Ian Alexander Norman contributed his long-exposure pic of this year’s Temple of Remembrance at Burning Man to the Boing Boing Flickr pool. The Temple is a huge, ornate structure that burners fill up with their regrets, grief, memorials and testaments to their dead, their lost, and their sorrows. Last Sunday night, we burned the Temple in near silence (one jackass in an art car broke up the silence by repeatedly blasting Freebird), and watched the sorrows go up in flame. I wrote a remembrance there for my good friend Possum Man, and it was cathartic to see it all burn, surrounded by tens of thousands of other people watching their own fires.
Update: Xeno Evil sez, “I just wanted to say that the
rendition of Freebird that you heard was not a jackass. It was a
tribute to a dear friend and solid DPW member who used to always
play the song before he was killed a couple months ago in Austin.
His name was Joey Jello and he was an exemplary human being, he
actually made most of DPW take stock and try to be better people.
He had ‘Never Betray’ tattooed on his neck backwards so that
whenever he looked in the mirror, he’d be reminded of his
commitment to live by his moral standards. When we play freebird
(and I, personally, HATE the song) it’s not to bother other people,
it’s to remind us to be better people because Joey was better than
all of us, he was amazing, weird and great. His absence has left a
void of awesome that all of us in DPW feel needs to be filled.
Working DPW is weird and hard and it takes a certain punk rock
lifestyle… it takes its toll and we all die a little too soon.
Joey’s not the first of us to die, but I’d like you to know why
Freebird was playing,