I am a Tahoe/Reno local of many years. Now I am hanging around at the Generator for the purpose of writing about what the Embrace project is, and why it is an amazing idea for the temple at Burning Man.
Imagining a six story statue of a couple embracing suddenly materialising on earth -built of lumber with an internal spiral staircase which rises up through the metaphorical energy centers of heart chandelier to the heads of the two figures, where groups of people can stare out of the eyes, all three, if you count the third, out towards the playa with a skylight to the stars. Imagination one thing. Building it is another.
The logistics of it’s construction puts it’s builders in a position of realizing the project’s meaning, and the release and reward of love and creativity implied in the massive sculpture. For a moment in the building of Embrace, the implication that our lives are constantly building this ‘couple in love’ bounces from person to person. As if love were our purpose in the world. Seeing it from all sides, and knowing it’s challenged dimensions, love is always experimental, it rise up and and looks out over the community like two people in communication, comparing their impressions of everything on Earth as seen at Burning Man- in the blissful awareness of love. Like everything on earth our time together is always temporary, our relationships can be as fleeting as a one night stand or a lifetime together. In the end we have to see it burn, regardless.
Therefore, the spectacle of Embrace on fire, would be one of the more profound things to write home about. It’s a healing concept to imagine fiery dust devils spinning from the memories of our love, if a one night stand, or a lifetime. How the greatest freedom we’ can ever give someone is holding on to them, it’s also the greatest freedom to let them go. We were free from the day we were born, are free throughout our entire lives and will be even more free when we pass on at death. Being involved in a project of this scale, with Embrace’s subject and theme, I am striving for a deeper understanding of relationships.
The construction of Embrace is like an involved meditation on love and freedom from it, then we learn what a solid foundation for a couple is, architecturally. The sculpture is able to give shelter to thousands of people, a place to gather, party, have personal rituals, if weddings, bar mitzvahs or sanataria sacrifices, fire spinning seminars or whatever’s clever – the Embrace’s attitude is that of love which can let go for the sake of personal growth and freedom. 30,000 lovers could walk through it, mixing and matching like musical chairs at a square dance. One hundred weddings could take place and the playa police force might hold late night homosexual masonic rituals there. All of this is expected. Regardless, it will be burned. This definite reminder of life and our ego’s transitory attempts for permanency are illusionary. It is a lesson we all hope to learn the night of the Embrace’s burn.
30,000 ways to understand love are transformed in life cycle of Embrace, maybe more so among the people responsible for building and transporting the massive six-story structure to the playa. In that element of fire it’s going to be interesting for everyone involved. All of our energy if overt and obvious or subtle and sublime is transformed in a fire of this magnitude, with the potential of being the most beautiful spectacle we’ve ever witnessed. It’s the fire and passion which gives rise to new souls, while the earth accepts other to be buried. 30,000 impressions of an Embrace on fire that we won’t soon forget. That fire could be better than the sex it takes to build it, depending on who you talk to.
Embrace is an amazing project, and an incredible design for a Temple. It’s immediate impressions inspire tantric love, Magdelene and Jesus, a first kiss, a last Embrace, a casual expression of spontaneous intercourse, or an eternal bond. If all of our higher spirituality revolves around love, it’s possible we all figure out armageddon by setting it on fire as well, a nuclear moment not to be overlooked either. Maybe we can help peacefully resolve a thousand breakups, with a lesson in non- attachment through a massive fire like Embrace will be on Sunday night. Although building a permanent structure like Embrace would be a landmark, as a burn, it’s a more epic story. Everyone from the designers, builders and laborer-nail-swingers, to various lovers, swingers and married couples deeply in love who pass through the Generator during it’s construction are part of Embrace’s story, which will keep on expanding as it comes closer to the playa.
That’s what this Embrace project means to me. Thanks for the chance to say something, yo. J
