Love letter to a city during a broken year.

(Written during the Temple Burn 2018)

—

You barely existed for me this year. One day I walked into a meeting and you bunch of techbros and bucketlisters and sparkleponies were waiting in a dust storm to get into your festival and the next day I walked out and you were doing your burn-it-to-the-ground-thing. And before it began I knew some of you were out there wondering why the fuck do you do this thing? Why pour and pour resources into this thing that barely exists?

(I had fond memories, of course, of being out there doing my thing. It’s always good when you can do your thing and it works with everyone else’s thing. It’s a good thing to know your thing. What’s your thing? Do you even know? (It was a long time ago after all) )

Hard choice. Hard choice not to go. Hard choice to go. Hard choice to put the tab on your tongue again. Hard choice to carry water to a lake that has been dry for 12,000 years. Hard choice to accept that your parents die. Hard choice to accept that they don’t. Hard choice to accept that your children outknow you. Hard choice to accept how very much is lost in translation. Hard fucking choice to believe in a thing that barely exists. That barely even exists, hanging on by some sheer force of sacred will and fuck your burn, some sort of gleeful masochism under the sun that howls at dead gods and says you can’t tell me it’s not possible if I do it. Your stupid ass beautiful tower built higher and higher just so you can climb on top of it.

(And how you laughed and laughed the moment you realized it was all a choice, every bit of it, and how none of it was, every choice the result of a choice made before you could make choices. And how light the choices were, glowing choices folded into the shape of cranes launched into the air for the sheer joy of the flight. You became the choice, and the choice made itself.)

And then I saw you out there at sunset. On a TV screen. (On a TV screen! Can you believe it came through? Technology isn’t quite magic, but it sure can get close.) And I saw the way that the sun baking the stench of your dreams off your skin shimmers into the sky and explodes into 1000 shades of orange. The colors reeked of your dreams and I tried to translate them but all I could do was marvel at how smell can take you somewhere you forgot that you forgot. How could you ever forget that you forgot?

God, how long had you been out there anyway? How long had you been gathering yourself around fires at night with your people? How long had you known who you were anyway? Had you known it all along? How long had you been remembering how amazing it is to drink the water that you carried into the desert? Had you forgotten how thirsty you were because you forgot that you were carrying the water? Have you been there forever? No really, I’m asking now through the TV screen, have you been there forever? Do you remember? Can you remind me of anything I forgot that I forgot? Why do you do this anyway? Why does water taste good when you are thirsty? Is it a choice?

Night fell finally (you were in a different timezone after all) and all your generators started humming with absurdity. Why the fuck do we do this? Because we can. Because we must. Because we are trying to remember who is making the choice and what the stakes actually are. When you play for these stakes, when you sit at a table with a bunch of scoundrels and whores and where a single night can hum electric across your skin and mark a before and after, do you really want to play for any others? What else can you bargain with other than your very life if you want to go up against the old gods and prove that you are their equal and that you have outgrown them? Haven’t you always wanted to bet it all on Black Rock City and laugh at the people that think it’s a foolish gamble and prove them wrong?

It was so hard to translate. The way things shimmered and hummed with absurdity. How hard you laughed. How much it hurt. It’s so terrible to have to explain a joke. Some of you hated how much was lost in translation, some of you howled at all the shades of orange. Why would you try to translate a color anyway? Just look at the sky explode every night like it has always done out here, look at the stars shining on your bones and bearing their silent witness to so much knowing.

12,000 years ago this barren city that barely exists was under 500 feet of water. You couldn’t even dive to the bottom. How much knowing can you hold in your bones? How much seeing can one lifetime contain? (A lot, if you’re up for it). Did you carry in the water, or did the water carry you in? Maybe you floated here on a raft that your enemies built for you. Did you choose them too?

There are mammoth bones here, massive lumbering beasts that hung out at this lake. Do you see how their choices led you here? Can you hold that knowing in your bones so that when we scatter your ashes they will glow in the desert? Do you trust me that when we scatter your ashes we will build you a temple that glows in the desert? Do you hear me that we see that you are glowing beautiful choice and we whisper our gratitude for the water you have carried, for all the ways you’ve tried to be good? And all the ways you’ve failed? And all the ways you’ve failed. Thank you for the knowing you could hold in your bones. I know it was heavy. So much water, to grow dreams in this place.

Only whispering translations then. Only the distant hum of absurdity this year then. Only the way things shimmer at the edges of your vision and only seem real when you can’t quite pull them into focus then. Only this clumsy attempt at translation then, my clumsy temple burning with the ashes of your dreams then thanking you for remembering what I forgot.