Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/08/the-playlist-of-the-2018-burni.html
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this is the best photo of the temple burn i’ve seen so far this year – of course it’s by John Curley. wow.
ever since the first temple burn in 2000, the temple has been my favorite thing on the playa, and my favorite big-fire burn every year. the man is a fun burn, everything’s just batshit crazy, but the temple… ooof. hard to describe. i love it for how it brings the entire community together to celebrate and mourn, i love it for the sound it makes as it burns (how many chances to you actually get in life to hear a building DIE?), and i find it also interesting to see how people deal with the general preference for quiet while it burns. the very first temple burn was ENTIRELY silent, and it was stunning. ever since then, it hasn’t been quite the same, but it’s still always profound to me. our culture isn’t good at silence, so it’s interesting to see how every few minutes, someone feels compelled to shout something, or the crowd just erupts into cheers or applause or howls or whatever. what struck me this year was that literally none of us would have been there if it wasn’t for Larry Harvey. it was amazing to look around and see how many people’s lives one man could change in the world in such a relatively short time.
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Bobzilla here, Co-Project Manager at BMIR. Several years ago I decided that what we were playing during the Temple burn on BMIR wasn’t really appropriate for the mood. People were coming back to the city from a solem event and we were playing, thump, thump, thump. To remedy the situation I reached out to the BM community via the JRS newsletter and asked for people who would be interested in being on the air durning the Temple burn and could play music that fit the event. Rocky was who I selected and he’s been DJing during the Temple burn ever since. As I was coming back fro the Temple on Sunday night I was listening to his set and I knew I had selected the right person.
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Good choice!!
For me, the burning of the temple was way more powerful than the burning of the man when I was there back in 2005. 50k people silent except for some crying.
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