I built another one. I burned it too.

You may recall that back on Sep 5 I participated in Burning Man’s World Burn with my own mini-effigy burn. This past weekend was the original date set for Alchemy, the Georgia burn — we canceled it back in the spring — and so Sat would have been our Burn Night.

The mini-effigy for Sep 5

Needless to say, I built another effigy, burning it last night since it rained heavily on Sat night. [N.B.: at the actual burn, the effigy burn would have gone on regardless of the weather, but 1) I am not our pyro team; and 2) only one of my guests was an actual burner. Real people don’t stand in the rain to watch kindling burn.)

I started with the base, documenting every step this time since it looks as if I will be called upon to do this several more times.

Last time I built the whole effigy on Saturday because I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like. This time, I had no solid design ideas, so I started earlier in the week to make sure I had plenty of time for ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS and SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION.

The only inspiration I was working from was the Alchemy logo, a riff on the Burning Man silhouette while incorporating the alchemical symbols for the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water.

So I just started building triangles.

Lots and lots of triangles.

My favorite moment was when I became frustrated with constantly having to switch between drill bits and the screwdriver bit and wished I had two drills so I wouldn’t have to do that. Eventually I remembered I do have two drills: my current spiffy modern one, and my old heavy-duty corded drill still stored in the basement.

I got the basic idea built:

But what to do with all the other triangles? I looked at attaching them on the sides, dangling them from projections, but nothing GESTALTED quite right. One of my concerns was that the thing was already tall enough to fall over mid-burn and create a mess if not a hazard, so I didn’t want to make it too wide or top-heavy.

Eventually my TASK AVOIDANCE paid off: stack the triangles under the structure itself. That gave it both visual and flammable mass:

Meanwhile, my Lovely First Wife suggested that we include a model of the coronavirus to immolate. So I started by papier-maché-ing the two halves of a rubber ball, with the intent of separating the two hemispheres then re-maché-ing the two halves together with bits of sparkler and colored flame packets INSIDE. Great idea, right?

Except that the maché wouldn’t come off the ball:

Fine. I had swaths of brown wrapping paper, so I started over with a rolled up ball of that. As it turns out, the new ABORTIVE ATTEMPT was actually a good idea, since I could start with the colored flames packet and then keep sprinkling the sparkler bits as I rolled up the brown paper. (I do think the all-at-once sparks/colors of the original idea would have been interesting.)

Covered:

Painted, spiked, and ready to be cast into the flames:

Installed:

In the labyrinth:

That was all done by Sat afternoon, just in time to move it out of the rain and keep it dry until Sun night.

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Sun night was cloudy, muggy, and still a bit warm. But everything looked great for the evening:

We had a small group of friends to join us, one of whom, Craig, is my chief partner-in-burning. He and I formed 3 Old Men back in 2014 and both have found our elder skills in great demand in the community.

I had a Zoom event lined up and trained the iPad’s camera on the fire pit from the patio area. It was the easiest way to share the event with people who couldn’t be there physically, but as a production it was sorely lacking. I’ll do better next time. (Remember that the Lyles Theory of Process Development states that it takes three cycles to get any process right.)

At about 8:05 Craig and I took the lights off the effigy and carried it over to the fire pit. (The number of people who, seeing the effigy sitting in the middle of my labyrinth, then assume we’re going burn it there astonishes me.)

It took a moment to get started, but when it did, it was glorious. People could put messages in the effigy to burn, and I encouraged everyone to toss in as many of the way-extra golf tees as they liked — a kind of anti-Covid ritual.

While the Zoom video may have been disappointing, the burn in real life was amazing. I should have signed into the Zoom meeting with my phone to give my viewers the same view I had, but I’ve had issues with microphone feedback doing that and I didn’t want to deal with it. Sorry guys — next time.

Here’s the video. You really should watch it. It burned beautifully.

Here’s a short clip shot by Craig that shows a beautiful angle late in the burn:

Not the same as standing a field with 2,000 of your closest friends while a 40-foot-tall structure explodes and burns, but until such time as we can burn again, we’ll burn like this.