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Drama in the Desert
Drama in the Desert: The Sights and Sounds of Burning Man is a compelling multimedia chronicle of life in Black Rock City, hometown to some 25,000+ "burners" who gather yearly over Labor Day week for the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The book and accompanying DVD contain the stunning photography of Holly Kreuter and the artwork and voices of Burning Man participants, including an introduction by bestselling author Dave Eggers and a foreward by Burning Man founder Larry Harvey. The 74-minute DVD is, in Kreuter's words, "the book on steroids." Produced by Michael Lazar, the DVD showcases 560 of the author's images in a frame as large as your screen, and includes interviews with some of the artists and Larry Harvey. Sean Abreu's mesmeric, tribal soundtrack to the DVD is available separately. The CD drew mystified appreciation from a coworker who meandered into my cube, the DVD is an immersive meditation, and the book, gorgeously designed by Lisa Hoffman, has found its home on this reviewer's coffee table.
"How was it?" she asks, and attempts are made.
- Shannon Coulter, in a poem by the same name
Holly Kreuter's full-color images (283 in the book, 560 in the DVD), spanning five years of Burning Man citizenry, artwork, events, and land- and skyscapes, are captivating, both in the subjects she chooses and her own interpretive style. Some of the photos are stark and disturbing, such as the deteriorating iron, mesh-fleshed skeleton kneeling on the ashen earth, howling at the sky. Some are vibrant and whimsical, like the many-hued, body-painted folk in one mischievous tableau, the Ice Cream Freezing Man truck, the colorful, life-sized "chess" board, the city aglow with lights and electro-luminescent (EL) wire. Then there's the artwork, bewitchingly captured by Kreuter, that just falls into the "astounding" category: the Plastic Chapel, the Faces, the Temple of Tears, the Emerald City, the man made of books. The images of the tornado-esque dust devils, spinning like dervishes off the blazing 100-foot Man, are epic.
The book is sprinkled with diverse forms of word art, from haiku to narrative, written in strokes as broad as the spectrum of art at Burning Man. Overall, the writing is strong and bold; in a few places, it is a bit uneven or could be pared down, but these instances are minor. Writers include luminaries such as Free Will astrologer and author Rob Brezney, poet and author William L. Fox, and Chris Taylor, San Francisco bureau chief for Time Magazine.
All of the stories are intimate and real, describing journey, vulnerability, humor, awe, magic, and epiphany. One woman speaks of her initial shyness about slipping into the hot springs nude. (She gets beyond it.) John Kelly's testosterone-infused "Let Me Be Dangerous" dreams of riding in the back of a pickup truck going 60 on the playa:
. . . "Mind if I catch a ride?" I asked.
"You fall, you die," the driver answered.
"That's fair," I said.
Rob Brezsny speaks of an experience common in Black Rock City: "I have never in my life felt surrounded by such relaxing fertility, by so much luxuriant conviviality. For many days now I have glided without even a taint of fear through a city of 25,000 people. Unknown allies and I have spotted each other from a block away and run to each other like long-lost friends from previous incarnations . . . I have been in love with more than a few women in my life, but this is the first time I've plunged into the throes of spiritual infatuation with a time and place."
Tom Kramer's simple "Together," describes a premise intrinsic to the Burning Man community, a Buddha gift ripe for the world:
That we appear
separate
is the illusion.At one time
the desert was
a mountain.
And we were children.
Holly Kreuter has been a Burning Man participant since 1995 and a staffer for Burning Man since 1997. She also founded Raised Barn Press, the production and publishing company that lovingly produced Drama in the Desert.
If you are a citizen of Burning Man ensconced in your everyday life, Drama in the Desert is a soulful trip Home. If you haven't been, Kreuter's collection is a playful, evocative dip into a culture as rich and exotic as can be found.
Experience samples of the text and images from the book, the DVD, and the separate CD at www.desertdrama.com, where you can also order the collection. www.raisedbarnpress.com will get you to the publishing company, a story in itself.
