Dave Raphael

Holy Hell, what a year this has turned out to be.  Somehow it’s here, and in my last minute packing its become painfully clear how little time I have had for photography in the wake of starting up a huge new project and finding a place for the endless sorrow of lost friends.  Heavy year.  On my knees in my friends garage, covered in Playa Dust, half excited, half dreading, looking for this little pin that goes in my camp stove, I realized all the stuff I didnt post up here from last years burn, all the reasons why I didnt and got out Occam’s Razor to figure out what was going to get published in the very little time I have left before the drive North.

In the eight years that I have been going to Black Rock City, I pretty much come back with the same group of pictures every year.  Impressive art, camp tom foolery and assorted ballyhoo, center camp oddities,  people jumping out of airplanes and then, always, the Lightning Bolt People.

I had dragged this 1970’s Summicron up there and while I was not so much in portrait mode of thinking, I was determined to take some pictures of people.  I tragically cant remember either of these peeps names, where I was coming from, where I went after, but when the French girl stopped to ask me if I had a lighter, camera was to my face and for the next six minutes, it was on.

I thought about this moment I photographed all year.  I spent a long time this year thinking about Love.  Not so much trying to figure it out, but simply identifying what it is.  How can you love something so much.  How can other humans not in any way relate to the depth at which other humans can love: other people, vocations, places, experiences, the way things smell, the space between heartbeats: any of the things that define our experience in life.

As silly and cliche as it sounds, the one thing above all that I have learned at BRC is one big lesson in Love.  Not how to love, not who to love, but identifying it.  Perhaps this year I’ll learn how to explain it.  In a lot of ways I kinda feel like perhaps it’s isolated me even further into my uncompromising black and white world but so be it.

And then these two walked by, and instantly, Im in.

She was from Paris.  I think it might have been her first burn.  He was from Northern California.  Two people with seemingly nothing in common, except for sharing the static charge from the lightning bolt that had struck the ground between them.  If you ever get caught in a lightning storm above the tree line or in a huge open field, its important to crouch with your heels together so if the charge goes in one foot, it will exit to ground through the other foot without going through your heart and stopping it.  Every once in a while you come across two people who dont know that little survival tidbit and they’ve just got this exploding energy.

When you go to burning man, its easy to find these people every day, reveling in it.  These are always the folks Im inspired to chat with and photograph when Im walking around.  I was never really conscious of this until I saw these photos a few months ago and was just waiting to find the right commentary to go with them.

I think Im always looking for that in any of life’s given circumstances: the lightning bolt.  Its probably why I have the social life I do, not everyone enjoys a lightning storm, but you know, the people that do, they kinda live for it.  Maybe its why Im so at home with the people I meet at BRC, we are all one way or another functioning on that quest and its not some elusive thing out there, its the force holding that whole place together, can lift the x-wing out of the swamp with it, spew thousand meter fireballs out the top of oil dereks, build trojan horses, many story staircase to nowhere, create DEEP friendships with people you’d never think possible, take the pre-existing relationships you bring out there and rocket them to the discovery of what truly is on the dark side of the moon, present the understanding of the true magic in life.  Its there, ya just gotta see it.

Im not living in a world where many people can recognize that.  Marvel at it.  Like, truly marvel at the force of life.  And Im fucking tired of it.

I never realized how alive I was until one of my most cherished friends died.  I also never imagined that the lessons I would learn in his death would be such a completely life changing, absolutely resetting event.  I triple never thought that reset would be positive.  But fuck, the clarity to move forward has never been so present and the root of that clarity is this completely lucid understanding of Love.

Certainly dont know how explain it or even think thats particularly relevant, but can simply show you what it looks like, and these guys have it going on.  I wonder if they just met and walked around for two hours and just had that moment, which I was lucky to be part of.  Or if they spent the day together.  Or the week together.  I wonder if they realized.

There is real magic in this world.  Purely real magic.  Ya just gotta get yourself open enough to see it.  What a challenge that is.  The reward however, is pretty amazing.  The true source of a smile.  The fabric of who we are.

The source of the experience.

As illustrated vibrantly, by the Lightning Bolt People.

People sometimes ask why I go to Burning Man.  Usually its an amusing task to try to sum up the possibility of things that exist out there in the high desert and for the most part, its simple enough to dismiss most folks with a simple, “ya just gotta see for yourself”.  But then there’s the people that do go.  And while there is such stimulus overload to be had there, no matter how hard ya try, there are still some things that are bound to be taken for granted.  Perhaps its not taking life for granted that pulls me back year after year.

