[All pho­tos by Mr. Night­shade unless oth­er­wise noted]

I imag­ine I will still be reel­ing from my week in the desert for some time, so please for­give me if my brain is still some­where in Nevada for a few days.
Burn­ing Man held many, many mag­i­cal moments for me, but here are some of the highlights:

+ Tak­ing over the man

My friend Slim orches­trated this amaz­ing act of tom­fool­ery where the sec­ond floor of the man tower was turned into a dance party for an evening. There was a vel­vet rope, a bouncer, and a list. I could try to explain it, but my lovely friend Matt from current.tv cov­ered the event and put this ter­rific lit­tle video together that does a much bet­ter job of explain­ing what it was like:

+ Singing Bar­ber atop Babylon

If you’ve been my friend for a long time, you might know that I used to be a vocal major & I sang quite a bit of opera.
It was then that I became famil­iar with Samuel Bar­ber, who is prob­a­bly best known for writ­ing Ada­gio for Strings, which is often ref­er­enced as the sad­dest song in the world.
I how­ever, am rather par­tial to “The Desire for Her­mitage”, which was writ­ten by a monk and found in the mar­gins of an illu­mi­nated bible, then later set to music by Barber. 

I sang this song atop Baby­lon, a 100ft high tower out on the deep playa, at 3am.

It was one of the most mov­ing expe­ri­ences of the entire trip.

To get a bet­ter idea of what it was like, check out this record­ing of Cheryl Studer singing it…

It looked like this:

+ The Diner Incident

This event shall not be described beyond say­ing that I laughed until I cried for hours. It involved doing shots of sugar, and epic mis­chief. The only other thing I can pro­vide is some pho­to­graphic evidence:

+ Work­ing at Cen­ter Camp Café

Any­where I can serve peo­ple lattes wear­ing a clown nose gets a thumbs up in my book. Also: dance breaks. 

[Photo by Matt Scott]

+ Meet­ing Susan Buice

The lovely lady behind Four Eyed Mon­sters. It’s always nice to shake the hands of folks bring­ing great art into the world.

+ Hang­ing out with Kai

Reunit­ing with old friends is a joy­ous thing indeed.

+ Danc­ing in the dust storm

Dur­ing one of sev­eral total white­out dust storms, I did a mod­ern dance improv piece at cen­ter camp.
We were at about 5 foot vis­i­bil­ity at the time, so only peo­ple who were very, very close could see me.
I rolled around in my red & black kimono, got dirt­ier than I’ve ever been in my life, and inhaled the dust as I danced until my lungs were raw.
I felt so at peace in that moment…alone inside my mov­ing body, work­ing both with and against the ele­ments at the same time…
On the brink of com­plete exhaus­tion, sur­rounded by peo­ple but still some­how com­pletely alone in all that white…
It’s a feel­ing I can’t prop­erly describe.

Much like Burn­ing man in general.

I’ll have another BM update with video when­ever I have time to edit it down.
Tell me about your week!