. . . in the great fire
my heart is burnishedbrushed
and burned cleanin the great fire
I fall in love again
only this time
I am awake
and the azure sky is as transparent as my imagination-Mark Jan Wlodarkiewicz, My Heart Has Been Burned Clean
You can purchase Drama in the Desert: The Sights and Sounds of Burning Man from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The artistic side of Burning Man is such bullshit. It's like any other post-modern gathering, it's based on drugs and fucking. Anyone else who shows up is there to watch stoned people have orgies.
where is the dirty hippie option in preferences?
ostiguy
Imagine your home town is built on a moonscape, epic in cracked earth, hard sun, dust storms.... dustbowl playa: a radiant cathedral built from recycled plastic "stained glass," a filigreed temple-mausoleum filled with messages to friends who have passed on, a coffin made of gun metal, a Tesla coil taunted by a wacky scientist, an art and philosophy-lined labyrinth, oases sprouting lawns and ferns
What is this? A new Doom level?
Well I don't do drugs anymore, but I still haven't outgrown the other... Count me in!
(Come'on, I can't be the only slashdotter that gets laid, can I?)
If you've only seen the photos and seen the press coverage, there's one alternate view in JWZ's journal.
Where thousands of the wealthiest and most powerful pay scads of money to celebrate anti-commercialism and equality. Gag me with a fucking spork; the hypocrisy is going to make my skin peel.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Burning Man is not for the fastidious - you are in an alkaline desert with no public facilities. We took a rented RV (complete plumbing, etc.). These small comforts cost a bit. The rental places are hip to this event, and they require an entire week's rental. The Oakland El Monte RV rental place is very cool, the guy in charge knows the Burning Man head honcho, has Burning man posters all over, etc.
I get a sense though that all the talk about community really applies to the few hundred hard-core burners. Not much effort is made to integrate newbies into this community. You sort of have to wander around and find thing hit-or-miss. Maybe this is a flaw in other intentional communities, where insiders are tightly knit, and outsiders may feel unwelcome.
Lots of neat stuff there however a realistic portrayal would also show zero visibility dust storms, long lines at porta-potties, etc. There are also several notorious speed traps along the road - Nevada Highway Patrol must make a mint here. It was not always a comfortable experience. Knowing what to bring is very important. For example, lots of old terry cloth towels, to wipe off the dust. Oh, and bring some sort of beverage to share with your neighbors, and do so as soon as you get there. Helps break the ice and you get to know the folks in your vicinity.
If you go, stay over Sunday night for the Temple burn. Also, as it tends to be windy, maybe a large kite to pass the late afternoons
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Tesla Coil.
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If Happy Tesla Coil begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.Happy Tesla Coil may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Happy Tesla Coil should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration...
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ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!
There are a *lot* of geeks at bman. I was reading with interest the previous single chip linux computer article as it sound perfect for an art project I have with 1400 ultra-bright LEDs. The home brew radio stations number in the dozens, and there are always tons of interesting robotics, laser, LED, and other projects. You get out of bman what you put into it.
Imagine walking into any jazz joint or grilled cheese stand, or getting your hair washed or your feet massaged, and your money is no good because this town operates on a gift economy. Imagine that everybody Leaves No Trace. Imagine diversity coexisting with common ritual - ritual based on radical free expression and purification by fire.
I suspect you'll have to imagine pretty hard - especially that "leave no trace" stuff ...
I'm not sure how this got modded down, because it's very true. Maybe it was the overgeneralization of young American males... Anyway...
I've been to a few burns myself, and you're right -- there are a lot of people who go for drugs and fucking. However, there are also very many (probably many more than the D&F contingent, though I've never taken a poll) who *don't* think the art scene is BS. There are also people who look at Burning Man as a sort of spiritual pilgrimage, those who view it as an experiment in community-building, and those who see it as a giant bass-thumping rave.
That's one of the great things about Burning Man -- it's very hard to pin down what it is, because it's so many things to so many people. And, like the parent post mentioned, if you go looking for drugs and fucking, you'll probably be able to find plenty of evidence to reinforce your bias.
Shouldn't this book be free? And where are all the photographs? Shouldn't they be free, too?
