Rosanne's Lounge

While eating breakfast Saturday, a woman named Kati wanders into the dome wearing nothing but a cream coloured silk scarf draped around her pale cream-coloured neck and carrying a pink parasol. She has pink ribbons in her hair and eyes tilted up like a pixie. She is a magnificent vision and I tell her so.

She sits down with us and another woman comes in, nut-dark bare breasts atop a pair of tight blue jeans and a crazy huge deep brown fur hat making her look like an Eskimo. She makes some comment about her breasts and suddenly we’re in the breast appreciation society. I say, as I often do, how I hate this culture women have of commenting only on the one bit of themselves they don’t like and envy in others rather than focusing on their beauty.

One by one, we end up around the group, baring our breasts and highlighting what we think is sexy about each other. Priya, a stunning goddess from Iran, thinks her magnificent large breasts are ugly and mammoth. Kati thinks hers are too tiny. It’s all ridiculous. We turn to the man in our midst and give him some loving too.

We leave everyone aglow.

We dub it the Breast Appreciation Society.

I got a ride on a weirdly tall bicycle up 2 to Intertidal. Someone gave me an ice-cold grape Otter Pop.

The swimming pool was gloriously cold, one of those child’s inflatable pools that was just large enough to sit in up to my neck. I was alone there for a while, and it was blissful. In the heat, I dried off almost immediately.

I got another ride back to The Man and walked across the playa to Media Mecca for another round of cocktails. Yet again, we were hit with a huge storm, this time so bad I had trouble breathing. News started to filter through that the storm had delayed the burning of Crude Awakening which was now scheduled for after the Man tomorrow night.

Dinner at camp. Went to bed early in the hammock strung up in the camp dome, but heard that Paul Oakenfeld would be playing at the Opulent Temple club on 2 o’clock and Esplanade sometime early in the morning, so around 1am, when I awoke with all the noise around me, I dressed and wandered out again. I jumped onto a passing art car and bizarrely, the hand reaching for me to help me up was Denis, who Doug and I met at Harbin a few weeks before.

We went off to the club and danced on the platform above the crowd. (Image cc courtesy of enpointe.)

Later I decided I was too tired and headed for home, only to discover all the wonderful people I’d met from Flaming Lotus Girls sitting around the Illumination Village fire. Ended up sitting next to them and getting fabulously drunk on red wine, tipping some down Mills’ cleavage when she wouldn’t stop singing “Tie Me Kangaroo Down” at me.

I even went out again in search of the mythical steam bath at Camp Carp, discovered it but no steam engine, wandered back and on my way ran into Dave and Alison from FireDrums. Had a wonderful talk with them, went home, chatted by the fire again until silly o’clock and watched the sun rise with

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. Slept.

On my way to a swimming pool

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had told me about at 2 and Intertidal, I saw that the queue for the “Talk to God” phone box was quite short. I picked up the phone.

“Hi God.”

“Hi. Before we start,” said the voice, “This is my male incarnation. As you know, I am male, female and all else, so if you’d prefer me to appear to you in some other incarnation?”

“No, thank you. As I plan to ask about a masculine person, your masculine persona is fine. I just wanted to check in with my partner. He’s been having a hard time of it recently and he’s camping somewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains on his own, recharging and doing exactly what he needs to do and I’m here with 40,000 strangers, recharging and doing exactly what I need to do, but I just want to know he’s okay.”

“Close your eyes, let’s do this together. Breathe in deeply. Remember that you are my divine child and that your partner is my divine child and so long as you breathe and know this you are always connected to each other through me.”

He went on for a while. I was crying. I knew he was some guy at some camp with a wire between us, but he was speaking a truth in some way, something I believe at least about all of us as humans being connected.

“Thank you,” I said. “I love you.”

“And I love you. More than you could possibly know.”

I hung up the phone.

Headed to Center Camp for espresso then tried to get over to the steam bath again but the line was enormous and by then it was getting on for midday.

I had interviews lined up with the crew from Mechabolic, which was an amazing project to build a 110-foot long machine that ate trash and fuelled itself. Its mouth was a woodchipper, its molars another, smaller woodchipper and a government paper shredder, its lungs an air intake array for its V8 engine. In its guts sat three gasifiers, turning waste into bio-diesel, and sending some of it to the V8 for motion, some to a Lister engine and to a generator for electric lights and some straight to metal flowers arrayed above it. Its bowels gently dusted charcoal onto planter boxes that also drank waste water. In the end, the monster only moved 69 feet, but it worked.

I absolutely loved the women who were working on it. You go, grrls!

One of the better pictures I found of this comes from Wired, of course. This is the day before…

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and I wandered off and had one of those magical Burning Man nights where you meander across the playa talking about mysticism and science, emergent consciousness and creativity.

We saw Swarm (I’d been looking for them for a few nights), four beautiful metallic robot spheres that changed color and emitted sound as they rolled around near each other, interacting with each other. The first one was amusing and off-putting: glowing pink, it murmured “I’m a bad girl” over and over as it crept closer to another sphere. Later, they appeared to be dancing with each other, singing deep Tibetan throat chanting in off-beat harmonies. Again, pictures coming as soon as someone posts decent ones. My photos turned out black.

