Many people bring journals to burning man to record their experience.  I brought a little handheld tape recorder with a built in microphone.  And, like many people whose experiences I've read on the web about burningman, I found that I was too busy interacting with people to sit and reflect, and my tape recorder fell into disuse in my satchel by the second day.  But then I had an idea.

Some time around wednesday, I made up a sign on a piece of cardboard that I wore around my neck saying "Say Something Interesting".  I was trying to get people to tell me something--anything--that would make for interesting reading here on this page, and would give people an idea of the kinds of minds and spirits they can find at the Burning Man festival.

The first thing I learned was that people have a really hard time being interesting when they are put on the spot like that, and that in itself was pretty interesting to me.  But there are definitely some interesting comments on my tapes.  I had thought I got four or five hours, but now that I'm going through the tapes, it looks like it's maybe two hours tops.

I tried to get photos of everybody who made a statement, but since I was pretty drunk about half the time (or more) that I was doing this, I didn't always remember to pull out the camera.  There's stuff going on all around you in this psychedelic city, and unlike out here in the "normal" world, everybody who goes to burningman goes to do something--something they want to do.  So you're constantly surrounded by activity, and it's difficult to pay attention to any one thing.  So... I'm sorry, but I didn't get photos of all of you!  Still, there will be photos here as soon as I get the film (8 rolls of 24 exp.) developed.

For now, I'm just going to start typing up the comments.  Right now, I'm just going to put them all on this page, so it'll be really long.  Later, maybe I'll organize everything by name and photo... we'll see.

So basically, this was the deal:  people see this sign that says "Say something interesting" and you can sort of see a little light go on in the eyes of the people who dig the idea, and I'd walk up and let them read the sign and say if you don't have anything now, catch me later.  If somebody had something to say, I'd do my little spiel:  "Say your name, first name is fine, and then your hometown or where you came from and make your statement."

While you're here, take a  look at my other pages.  If you're interested in Burning Man, you may be interested in some of the other things I'm interested in, for example, the Dreamland project.  Also, I have more stuff on Burningman, including my plans for next year on my Burning Man page.

Here's what I got on tape:

Grand ideas executed poorly are far less impressive than simple ideas executed well.  A good example of this is the horse on the playa last year:  basically, a sequence of running images of a horse, illuminated, mounted on a bike, and it was done perfectly well.  Everyone I've talked to that's seen it last year, saw it and was totally impressed by it.  Simple idea executed very well.

(Note:  the following conversation is about the big ring of red lights buried in the ground around the Man that showed the cool patterns.  The lights could be easily seen from very far away.  To me, it looked like a big, flat UFO had landed on the desert.)

About the 2,000 lights around the man, every one of those is individually controllable.  So, for every ten lights, there's one controller board, basically a programmable interrupt controller (PIC), a tiny little computer, and those are all buried, the wiring harnesses are all buried...

ME:  now, do you have circuitry at each light with an address?... or do you have a bunch of wires addressing them or...?

Well, we have, basically... there are 200 computers to do 2000 lights, and they're all attached bit-serially, so they have basically a very simple networking protocol, a very simple serial protocol... you grab a packet off the incoming serial line, and if it's your address, you take action based on what's in it, and if not, you pass it on... and just using that very simple technique, we can do all kinds of cool patterns...

ME:  what chip are you using for the computer?

...the master computer is a Z80...

ME: great chip!

...yeah... the conceptual artist, the master designer is Tim Black, also known as the Wizard.  He worked last year on the Nebulous Entity, he worked on the Alien Abduction Chamber, or the near vicinity abduction chamber?  in any case, he's the man as far as all the engineering goes... and then we had a core group of builders, about ten of us, that put in, you know, gobs and gobs of hours, and we're trying to gather some statistics to give people an idea of how much work this is... I think we counted fifty thousand solder joints... on the circuit boards alone...

ME: you guys shoulda contracted that out...

...well, we had the boards made, um, we had that contracted out to actually make the boards, but ah, it was pretty much, you know, a volunteer effort, on ah... one guy did pretty much about 80% of the boards...

ME: wow!  what's the controller on the boards?

ah, I'm not sure the kinda PIC that's on there, but I do know that we're using 126 out of 128 bytes of RAM... so it's basically packed tight to capacity, and it's all controlled by the master controller that's in center camp, so it actually shoots out 2000 feet onto the playa to the ring around the man, and ah, in the lounge, which we're getting ready for tonight, this is Thursday, it's been up and running but it's not really been ready for the public yet, we're gonna open it up tonight, and there's 2000 LEDs and 2000 buttons...

ME:  WOW!

...and in addition to the patterns that we're running, you can sit there and play with the buttons and have the lights light up, and whatever happens in the lounge, whatever you're seeing in the lounge is what's happening out on the ring.  So we already cut windows, in addition, in the lounge, so you can see, you can actually see all the way out on the playa, and the REALLY cool thing is, not only can you see the front edge of the ring, 2000 feet away, you can see the back edge of the ring as well, which is 2500 feet away, cause the ring is 500 feet in diameter so...

(TJ's recording got partially taped over at this point...)

...and other people are jumping up whenever the light went by, so that's been really nice.  So it's been an incredible amount of work, it took us three days to do the install, from sunday through tuesday, but it's just more satisfaction than I can possibly express.

ME:  Now, are the lights controlled with Z80 assembly, or do you have a meta-language, or...?

We have a meta-language that was also created by Tim Black, he basically wrote sort of his own mini-OS, mini-language, all hand coded in assembly... I know he's got some macros set up, he's got some primitives to do some very basic things, so you can play with those, play with parameters and stuff if you know how to control it, so people from L2K camp will be sittin' around in the lounge messin' with people's minds, that's the other fun thing we can do.