Two years I went to Burning Man and got violently ill. It was too fucking hot, and I ate too much roasted papaya. A doctor in nearby Ralston, Nevada made me wait for hours in a tiny waiting room. There were no windows, no white sheets of protective paper on the prep table, and only a single mason jar full of tongue dispensers. On the wall was a calendar from 1977.
Anyway, this doctor -- he was an old guy, maybe in his 70's -- took all kinds of blood tests, urine samples, you name it -- but said, finally, it was a bad papaya. He advised me to pack up my shit and head home.
And then, just as I was putting my clothes on -- I'm not kidding -- he launched into a speech about hippies in the 1960s and how his son fought in Vietnam and how when his son came home, nothing was ever right in his son's head. He claimed that these burning people -- that's what he called them 'burning people' -- were hippie wanna-be's too young to protest in Vietnam and too dumn to understand the thing they shoulda be protesting was Ho Chi Minh, not the US government. I asked him: did he vote for Nixon? He said, yeah, he sure did, and then I reminded him that Nixon was just this side of a wack-job.
The doctor didn't like that and ordered me to leave his waiting room. I grabbed my shirt and shoes and shorts and on the way out wondered if he was going to give me anything for my stomach.
"Give you what?" he yelled. "You fucking peacenik."
I said, wait a minute hoss, I'm no peacenik. I came here under the assumption that guys like you were bound by the oath of hippocrates to help out all the peaceniks and hippies and burning man washouts.
He said to hell with that and said he didn't want to see me in his office again. I brought shame to him and his son.
"My son," he yelled at me as I walking across the parking, "fought for hippies like you. He was in Marine and got a piece of NVA shrapnel in his arm which corroded and rusted and caused a rot that nearly ate off his whole arm."
I yelled back: Where's your son now, old man?
He said he's in a VA hospital in Galveston. His arm is shot, he smells bad, and he has a drinking problem.
"So much for Vietnam, then," I yelled, got in my car, and fishtailed out of the parking lot. I stopped at a drugstore down the street and picked up a bottle of Milk of Magnesia, and spent the night in a little motel in Henderson, Nevada. I puked a couple more times, but all was well the following morning.
I put a couple dollars worth of quarters into a couple of old slot machines, and won enough money to get me across the desert and into Idlewild -- another hippie-type community at the foot of the San Jacinto mountains. Last I heard, my father was supposed to live there, but when I went to the address I had for him, the house was occupied by a woman named Sylvia who threw pots and knitted sweaters. She invited me to stay for supper and told me that she knew my father but had no idea where he left when he moved out.
Anyway, I drove around the desert for a couple more days, then headed back east. I work at a tech company, so I was glad to get back home.
All in all, my own Burning Man experience was a disappointment. Months later, however, I got a bill from the doctor who treated me in Ralston. He charged my three hundred dollars for the office visit.
I wrote 'Fuck You' across the bill and sent it back.
Burning Man is William Shatner's version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" come to life. And no, that's not a good thing...
Now imagine a bunch of freaks and weirdos getting together with a bunch of junk, taking drugs, and going out of their way to prove themselves "more artistic than thou". Then watch as they try and do as many oddball things as possible to desperately cling to the notion that their meaningless lives have some sort of purpose. Hey, if you can't have a purpose that is actually productive, at least you can have an anti-purpose that tries to demonstrate to the world how "cool" you are.
Most teenagers go through this phase (e.g., Goths), and grow out of it. It's really pathetic when they don't.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
There are some pretty wild things going out out in the desert--people find all sorts of applications for technology. Some are artistic, some are practical. One of my friends is learning how to build a flame cannon...I learned engineering skills to make a temporary, stable structure (a 33' geodesic dome). The cool thing is that each of the people behind the projects they bring will gladly share what they learned. The free software community and the Burning Man ideal aren't so different when it comes down to it.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
I find the notion of temporary art appalling. Art is meant to be permanent, a lasting mark on the world. Destroying everything you create is the ultimate in asinine stupidity.
That leaves only drugs and fucking as possible attractions to Burning Man. Both are worthwhile pursuits, if you're at the age where drugs make sex better, but I've outgrown that.
History's filled with people who find others' notions of art "appalling." Obviously, what you think art is "meant to be" is different than some other people's.
