2017 Art Theme: Radical Ritual

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

i have never been a big fan of religion. i like to think of myself as educated, and above the silly nonsense of spirituality.

like spock, but without the haircut and ears.

and now this...

how can i reconcile my annual pilgrimage for 20 years with my distaste for the church, the temple, the shrine and the altar.

how do i let go of my hatred of all the terrible things we as a species have done to each other under the guise of spiritual salvation?

how do i justify the utter ridiculousness of all the stories and myths i know to be metaphor and lies?

i trust the dust.

let me explain...



in every religion there is a force, an entity or entities that overlook or oversee or create our world and we are the product of that.

at burning man, we arrive to nothing but dust. it is our everything. it is our nothing.

and every time we breathe in that dust, we are breathing in the molecules of our ancestors.

we are the dust, we came from it, and we will return to it.....this you can be sure of.


not much else is certain.

all religions have their rituals and practices, and to outsiders, they may seem strange, even dangerous, since we tend to fear what we don't know.


we all worship different things in different ways, and you know what?

It's Fucking Awesome.

Burning Man is the Anti-Religion......We Mock and Snark as we Tolerate and Love.

make up silly rituals....WE LOVE IT...make fun of silly rituals...WE LOVE IT

it's ok to wear your magic underwear to center cafe, or your aluminum foil kippah to the Temple of your Choice.

its really the only place in the world where i feel comfortable in my own skin, and i get that feeling the first moment i smell the dust.

i suppose for some catholics, the smell of incense may flood them with memories of high mass at christmas, or for jews, the smell of chinese food on dec 25th, and buddhists get off on sage, so whatever floats your Viking Death Boat......

for me, i get "all the feels" from literally nothing.

walking out onto the tabula rasa, the emptiness, fills me with joy.

there i said it.

i'm get all moist when i hit dirt.

so, sue me.





now again, i ask myself, am i a religious man?

it appears i am, but i have chosen to not choose.

in the dust, we are all dusty........it's actually pretty simple.



the freak in me respects the freak in you. be nice. burn shit and blow stuff up, make art.


spread the word.

or tell people it sucks.

thats the great thing about this new Religion called Burning Man.

we get to make it up as we go along and admit it.

[TT120]

I will continue my ritual of drinking too much scotch. It's always worked for me in the past, I see no reason it won't work again.

[AntiM]

I am ritualistically jaded. Fuck.

[forty_eight]

fits well with plans for my fucking up couches ritual

[forty_eight]

sk8 kamp desitned to be extra radical

[Elliot]

Can you point us to further information?

I like the Theme plenty -- all kinds of potential. But using the word "Temple" for the Man Pavilion is surely an error? I hope, and halfway expect, this will be corrected soon.

I asked the question directly to a key person who builds the Man pavilion. I hope it's corrected and cleared up soon, but it was clear from my questions that there will be TWO installations as they have always been in the past.

Yes, yes.
One installation is The Man and his Man Pavilion, which burn Saturday.
An other installation is the Temple, which burns Sunday.
No worries there.

But to rename the Man Pavilion by the moniker of the Sunday-burn installation... is surely a misprint?
I trust we are not merely "hoping" this will be corrected, but that there is concrete and targeted action underway to correct this? Can we obtain confirmation of such corrective action in progress?

(I don't have time to bicycle to 660 Alabama Street with a printout of JRS; the error circled in red crayon.)

[Simon of the Playa]

i say we call it a Pagoda, and set up a noodle stand beneath the mans legs...




how about we name the man Abraham.



Then it will be Abe Pagoda...



my job is done here...

[Simon of the Playa]

The Day Burners STOP bitching about one aspect or another of the Project is the Day Everything Ends.




be thankful it still sucks.

[Patsh]

Nice to know the theme this early, but it may not help that much with designing a new copper pendant...
my mind is blank.

(not an unusual state of mind here.)

[AntiM]

Tabula rasa here too.

The top of the pagoda looks a lot like a penis, so dicks are on my mind. Other than that, I got nuttin'.

[Ratty]

A penis? Really? Larry must be an alien. "I see penis' everywhere".

[ecoita]

I'm just glad it wasn't Sublime Skyfall or something more ambiguously abstract.

At least it will give something for the media to talk about... " See, we have proof! They Do offer sacrifices!!!"

Anyway 267 days to go...

[Simon of the Playa]

[FlyingMonkey]

Not a fan of the Man in a box. Maybe there's symbology in that but I still don't like it visually. Perhaps the giant dildo on top is functional. Who knows?

I'll still enjoy watching it burn.

[Elliot]

That spire looks alien, as in outer space, Ratty? It looks a bit like me, actually, and I'm only from Norway.

I second "Pagoda". It alliterates with Pavilion, for continuity. And certainly looks like a pagoda to my eyes.

[remi]

I'm don't care much for the theme.. I don't really care, but I don hate the fact that the man will be in a pagoda. The last 3 man burns sucked. I was really hoping they'd go back to the skeleton man. Oh well.. I guess I'll just build my own and hold a competing man burn.

[Elliot]

All right... I think I have given it enough time for my mind to process. And re-read the announcement enough times. And decided. Specially about the enclosed Man, and about the appropriation of The Temple's concept for the Man Pavilion -- even describing it as a "temple".

So.... There is an old saying, which applies to these two items... "If you cannot say something nice...."

Oh... the THEME is all right. We will have fun with that. One of our campers is designing a "Man" to be built of bicycle frames, with movable arms like the real Man, and we will have arm-raising rituals at Noon when we open the Bicycle Service, and so on.

From the announcement:

"...we will disregard assertions of belief and concentrate instead on the immediate experience of play."

I'm in!

[some seeing eye]

Man Cave.

Few know the burn plan.

[Simon of the Playa]

burn your plan.

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[FlyingMonkey]

That spire looks alien, as in outer space, Ratty? It looks a bit like me, actually, and I'm only from Norway.

I second "Pagoda". It alliterates with Pavilion, for continuity. And certainly looks like a pagoda to my eyes.

You say "Alien" I hear "Probe".

[forty_eight]

The pagoda was a design requirement to host more VIP seating for the burn.

[forty_eight]

We need to get our little girl potty trained for the burn.

Radical Ritual, indeed!

[GreyCoyote]

Dear Larry;

Stop talking. Or writing. Instead, get back to drugs. Nurture your inner monkey. Take our money and STFU.

The theme is "Burn shit/blow shit up." There will be dust, and fire, and friends. So it is written. By the People. Forever. Amen.

Transmission ends....

[lucky420]

Dear Larry;

Stop talking. Or writing. Instead, get back to drugs. Nurture your inner monkey. Take our money and STFU.

The theme is "Burn shit/blow shit up." There will be dust, and fire, and friends. So it is written. By the People. Forever. Amen.

Transmission ends....

Well said

[Simon of the Playa]

[Paperman]

Ah Um... There is the same discussion/thread on the main BM web page. Just had 20 mins of panic attacks trying to believe that I dreamt the Larry had posted 3 responses.
Here we go again. Thought I lost my mind. I'll be looking for it on the playa. Yeh that's where I must have left it. The theme is fine and as good as any. And will get better as I work with it , for sure.

[Simon of the Playa]

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[FlyingMonkey]

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+100

[PlayaPatrol]

Radical Ritual is pretty much what BM is every year. They need a theme name for that?