I'm back! — Lichtenbergianism

Last week I was at Emergence, the South Carolina burn, camping with the hippies. I didn’t get photos of all the art — some days you just didn’t feel like walking to the back corners of the burn to experience something called Robot Fart, you know? — but here’s what I found notable on my side of the burn.

Emergence is my “vacation burn,” in that we don’t take the labyrinth or GALAXY, just the craft cocktail bar. Likewise, it’s not a huge camp like when we go to Alchemy or To The Moon, fewer than ten (and not all of those were actual members of 3 Old Men). I got a lot of rest in over those five days. (Of course, packing up, loading, driving, unloading, etc., eradicates a lot of those quiet gains.)

Here is Astropoda, a giant macramé installation:

Apologies up front for not crediting the artist — nothing in the guidebook provided by the burn told us anything about who created what.

Here’s a closeup of one of the sections. The guidebook says that Astropoda “is a burnable piece of art with fire performers and a bit of theatrics, in three parts.” We never got to see that bit; since we were under a burn ban, none of burnable art burned.

Over by the lake, there was Drift 2:

Created from driftwood from local barrier islands, the bench provides a space for contemplation.

Up the road from Drift 2 was String Theory:

String theory, an art project at Emergence burn

Literally a giant string connected to two rotors and uplit with programmable lights, String Theory was endlessly fascinating.

Over from String Theory was a piece that was not listed in the guidebook:

At night, it became utterly magical:

The Wingéd Heart at night

All these pieces were clustered around the Temple. At most burns, there are two major structures erected by the organization: the Effigy and the Temple. We burn the Effigy on Saturday night with much hoopla; it’s a big raging party. We burn the Temple on Sunday night, and it’s a much more somber affair. People have written on the Temple, left mementos of loved ones, and generally have assigned the Temple the power of erasure, of letting go.

Here is the offering in front, before the opening ceremony:

The ceremony is very hippie woo, as one might expect. At the end of the ceremony, the celebrant invited us all to take a flower and toss it into the lake in memory of our ancestors. It was a moving experience.

Beneath the Temple was a small, round space reminiscent of a smoke bath.

I don’t have any good pictures of the interior; people were using the space and one doesn’t take photos of one’s fellow burners without permission and especially not in a place where people are making their own sacred rituals.

The front of the temple by night:

The Effigy was effusive this year:

You could enter it and climb up two or three levels. Somehow I never got around to exploring it fully.

The Effigy at night:

It looks like it would have burned quite brightly and fast. Oh well.

Elsewhere in the burn…

Why yes, that is Grubby, 3 Old Men’s beloved art car, most foully repurposed as an alligator to fit in with the camp Gator Bait. (Yes, the mouth opened and closed and was lit from inside.) The reprehensible man standing there is Grubby’s mastermind, one Duff, who used to be beloved in our camp before he went AWOL. (We had a brilliant time shunning poor Duff and imagining ways to shame him.)

And what was I doing to earn my place as a fully-engaged-in-PARTICIPATION hippie?

I led the Shakespeare encounter at Center Camp: I had 20 scrolls with monologues/scenes/sonnets, so volunteers would step up, roll a 20-sided die, and have five minutes to prepare the scene. It was great fun! (The t-shirt says “Think globally, act locally.” I’ll be wearing it at the Ultimate Shakespeare Death Smackdown in a few weeks. Go sign up.)

(I also served craft cocktails at 3 Old Men, so I wasn’t a complete waste.)

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