Are you suggesting that it's impossible to have a different view of what art is than yours? That seems a bit arrogant.
Thank you for putting that so well. I was struggling to come up with the same thing, myself. It's really like anywhere else in the world. Different groups and subcultures represent themselves, and the crowd you hang around greatly influences your experience.
It's a strange microcosm of the rest of the world, really, with the freak factor magnified 100x. You even end up with neighborhoods in Black Rock City. Certain areas will be a large cluster of rave camps, and such, and some people end up thinking of them like a bad part of town, that they want to avoid.
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
So you find jazz improvisation apalling as well?
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
I'm saying it's arrogant to create art that you don't intend to last. That's stealing from culture and history. You demand that someone be present at the time of creation to enjoy your creation? Fuck that. Art is a statement, not an experience. Art-as-experience is a nihilistic, intellectually bankrupt, culture-rotting crock of shit.
What realy 'works' are the amazing number of people who bust their asses cleaning up after people who do go just to party. Part of me was really excited to see this article posted because Burning Man is such an amazing thing and I want everyone to share in the experience. Another part of me sees the kinds of posts that have followed and thinks these people should stay home. Are there drugs and sex at Burning Man? Yes. Is that what Burning Man is all about? Only for the moronic frat boys that show up the last couple of days to get f-ed up and ogle women. For the rest of us, it's a week to be amazed at the freedom one feels being in a place totally devoid of any commercialism, being amazed by the creativity and generosity of thousands of people who've come to share it with you, and giving what you can back to the community.
that the drug thing is pretty true. I tried bm a few years back and it was definitely an experience. i liked a lot of the crazy shit. and i think there were a lot of genuine people there for the community and the art and the whole 'journey'. i can definitely understand just wanting to get the hell away from 'civilization' as one can.
but on the other hand, i felt a huge disconnect there. i'm not the raver type and just wanted to hang out with people, check stuff out, but there was definitely much more of a non-stop party than i really wanted. all party and no one to share it with i suppose.
however, one cool thing i did was to walk across the playa, find some friends, who in turn followed some dj in a big rolling fish bowl with speakers and monitors all over back to some 'club' in the middle of nowhere. it was interesting, but i didn't care much for the music so i headed back the way i came. the dust storm was incredible. i would just see people and vehicles and weird shit come out of no where. luckily i wasn't run over cuz people are all over the place in their art cars.
anyway, off in the distance i heard motors and drumming. i walked by and there were these mad max cars circling this big artsy wooden thing (no it wasn't the man), shooting flames at it, torching it. also lined up next to one of the cars that stopped were these drummers banging out a steady tribal rythm on their drums. pretty surreal.
so, yah, i guess you can take whatever you want from that place. there were definitely dorks, but also cool people and whatever else you wanted there. for me, it was definitely an experince and i like weird shit, but i'll probably never go back. just not my thing, really.
For the most part, yes, unless it's captured as a recording and charted for posterity.
What if Michaelangelo painted the sistine chapel and then painted over it? What if [your favorite musician] wrote the most brilliant song ever written, and never bothered to record it or write it down? The world would be denied the greatness of the work.
I understand what people are saying when they want art to be temporary or just some instance in time, but I think it's the ultimate in cultural self-destruction to do so.
Been reading through some of the comments about burningman. Pretty typical. There's a tendency for people that haven't been there to blather on about it having become "commercial" or how it's just a big drug party/orgy whatever. When the truth is that the person complaining is too lazy to get out to the desert to see for themselves. Burningman is extreme by design.
If you haven't been to Burningman I strongly urge that you check it out for yourself. As others have pointed out, you don't have to go to the desert to find many of the things that are there. For those who will seek it though Burningman is about much much more. I have been for 5 years now. There is nothing quite like Burningman. I wouldn't miss it for world.
The guy wearing an oversized Campbells Soup can is obviously the shade of Andy Warhol!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Anyone who takes drugs has severe personality problems anyway."
Thanks for the tip. That would explain why I turn into a murderous psychopath after a couple beers.
