GALAXY report

I realized I didn’t report on the success of GALAXY at Emergence two weeks ago, and there’s a reason for that: what should have been a glorious hippie trap was a complete failure.

(For those who are just joining us, here’s the rundown on GALAXY.)

So what happened? First of all, I drove the six hours to the property on Wednesday, March 23, a day early, so that I could spend Thursday morning setting the piece up. But it was raining on Wednesday and continued through most of Thursday.

Thursday afternoon it cleared up enough for me and an action hippie from the Art Team to lay out zones 1–4 (out of 7).

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but only zones 2–4 are lit. This was concerning, but I figured I could troubleshoot it later.

On Friday morning I set to it again, and again I was aided by random action hippies who wandered by and volunteered. We got the whole thing set up, and I was ready to flip the switches at sunset. Note: I didn’t test the zones as we got them set up, because in broad daylight it was impossible to tell whether the loops lit up or not.

So I went over shortly before sunset to make sure everything was going to work before the grand opening — and nothing worked. Not one of the zones lit, not even the ones that had been lit the night before. It was soul-crushing. I put up the caution tape and headed out to experience the burn as a consolation, but my heart wasn’t in it.

On Saturday, I started troubleshooting. Following the directions I got from Chief Engineer Turff, I unplugged and plugged and grouped and regrouped zone 1 — and it worked! I was much heartened.

But then zone 2 would not work no matter what I did to it, and I was faced with a decision: Do I spend the rest of my time trying to figure out why a simple plug-and-play project wouldn’t work, or do I pull the plug (so to speak), pack the whole thing up, and go enjoy the rest of my burn?

All the burners in the vicinity, including the artists camped around me, urged me to ABANDON the project and just burn. And so I did.

Amazingly, I did not feel as much shame as I thought I might. I mean, Dale Lyles does not fail, but there I was. Quite the reverse: I felt as if I had done exactly what I should have done according to the spirit of the burn and all that. I was at peace. I went forth and had a beautiful time playing with the hippies.

But by all the burn gods, we will figure out all the bugs before the next burn.