Of Poetry & Fire: Burning Man

[Gonzo Gardener]

“Gather round my friends
It’s time to tend the fire
Divine embers glow within
fueled by imagination, dance, and desire

Draw close and circle in
feel the energy surge
Each one but a fragment
we become whole when we merge” ~ Green Meanie

This first 'Of Poetry & Fire' thread is dedicated to Rising Phoenix. May it give you the inspiration that you seek!




Burning Man through the eyes of Photographer, Patrick Roddie: www.webbery.com
(I put this sampling of Patrick Roddie's Burning Man photos together for my desktop display.)



LA VIE BOHÉME — A History of Burning Man
~a lecture by Larry Harvey (founder of Burning Man)

The commodification of our culture, as representing a final phase of late 20th century capitalism, has only gradually become apparent, and even now the scale of its effects on our society are not well understood. Had I known this when I scanned that sea of television antennas many years ago, I would have realized that beneath each roof in every house, there existed people held in isolation from the world at large. Like those famous prisoners in Plato's cave, these internees are given only spectral shadows to experience. They stare steadily at entertaining images and by degrees mistake them for palpable things and real experience. Gnawed by an incessant appetite, a boundless hunger for spectacle and it's ambiguous promise of satisfaction, they endure this vicarious state from day to day, from year to year, now throughout entire lifetimes, in a state of isolation from the sunlit world and from one another.

Modern demographics have also affected the subtlety of this image making. It wasn't until the 1970s that I seem to have heard the word lifestyle being used. A lifestyle, with its panoply of status coded goods, is a commodified version of what we used to call a way of life. Marketers have learned to sort us into separate stalls like cattle in a feed lot. Using focus groups, it's endlessly possible to invent new and appealing lifestyles which give us the illusion we are making lifestyle statements and are members of imaginary peer groups. That these fashions require no participation in the life of a community is not the concern of the merchant. We have become a nation of posers. It's not a life that's lived or shared, but an imitation of life, a kind of commercial for self. It's as if we ourselves are now TVs and broadcast images. Politicians are purveyed to us by means of focus groups and polls, and in our political and social life, the personal and private realm, the specific realm of consumption, is displacing the public world altogether. Neighborhoods that once formed public meeting grounds and centers of community are now engulfed by sprawl, and in reaction we take refuge in the security of gated communities. Our entire public environment, in fact, is being redesigned for the sole purpose of facilitating anonymous acts of consumption. Multiplexes and mega-malls now stud the urban landscape, and commercial advertising proliferates like a virus. It pervades and fills every gap and leisure moment of our lives. It speaks to us from the sides of buses and in classrooms. It is inserted into movies and it dances at the corners of computer screens. "What will you do next?", we ask our heroes in their shining moments of glory, and they tell us, "I'm going to Disneyland."

America is now wealthier than at any other time in its history, yet all around us and within us a feeling of lurking anomie persists. Like that scratchy sensation at the back of your throat, that shudder down your spine when you feel the flu coming on, and symptoms of this deep unease pervade our society. The spread of materialistic values has contributed to a moral coarsening and a growing cynicism in our country. Within a manipulative world all motives seem venal, all efforts illusory. But at a deeper level, it is the commodifying of imagination itself, the moral passivity, the social isolation, the angst that is generated by living in a solipsistic world of fraudulent satisfactions that is producing the greatest evil.

We're suffering the symptoms of narcissistic injury. The vital here and there of spiritual experience is disappearing from our world. It's dissolving into vicarious spectacle. The world, in some nauseating fashion, no longer appears to belong to itself.

We need some deep and drastic therapy to break this spell. We need to reestablish contact with our inner selves. We need to reinvent a public world. We need immediate connection to the natural world of vital need. And this is where my work and the experiment called Burning Man comes in."

more... http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/lectures/la_...


2008 (BURNING MAN) ART THEME: AMERICAN DREAM

And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.
– William Shakespeare, As You Like It

This year's art theme is about nationality, identity and the nature of patriotism. One species of the patriotic urge conflates the nation state with mass identity. Governments, as actors on a worldwide stage, become a surrogate for self, a vast projection of collective ego. And yet, there is another type of patriotic feeling that attaches us to place and people, to a home and its culture. Both these feeling states (and their attendant ironies) are relevant to this year's theme.

In 2008, leave narrow and exclusive ideologies at home; forget the blue states and the red; let parties, factions and divisive issues fall away, and carefully consider your immediate experience. What has America achieved that you admire? What has it done or failed to do that fills you with dismay? What is laudatory? What is ludicrous? Put blame aside, let humor thrive, and dare to contemplate a larger question: What can America, this stumbling, roused, half-conscious giant, still contribute to the world?

Anyone embarking on this path will encounter hundreds of fellow participants – many of whom come to Black Rock City from around the world. Indeed, in order to discover the flag of any particular county amid this welter of imagery, it will be necessary to inspect the flags of many other nations. Each of these may be imagined as a dream no less radiant or precious than the rest. Each country is a source of culture and identity; yet each may also be regarded as a glimmering illusion: a sovereign artifact, an arbitrary puzzle piece, an isolated fragment on a map.

Today, Americans appear to live amid the tarnished squalor of a second Gilded Age. By nearly every measure, America has become a more unequal society. A mere one percent of the population now controls a third of the nation's wealth. Education, health care and home ownership – these now escape the reach of those who thought they were the middle class. Forty years of heedless mass-consumption have turned dreams into delusions. America's awash in debt. Embroiled in a wayward war, its citizens are told to shop.

Many feel that the United States is now adrift. Its allies, once so numerous, begin to fall away and chart an independent course. Its citizens, more tellingly, have lost their faith in progress. Polls indicate they now believe their children can't expect a better future. They distrust the institutions of government, of finance, and the corrupting power of large corporations. And yet, the native traits of any culture are deep-rooted. Freedom, opportunity, inventiveness, the power to transform oneself: these values and a love of self-expression still endure.

more... http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/bm08_theme....

[Breeze54]

1. Perfect!

When is the next "Burning Man" gathering?

Thank You for posting this. :applause: :applause:

:kick: & Recommended

[Gonzo Gardener]

3. August 25 - September 1, 2008

:hi:

How are you doing? :pals:

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. K and R

For real.

[Gonzo Gardener]

4. Thanks, Tuesday Afternoon!

When I see you screen name my inner voice
sings, "Toooooooosday Aaaf ter noo oon!!!" (Moody Blues style) :crazy:

:hi:

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. as well it should --

That is where I got it ;)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. My dear Green Meanie!

Bad poetry? I don't think so!

It's very short, but full of emotion and meaning...

I wish I'd written it...

Thank you for posting it...

:yourock:

[Gonzo Gardener]

7. Thanks Peggy!

You might enjoy checking out the www.webbery.com link. Patrick is a very talented photographer.

Have you thought of putting together a book combining your poetry & photos?

BTW, I was joking about my inbox being eliminated. ;)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. I know you were kidding about your inbox, silly!

I have thought about combining the two ...

Maybe, someday, if I get lucky...

:hug:

[Gonzo Gardener]

9. .

[Gonzo Gardener]

10. last hurrah...