Try to stop at Pyramid Lake, if you're coming from southern Nevada. It's a huge lake surrounded by desert. The whole place is an Indian reservation. At one corner of the lake, a natural stone column (strikingly pyramid shaped) rises out of the water. At another part of the lake, is another stone shape that looks strikingly like a cloaked woman with a baby basket. The drive from Reno is breathtaking, from what I hear. And if you're into fishing, some of the world's largest cutthroat trout (Lahontan) are caught there.
There's a lot to be said for that point of view. But at least at Burning Man, some people do it well. It's better than the SF art scene, where nobody tells artists when they suck, and they continue doing bad art for decades.
Burning Man has a faction of Deadhead types, bereft since their idol overdosed. They have an annoying 60's stoner tendency to pretend that what they do for fun is really important. But they're dying off. The younger people admit they're just having fun.
it changes the heads of anyone who can afford $150 a ticket and who happens to be in the same part of the "city" as you. that's a very small subset of "the world".
I don't hoard art. I'm actually speaking about permanence/impermanence from experience. When I have a few more minutes I'll write out an explanation.
...self-righteous, privileged neo-hippies that make goofy arts and crafts are especially pathetic when portrayed in coffee table books of their own making.
...the only people with time to imagine that shit (and to play the tea party version of Utopia) are fucking trust fund hippies.
That was one of the reasons we had to go to Grateful Dead shows every night. They were always different, not only playing different songs every night, but playing each one differently every time. Sometimes it flopped, but sometimes it was pure magic. It wasn't just the performers on stage, it was also the interaction of the performers and the crowd. Recordings are nice, but they're not the same thing as being there, and the shows were always recorded for posterity - not necessarily on tape, but in the thousands of different recordings in the memories of the individual audience members. Also, while some of the songs started out good, what really happened was that there would be a basic structure that would evolve as they'd get more experience with performing it, and with how the crowd reacted to it, and with what their emotions were at the different times they were performing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Barter is still commerce, you know.
If Burning Man were truly devoid of any commercialism, you'd make your resources freely available to anyone who wanted them, without regard for receiving value in exchange. You'd move from camp to camp, taking anything that struck your fancy, without any concern for ownership or permission to do so.
As it is, I get the impression that most attendees intentionally bring trade goods which they hope to exchange for the goods and services which they haven't brought. If that isn't commercialism, I don't know what is.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I see recording like Zappa did. The studio is another instrument - it allows the artist to perfect his/her vision. Live performance is too spontaneous to allow a coherent statement to come forth.
I'm a musician.. I used to play improvised music, fusion type stuff. One time I recorded a 13 minute solo over 2 chords. some people loved it. It was described as "genius" and all that other stuff. I was in a different zone when I played it and I felt like I really made a coherent statement.
Then, I lost the tape. I hadn't written the piece out on paper, nor did I have an extra copy lying around.
To me, this completely invalidated the concept of wholly improvised music. The statement that I made was lost forever, because a) I was dumb with the tapes and b) it was just one moment in time.
I could never reproduce the song because it was the product of a very specific mood. This made me realize that the holy grail of music is to write a song that always puts forth the same impression and always produces the same mood in the listener.
Words always mean the same thing, so should music. Humans being imperfect as they are, this requires that recording technologies be used to capture and perfect the vision of the composer. Even scoring the piece in musical notation leaves it open to mutation by half-assed musicians. Now, recording is even more fuckup-friendly with all the remix and sampling shit that's going on.
Now does my stance make sense?
Art is meant to be permanent, a lasting mark on the world.
So all the actors, musicians and singers who plied their trades before audio and video recording was invented are "nihilistic, intellectually bankrupt, [and] culture-rotting"? The Greeks of the Age of Pericles would probably take exception to that. Art is a means for the artist to express him- or herself. Permanence is not a necessary condition. Hell, an audience isn't even necessary.
No, that just means that pericles was the real artist. His work endured, the actors' didn't.
Art is always valuable to the artist no matter whether it lasts for 10 minutes or 1000 years, but it's not culturally significant if it isn't permanent. I feel that any artist that isn't striving to be culturally significant is wasting his/her time, because art is humanity and if you don't want to contribute to humanity, then you are a selfish bastard(ette).