ME:  Yeah that's fun!  So where is L2K camp?

L2K camp is at the esplanade and center camp.

ME:  What's "esplanade"?

esplanade is the road that goes straight out to the man, straight out at six o'clock.

and what i'm talking about, for instance at the simplest level, say you have two ripples in a pond, OK?  and the points of each of the ripples, the crests, where the crests meet?  they will themselves seem to behave like an object moving through space, right?  and remaining consistent.  you know, like normal massive objects move through space consistently.  electrons don't behave this way.  they seem to jump around.  right?  now as you make a more complex ripple pattern, what you will seem to see in the water are little objects that sort of, you know, pop down, pop up, appear, disappear, and if you have a complex enough ripple pattern, you'll generate chaos, and you'll seem to have a non-deterministic event where the overall number of seeming "objects" actually remains consistent.  right?  and so my suggestion is that what electrons and subatomic particles are, are the results of diffraction patterns from events coming from other dimensions, or other periods in time.  thank you very much.

(Then Erin and his banjo playing friend played a very charming song for me.)

Zephyr,SantaCruz,California.So this is my second year at burningman, and I'm camping with one of the same people that I was with last year, and another one who I'm kinda friends with, and I just don't really know him too well, and I just got back from this mad journey across the country, where I went and worked at this um, summer camp for gifted and talented youth, for the University in Baltimore, and a lotta like, kinda pretentious, um, precocious kids... some dumbshits as well, you know, as is to be expected, and I drove across the country after buying a car in Baltimore, and this is, I'm nineteen years old, so this was my first road trip, so I get home and come out to Burningman, and I  have all these things that are going on in my head after  travelling across the whole country, and then coming out to this place which is just, I have no words to describe burningman... and feeling like I don't... am not able to put that experience into words at all, but really want to and so I've been walking around just trying to put some of what I experienced into at least a coherent thought... and I'm not really trying to pass it on yet, because I don't think that's really possible, but I  feel like I'm on the lookout for kind of like minds to actually talk about things with.

So I think, the first year, they had two of 'em, and people were really into the idea... it was pretty small but it was definitely cool in everyone's eyes, they were into it.  Ah, I think this is the third or fourth year?  This year, I came down from SF and I ran into Brandon, who really is, he's the guy really coordinating the Ataris, at least the TVs and the structure and everything, since he's closest to the event, and uh, he spent about a thousand dollars putting this all together of his own money, so we all kinda helped him with that...

(here the tape got screwed up, so I missed a few sentences--rdh)

...so far we've got a couple people brought game carts out already, so we kinda put 'em together, um... this is really the first night we're open, so I don't really have any witty anecdotes to share yet...

ME: what's a merkin?

Kybor:  a merkin is decorative genitalia coverage

Princess:  Rick!  no! you can't explain it!  you have to just look... merkin...

Kybor:  it's a muff cover!

ME: and your name?

Kybor:  Kybor, Dranoville, from Schlema, it's in Europe, it's in far eastern europe, middle-eastern, well it's, it was East Germany.  The merkin is a decorative thing, kinda like a chastity belt, but it's not an all-exclusive thing, it's an inclusive thing... it's a dress-up kit instead of a lock-up kit.

Delphina, I'm from Colorado Springs, and I like to masturbate to  opera, especially La Boheme... try 14 on the first disc.

ME: why do you say that?

...so we all sneak away... because!  you have to wear clothes, you can't smoke weed, I mean there's all these laws imposed upon us, and here it's just a free community of everyone getting along and helping and respecting and singing and laughing, and those are the signs of a community.

ME:  why is that a good thing?

...because it means happiness.  and sadness is a... derogatory, a negative, and bad things happen, obviously if someone's, you know, on a negative side?  it's not positive so it can't be good.

ME:  would you like to see this out in the real world?

yes.  yes, absolutely.

ME:  how do you think you could bring this about in the real world?

mmmm.... I do in my day-to-day living, in my community that I live... with my friends and my family, we live like this.

ME:  what would you do to bring this about?

for myself?  i cook at home, i have friends over all the time, and we... smoke really great grass, and eat really great food and have great conversations, and love and live and walk and laugh and sing and dance...

ME:  for what purpose?

To... there doesn't need to be a purpose for that, that's my whole purpose in life so...

ME:  to... just experience...?

yeah, and it all contributes to a greater goal I think and one of them--either for myself, or someone else, you know...

ME: why is that important?

that's... because I feel it is, and that's my belief... and what anybody else thinks is not important...

ME: that's cool, that's OK.  but I mean you must have some history, or something, that makes you want to do this...

uh, no, no, it's just that, ah...

ME:  I mean, is it beauty?  Is it creativity?  Is it to fuck with people?  What is it?

Well, all of that.  It's all there, and I want to, you know... learn a little bit more, or see a little bit more, what other people are doing, see if there's any similiarities, any contact... particularly as I'm from far away, you know?  I don't really know... what the people are like in different parts.  And I'm pretty much under the assumption that most people are a lot alike in a lot of ways, and individuals in their own way... everywhere you go.

ME:  what makes you say that?

Having gotten stuck in jail in solitary confinement for 74 days, and have a lawyer do nothin' but shake his asshole at me, and have him tell me it doesn't make any difference whether you're guilty or not, just plea no contest anyway, and then have the state bar association say, "oh well it's perfectly OK, he didn't do anything wrong"

(Bob's comments will be listed in detail on my Kill the Drug War pages.  check later)

...this is sign language for "girl", "boy" and "kissing".  I'm Cynthia and Libby has three big brothers, who have taken her to lots of scary movies all her life, so now she's decided that she likes "chick flicks"!  girl-boy kissies.  ha ha!  She came here last year too, she had a ball... so, she loves it!