By jim holt
In my head, the amoeba I planned to build was big enough to swallow a pickup truck.
In my head, months before Burning Man actually happened, my amoeba would hang suspended in the air, lit up and looping with red and white rope lights.
This year’s theme was Evolution and I couldn’t think of a better place to begin than with a single-cell organism. And, since it was after all – Burning Man – I was going to call it my “Single Cell Orgasm”. How I intended to incorporate a sexual component into a wild light structure 30 feet in diameter and hanging in the desert air was a challenge I relished saving for later.
First things first. A certain degree of prep work had to be done before my art ever motioned to become complex and before it ever developed to the point of exiting the mud and ooze as a more elaborate creature.
50 feet of transparent plastic tubing, 2 inches in diameter – check.
3 times 18 feet of red rope light, 18 feet of white rope light – check.
2 deep cycle batteries, solar charging for an entire month in the California sun – check.
10-foot metal tubes and 3 smaller tubes, with assorted ropes and pegs to anchor them to the Black Rock City playa – check.
In previous years, I had brought drums to Burning Man – hand-carved wooden drum shells suspended 10 feet off the ground attainable only by bouncing on a mini trampoline with sticks of rebar, the same drum shells arranged xylophone-like in descending order over 20 feet and last year’s turtle drums made from BBQ lids spray painted green.
But, this is evolution.
Before we drum, we must walk and before we walk we must stretch our amoeba cytoplasm. We’re talking way back – way way back – back before sex …. OK, maybe not that far back …. But back there.
But, sex or no sex, I can’t really test my vision of a car-gobbling amoeba in my backyard … since I’m already a pariah in my neighborhood for even knowing about Burning Man.
They don’t know. They don’t get it. They’ve never been.
You know. You’ve been. You get it.
I arrived at Burning Man just as I habitually do – just after sunset, having driven from LA with a carload of give-away items that alert everyone about my destination: metal rods tied to the roof of my vehicle, PVC tubing that pokes out here and there, pillows and, of course, 50 feet of arm-wide plastic tubing.
I set up my tent quickly on Jurassic Street between 6:00 and 6:30 – jumping on those precious windless moments.
A walk to the porta-potties was delayed after meeting of new friends (in this case, Marines) determined to cut loose and hospitable enough to drag me along – art car tours of the playa, dancing at disco theme camps, margaritas, beer and more margaritas.
I woke up the next day to an amoeba screaming to be built.
A guy I call Mech watched me work up a sweat, shaking limp rope lighting through 50 feet of tube. He chuckled then stood up to cross Jurassic Street to my camp.
He didn’t know it but he was about to step over that threshold in the hero’s story when the hero – one day – walks a different path and undertakes a challenge that promises to transform an ordinary man into something quite extraordinary.
“You want some help?” he asked.
I looked up sweating, holding in my hands a tube that contained only 6 feet of light.
“Sure” I said.
“In my head –“ I said, explaining my vision of a floating amoeba.
That was it – we shook, we stuffed, we cursed, we elicited more help.
“Would you like to stand on the roof of our RV?” said a woman, my next-door neighbor.
“Sure” I said.
We weighted the rope light with rebar and dropped that sucker through the tube – more shaking, more cursing.
“You bastard. I never would have offered to help if I knew it was going to get this intense.”
Evolution is hard work, my friend.
Pop a beer; discuss anchoring my poles to the desert floor with rebar. Pop another beer, and then actually do it. Pop another beer to stand back and assess. More shaking, more drinking, more sweating.
“Get up higher. Step on the step that says ‘this is not a step,’” – bad advice, good advice, we had to do something to move 50 feet of constipated rope light through the 50 intestinal feet of tube.
More sweat. More beer.
“I’m giving you a D minus on planning,” the Mech man said. “An A for vision but you get a D minus on planning.”
I told him I had 2 deep cycle batteries recharged daily with solar panels.
“OK. You’re up to a C plus. Let’s finish this sucker.”
First, a beer – while it’s still cold.
Did I mention this is Burning Man? Before we walk or run, or dance or develop hands with fingers capable of touching thumbs, we must drink.
In my head, I envisioned the tube bubbling up between the two highest points. Wrong.
The tubing is heavy and has a tendency to droop.
Rigid, arcing and magnificent was my vision (edging closer apparently to a sexual component than perhaps I had fully appreciated initially) …. Not drooping.
“Do you want this to connect over here?” Mech asked at one point.
“Yeah sure.”
No.
No?
“NO. NO. NO. You bastard, you’re not quitting on me. I see what’s going on. We’re doing this. “
“Cripes I’ve known the guy for less than three hours and he’s calling me out.”
He was right.
“No, I want it to go this way first and then down,” I said, waiting for him to throw down a glove or a hammer or a roll of duct tape ….
“All right. Let’s get it done.”
First, another beer.
By mid-afternoon, my limping drooping – not bubbling – amoeba was a web of guide ropes, rebar, metal support rods and, of course, tubing that could have swallowed a pickup truck.
Mech retreated to his camp across the street. He had a beer. I watched him.
I sat under the sweeping cup of tubing, drinking a beer on my side of the street.
We were both waiting until dark.
Finally, at sunset, I plugged it in.
It was – in a word – beautiful. Brilliant sweeping red through white like blood through protoplasm – 30 feet in diameter, 10 feet off the ground at its apex. It was ready to grow vertebrae, baby. It was bucking for an evolutionary moment.
It was a statement.
Then it went out. Four and a half minutes later, it went out. That’s all it could muster was four and a half minutes.
“Well, it’s obviously a male amoeba,” the giggling women next-door concluded.
Four and a half minutes. That was it’s crowning moment Day One.
I looked at it, hands on hips, smirking and thinking to myself now it’s gonna want to sleep, then wake up soon ready for a slice of pizza and a beer.
At 54 and a dozen consecutive trips to Burning Man, I had a stamina problem to address – after a beer, and another margarita, then another beer, then another night on the playa dancing with creatures already safely out of the swamp.
Evolution would have to wait another day.
