Message #1045, a followup to #1041

Name:	Marvin Moore
Date:	Thursday September 6, 2007 10:45:16 am MDT
Subject:	Re: Burning Man torched early; artist held
Message:	There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the arson early burn of the Man on Monday just as the moon eclipse reached totality--and never mind all the rantings by angry clueless bloggers. After being mystified by the neon flashing on and off, I was the one who saw him through the crack between awnings as he moved around up at the feet of the Man and then flicked a lighter torch, and I ran to find a ranger. After radioing for help, three of them intercepted him just as he slid down the awning. News reports said he was arrested at a distance, but maybe that is because rangers aren't law enforcement officers and can't make arrests themselves. (I didn't watch as he walked away with the rangers escorting him because I was distracted looking at the Man begin to burn.) I had met him about ten or fifteen minutes earlier when he came up to talk to me. Instantly I felt that I didn't resonate with this odd and seemingly disturbed person, and he said all kinds of strange things that were too weird to get a handle on to remember, but there was a bunch of talk about doing "self-immolation" and scaling the Man and sliding down on a zip line without the distracted rangers seeing him. He had a strangely painted face and a breast-like pouch on his chest which he claimed contained explosives for his self-immolation. I discounted it all as a self-indulgent ego trip. So I confess that when I saw him up there, it took just a moment to put two and two together--but the flash of flame from the lighter did it. And weren't the exquisitely choreographed fireworks and the magic of the real burn a thousand times better than amateur arson?

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