonely, and instead spent a lot of time wandering by myself looking at art and exploring, but Leeky had some wise words for me and said it sounded just like a more intense version of the life I usually seem to lead, and yes, he was right, and actually, it being that is an excellent thing. I spend a lot of time in London trying to seek out the beautiful, the weird, the obscure, the things that make me marvel, and there it all was that, so much so, and that was what made it magical and wonderful for me.

Photos on Flickr: California (2009 and 2019) and photos of Burning Man 2019.

Comments

[braisedbywolves]

This sounds great - all the way through, I was thinking that it seemed a good way to supercharge your usual interests in doing and seeing new things, so I would generally agree with Leeky :) Have you considered any of the UK/EU 'burns'?

[squirmelia]

I think I might consider them now!

I was put off previously as I had heard they don't have the large scale artworks like Burning Man does.

[blue_mai]

Wonderful write-up.
Sounds pretty epic, and amazing, and that you were doing it right :)

[squirmelia]

Thank you! There was so much I didn't get around to seeing also!

The art installations leaflet lists 358 installations! And that's without installations in camps, etc!

[miss_newham]

Gosh, so much stuff, I had to read this twice! I'm glad you went and experienced a lot, and that the sky cabbage was a success too. Burning Man sounds exhausting and hard (my friend who went a few years ago really struggled with being in a desert!), but exploring and getting involved in all the art sounds like the right thing for you.