Of all the wonderment to not take for granted while out there, Civilians jumping out of a fucking airplane at night is one of them.

But before we get to that, this is Ken (with the hat).

There are lots of people who bring the most amazing shit to Black Rock City.  And by amazing shit I mean The Truly Amazing.  And maybe its more than lots, perhaps its in the order of loads of people, on a good year, tons.  But then there are the one percent.  The gifted.  The determined.  The possessors of vision, ingenuity, and the distinct skill set to make things happen.  And this fellow, if there ever was one, is a one percenter.

Ken is the guy that runs Burning Sky.  If you’ve ever gone to Black Rock City and have seen people hanging in the air under open parachutes, chances are extremely high that its because of Ken.  Burning Sky has been on the playa since before Ive been going, maybe ten years.  One of my first memories of my first year in the dust is sitting next to the stranger I was getting to know over dinner, who was kinda showing me the ropes, and seeing some dudes parachute down near center camp.

what the fuck, people parachute here?

Instantly I was mistified.

Burning Sky arranges a pilot, few hundred gallons of Jet-A, a plane (and a PAC 750 on top of it) and provides as many loads as the weather and fuel allocation will allow up over Black Rock City.

Before you ask, you’ve gotta be a very experienced skydiver to jump at Burning Man.  Why?  It’s a great open desert, what could go wrong…

There are drop zones all over the country.  And all of them are free of people, moving vehicles, objects of varying height protruding into the sky and of course then there is the weather which can change on a dime faster than any place Ive been in my life.  Making a safe landing involves dodging a variety of things to avoid injury to the skydiver and the people and art on the ground.

So yeah, Dangerous.  And that’s with the sun shining.

And while that seems like it would be more hardcore than most people could handle, one night, every year, there is a load of folks at Burning Sky that cork screw up the eighteen minutes to 12,000 feet and jump out of that plane into the inky black sky over Black Rock City.

 

I showed up at Burning Sky Friday evening just in time for the safety meeting, the night load was full and everyone was at complete attention.

What makes the night jumps really special is the fact that each of the skydivers wears a rig which trails a magnesium flare.  The flare flies maybe 25 feet behind the skydiver and sprays a long tail of sparks streaking through the night.

It would be awesome enough to just jump out of a plane at night, anywhere, let alone over neon wonderland.  But these guys step it up a notch and provide a synchronized pyro show from the air for anyone lucky enough to be looking up once it gets dark enough.

After the safety instruction on the proper mounting for the electronic ignition system that would set off the pyro units mounted on the skydivers  was concluded and the preparations for the drop zone outlined, Ken biked out to the airport to set up lights on the runway.

Via those lights, its possible to take off, but the pilot would have to fly to Reno for the night (probably his favorite night at BRC…) as its too dangerous to land there without a properly marked runway.

The plan was to line up a bunch of art cars a bit out from the man to create the drop zone with their headlights.

You get used to seeing lots of things at Burning Man,  fireworks are definitely one of them.  In this case, however, the fireworks were set off for the sake of the night divers to mark the drop zone once their altitude was low enough to see.

Standing out there in the shadow of the glow of the man and the headlights of a makeshift drop zone, ya just have one of those “what the fuck, how did this get done?” moments that are often common in Black Rock City and tragically devoid of my daily experience the rest of the year that I spend in the USA.  How did this get done.  Slowly that turns to simply, this got done.  And Im standing here.  Part of it, one way or another.

It’s why so many of us go to Burning Man, to be part of this thing that is just entirely bigger than all of us.  But it starts small, with focused effort from a truly elite bunch of people.  Burning Sky is one of those institutions at Black Rock City that not only makes BRC a better place, but ultimately makes it what it *is*.

If you are out on the playa this summer and you see some skydivers, take a second to appreciate the hard work and determination poured into the skydiving camp allowing for a safety first experience from the air over Black Rock City.  Burning Sky is located on 5 O’clock around G, if you happen to be walking by, stop in and say hello to this amazing bunch of people.  Ya need at least 100 jumps logged to skydive over BRC with Burning Sky.

There is a Man.  Fucker’s gonna burn in Twenty Six days.