We saw Crude Awakening, the enormous oil derrick with stairs all the way to the platform, worshipped by nine enormous figures crafted from recycled metals twisted into bodies, lifting burnt offerings in their hands, eyes blazing, unable to look upon their deed, having turned from worshipping the gods to worshipping oil. Stripped tree trunks stand abandoned nearby.

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says to me, “At first I hated the oil rig, but then I realized it’s the worshippers that are the problem.”

We go to the Temple and write on the walls. I write “I forgive my father” and I write something for Doug.

We wander across to the crazy monkeys and snakes swinging on the zoetrope tree, watch as it stills then as the cyclists start it rotating again, the monkeys appear to come alive, swinging from limb to limb as the snakes slither down towards them. (Awesome photo and description here)

At some point we decide to look for a chill space and I remember hearing about a place called Celestial Heavens or something like that, somewhere on 4 o’clock or 4.30. We find it but everyone has gone for the night and it’s dark. We head back to the 4.30 keyhole where we saw a place called Iron Rose and discover it playing reggae and we lie down and drink red wine and I dance occasionally.

After a while we head next door to the chai bar to have chai, discover they’ve run out and have mate instead, listen to a woman singing accompanied by someone’s beautifully played piano. We end up singing ourselves, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “the Rose” and many other tacky classics. As the sky began to lighten, we went back to camp.

Back to Media Mecca around 2.30 to make it to the media art tour. There was another insane dust storm, so they plied us with liquor until the storm passed and then a grand golden dragon named Abraxas pulled up outside the tent complete with warriors in Eastern-style armour.

We piled on and moved out into the playa, stopping periodically at huge installations of art, climbed onto them, clambered back onto the dragon, watched the warriors walk on their hands and do other stunts. Climbing up inside Big Rig Jig was kinda terrifying. Two semis bent and connected to each other one on top of the other, filled with a lounge and weirdness and a science lab. Hard to explain.

Back at Media Mecca, it was a ‘meet the artists’ drinkfest. I met one of the warriors, styling himself Predator, with coffee skin and long dreds and liquid green eyes. (Really want a photo of him in his Eastern armour… next to the dragon. Yum.)

Met Brad Templeton of EFF and chatted for a while.

Checked my e-mail on some guy’s laptop and found out that Dad was okay — he’d gone into hospital with a blocked artery the night before I left.

Met another guy,

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, and decided to wander around with him that evening.

(Photo of abraxas from someone on Tribe called theoneandrea… still looking for one that shows more detail from this year)

Signifier found out where the steam bath was, so I headed over there. Oh wow.

Inside a dome, they’d built a low wooden bench around the edges and the floor had wooden floorboards in a hexagonal pattern with gaps between. There was a keg of water that was boiling, making steam, and a sprayer to spray the hot, dusty playa off your skin. It dripped down between the gaps and into the grey water system beneath.

It was heavenly.

I went to media cocktails and we got hit by a windstorm. This one wasn’t too bad and it was nice to hang out at the media space and sip my bourbon and mango-passionfruit Rockstar energy drink (it actually tasted pretty good…)

Back to camp for dinner and a change of clothes. Went out to Spike’s Vampire Bar because I knew a couple of people from there. Getting gothed up on the playa is a weird experience but it was fun. They serve red wine from IV bags hung from a manikin wrapped in gauze. The music was heaps of fun and I ended up dancing around on the podium to a remix of New Order’s “True Faith” with some guy in a blue silk boxer’s gown.

Hung out with Doug’s friend Rodent (right) for a little while and got more goss on the Man burning on Monday.

Went searching for the Swarm. Didn’t find them.

Had an early night.

Spent the morning reading a book on Burning Man by

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’s friend Jess Bruder. It’s brilliant, one of the most comprehensive and coherent compendiums on Burning Man that I’ve seen, filled with photos of art and stickers and the detritus of the culture. Her interviews are superb, delicate and touching ones like the story of the first Temple and the burning of the Contessa, raucous ones like how the Tuna Guys got started and the woman who built the huge chandelier which gave viewers electric shocks.

At least, I think that was Wednesday.

Buy one. Seriously.

I head into Centre Camp for coffee with Karen from the Flaming Lotus Girls. There is a man there holding a sign. It says: I know something about you.

So we walk up to him and ask him.

“You think you’re normal,” he says to me. I laugh. Normal is about the last thing I think I am. “No,” he says. “You do. You think that everyone processes things the way you do and it isn’t true. You recover from things a lot faster than others — and people could benefit from those lessons. You could find work in charitable pursuits helping give people those keys to processing the way you do.” Or something along those lines.

It’s very interesting. “Resilient” is a word just about every psychologist I’ve ever been to has used about me. And I’m definitely looking at moving into non-profit work.

He’s intuitive, that’s for sure.

(Photo cc courtesy elainevdw)