So we can enjoy Bach, even though we do not live in early 18th century Germany?
Hence art designed to be destroyed is inherently bad art?
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
kin_korn_karn seems to be quite the asshole.
Art is no good unless it's recorded? Music is no good unless it's recorded? What utter, unremitting bullshit.
k_k_k has a very constipated sense of art.
How is a live musical performance that doesn't get recorded "the ultimate in cultural self-destruction"?
A culture had better be alive. Not just archives.
PhotoVista was meant for making QuickTime VR-like images, where you can scroll the panorama around in a web page using a viewer plugin or Java applet. But I always thought it was cooler to have just a photographic banner.
I have a panorama I took at burning man on this page. The panorama in that page is quite small so that it will fit on your screen - click it and you'll get a greatly enlarged view where you can see some detail (including the PhotoVista Demo Version watermark!).
I have promised the organizers of Burning Man that I'd give them a hi-res panorama on CD that they can print and hang in their office, but I've never gotten it together to make it for them. I'll try to do that sometime soon.
You can find a few other examples of my photography, art and music here. I have a lot of stuff on PhotoCD that I mean to put on the site, but again I've been too busy to deal with it. There are several MP3's of my piano compositions though.
I'm not sure if PhotoVista is still published. Live Picture was bought out by MGI Software, who were then themselves purchased by Roxio (the Easy CD Creator people). Roxio has an inexpensive graphics bundle package, but I don't know whether PhotoVista is included. Besides stitching the images, it would handle such things as lens distortion quite nicely.
I have a couple panoramas I took up on the Eiffel Tower that are still waiting to be scanned.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
what it's like until you've been there.
A lot of people don't believe it can be as good as claimed, Leave No Trace, gift economy, etc. And most of them they stay at home, bitterly bitc^H^H^H^Hposting about how lame everything is.
Those who do believe show up and create it. This self selection process yields a pretty amazing bunch of people.
Ask anyone who's complaining if they've been. For those (few) that have, ask if they were invovled in anything, or just were waiting for the experience to happen to them. It's all about being involved.
And yes, there's drugs, frat boys, and trustafarians. But there's also the most incredible art you've ever seen, more intense life experiences that you didn't mean to have, and more real possibilities for life than you had any idea existed.
The truth has been said before: you find what you're looking for. If you want lameness you can find it anywhere. But if you want transcendant, indescribable life epxerience and community, you'll find it there like no other place.
Here's a good, short article on the vastness and variety of the experience.
Another good bit is the speech Larry Harvy (founder of BM) gave at Cooper Union earlier this year.
you miss the point. The storyteller's story lives on, as its medium is the memory of the inhabitants of the culture. But you notice that cultures built on oral tradition usually don't have access to a more permanent medium? If they knew how to write, the artist could have preserved his/her story as it was supposed to be.
There are a lot of paintings from europe that were destroyed in various wars or lost to thieves or whatever. We have written descriptions of those paintings, and in some cases we have sketches of the paintings themselves. The written descriptions definitely do not equal the paintings, and while the sketches get closer, they still don't have the color, brushwork, lighting, etc. The faceless millions are the ones who 'don't get it'. The USA doesn't train people, it trains workers, so very few people here (as a percentage) really understand art.
I want my great grandchildren to be able to listen to my music. If I don't write it down or record it, they won't be able to. If I were to become an important figure in music (not much chance of that now, but hypothetically speaking) I would want to be known for the ages, not just by the small amount of people that heard me when I was alive.
it doesn't make them worthless or shallow, but I can't experience anything about them. That's where permanence comes in. If they were so beautiful, why don't you want to share them with the world? The world needs more beautiful things, not self-centered people hoarding their own little pieces of happiness.
the world needs more people trying to be recognized for the right reasons.
You can contribute to your own ego and to humanity at the same time. Do you think Edison wanted to make a light bulb because he felt a great need to help humanity see in the dark? No, he wanted to patent it and become rich and famous. That makes it no less of a contribution to humanity.
I just don't see the point of creating art in order to destroy it. What if you had a child, and killed him/her 30 seconds after birth? That's a creation, that you destroyed, and it's a pretty apt analogy for an artist's work.