Sweetthang is the person who draws the lines in the sand

Take your plans and make them real.

For a lot of Burners, it’s a yearlong task. You plot and plan and meet and talk. You have an idea for an art car, and you wrestle with the logistics and the money and the know-how, and sometimes it comes out great and sometimes … well, it’ll be better next year. It’s an evolutionary thing. Same thing with art projects. Oh yeah, it was all going to fit together just fine. Except it didn’t. And then you had to adjust.

It’s like that for a lot of people in the Burning Man organization, too. A lot like that. And no one knows  it better than Sweetthang.

It’s Sweetthang’s job to translate the map of the playa, and the flags on the ground, into actual camp layouts. She has to adjudicate border disputes. She has to confirm (or deny!) where your theme camp begins and ends.

The task  has to be daunting. You know how hard it is to make what appears on your planning sheets actually show up in the desert dust. No, the DJ booth goes over HERE.  And it faces THAT WAY, not like this. And the sun showers go BEHIND the recycle stuff, not in front of them! Sheesh!

Ok, now exponentially increase the complexity of the undertaking. Imagine trying to figure out where it ALL goes, what ALL those flags in the ground are supposed to mean. Oh, the electrical wires are buried here? The spider box goes over there? Oh, then we can’t have the Airstream park like that. It’s got to go over here.

You get the idea.  40,000 people showing up with there own ideas about how it’s all supposed to come together, about where they’re going to set up, but the map says no. And you’re the person who has to figure it out. That’s Sweetthang.

Of course, things happen. Adjustments must be made. Because really, one of the best things about having a plan is changing it.

So the question is this: How’d you do? Did it all come together the way you thought it would? What did you learn this year that’s going to come in handy next year? Tips and tricks for playa preparation are most welcome …

It was the day before the  gates would open, and all through the city, people were getting ready for the new arrivals. It was another day of this and that, and last-minute details. Who do we have to run out the Yellow Bikes? Who’s going to test the systems over at Arctica? Oh, and who is going to lay out the “you are here” signs at the major plazas? That would be us. So off we went, around and about, talking to people along the way, on the day before the event began.

That's just plain Mike in front of the solar panel at Snow Koan village, which provides 25kw of power to the Black Rock City grid, enough to power four camps, including Nectar Village and Comfort and Joy out near E and 8. Surprisingly enough, Mike is a solar operations manager for Energy Efficiency Solar in the default world, and here he is doing his thing on the playa. Stop by in the afternoon, and they'll charge your iPod and give you a snowcone, too.

Three days before the event begins, I am most pleased to report to you that this year’s ART is sprouting up like playa fire flowers all around our beloved Black Rock City. Everywhere one hears the sounds of drills and hammers, grinders and heavy equipment and the white hot crackle of acetylene torches at night beneath huge floodlights. The communal unloading, lifting and erecting is moving forward full force. Some many crews of artists haven’t stopped working since they hit the playa.

In a post apocalyptic world, there is a difference between surviving and surviving in style. In our desolate lake bed, we are surviving very much in style.

I was able to pull myself away from the alternating working and cocktail parties to take a stroll around and visit with the artists and take in some of this year’s installations.

The Man on his Tangled Bank

The Man is atop a Tangled Bank this year. A forest of nailed wooden organic shapes surround him and create a space we haven’t ever seen in the Man base. The trees, or flames, or crystals, or dancers or whatever they look like to you suggest a small homage to the Belgian Waffle of years past. Whatever it is, I like it and true to the theme, it’s definitely a fresh evolution of the Man’s surroundings.

Currently the lighting, including a double helix that winds around the Man pole, and other Evolutionary Mud bug sculptures are being installed below.

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The Man stands tall in the heat and the dust, even as work continues around him

Maybe we have time today for a personal anecdote.

There are only a couple of days before it all changes here in Black Rock City. There’s a poignancy in the air, because one thing is just about finished, even as something much bigger is about to begin.

And so maybe people are a little thoughtful today. It’s been a long month. The work that began so amazingly on the 10th with the fence is coming to an end. It has to, because the event is about to start. The guests will arrive, whether it’s all ready or not. But it feels  ready.

And it has brought me back to a night 40 years ago, to a Friday night in August that I’ll never forget. My family used to spend time during the summer in upstate New York. We’d be up “at the lake” as we called it, a sleepy little area just outside of Brewster, New York. And on that Friday night in August, something very different was happening in the quiet little town.

There were vans and bells and hippies and tie-dye and ribbons and guitars and music, so much music. And thousands … THOUSANDS … of young people caravaning through the streets, stopping to buy ice cream and soda and other stuff. I’d never seen anything like it, and I had no idea what was happening.

What was happening was Woodstock.

A third level has been added to the Temple, where the pace was furious

Brewster was on the way to Woodstock, and the town was crawling with long-haired hippy guys and girls on their way to see Hendrix and Janis and the Doors and Joe Cocker and all the rest.  I hadn’t known about any of it, but all of a sudden it was right in front of me.

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