Burning Man | Marie Marshall

December 21, 2016

2016… 2017…

Wow, what a year for the world 2016 has been, with all the good guys checking out. Even the arguably worst person to die in 2016 was passionate about public health, public education, and anti-colonialism. I keep trying to stop myself hoping that if the carnage continues into 2017 we lose some of the bad guys too, but – hey! – I don’t like to indulge in that kind of Schadenfreude.

2017 is, as yet, an unwritten page. I do know that the Winter Words festival in Scotland has been shortened, so presumably the ‘Fearie Tales’ competition will be tougher. I have a story ready to go, as it happens.

In 2016, I suppose my major writing project was, in response to a request, to come up with a text for the ‘history’ of I Tamburisti di FIREnze for this year’s Burning Man (see previous news items here). I thought you would like to see how some of that turned out, so there follows some images of the Renaissance section of the book. Enjoy.

Images are ©

September 6, 2016

Burning Man 2016

There’s a lot that can be said about the Burning Man festival, held every year in the Nevada desert, and not all of it is positive. But the one thing that I support is that its internal function depends on everything being free – not bought and sold, not even bartered, but free. Everything is, somehow, paid on. Now, of course I don’t attend, for many, many practical reasons, but this year I have had a remote presence. Not only did I write the script for the Guild History of I Tamburisiti di FIREnze, as posted here before, but I also provided some poetry for display there.

This poem, and this, are among several that were displayed inside the portable toilets!

This one, however, was displayed in the Temple.

I have to say that I am very glad to be able to contribute something to the overall experience of Burning Man, and to do it with no thought or expectation of anything in return. It’s a principle I admire, support, and wish to foster.

©Marie Marshall

June 10, 2016

I Tamburisti di FIREnze – project now running!

12010699_1465307271.6343_funddescription I told you in my last news update here about my contribution to Camp Thump Thump’s presentation for Burning Man 2016 I Tamburisti di FIREnze. Well, it has grown arms and legs since then. The text has tripled and the story of the Guild – part fact, mostly fiction, and a little bit Time-Lord – has been brought up to the present day. The plan of the Project Coordinator is to adapt what I have written into a large, scrapbook-like record, to be put on display at the Guild’s mobile HQ on the Playa at this year’s Burning Man, so that people who drop in to the workshop can read it and marvel! I have to say I’m honoured.

Now, the essence of Burning Man is that things are given freely. The members of the Camp Thump Thump team give up their time, energy, materials, and finished products entirely gratis, in the spirit of that BM ethos. But outside of Burning Man – in the world in which preparations are made – things cost money. I wish they didn’t, I wish that everything in the world wasn’t reduced to a commodity and that the Burning Man ethos would spread beyond its borders, but such a thing has yet to be. I live in hope.

This year the team will be doing their bit to spread that ethos beyond its borders by making and donating a dozen drums to a school on the ‘outside’.

Meanwhile, the team is obliged to raise money for transport, workshop construction, materials, etc., and are obliged therefore to ask for donations. If you would like to know more, please click on this link, watch the video, read the blurb, and see if you are able to make a cash donation. If you do nothing else, please help by spreading the word – reblog this item, put it out on social media, tell your friends over a cup of coffee.

I can’t get there myself, but it is so exciting for me to be a ‘remote’ part of the Camp Thump Thump team, helping to create I Tamburisti di FIREnze.

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May 28, 2016

A script to finish, a man to burn, a drum to build…

During my sabbatical from novel-writing, I haven’t exactly been idle. Here are a couple of things that are going on right now.

girl-gang

Turning my short story ‘Axe’ into a screenplay. I had been working closely with a Scottish screen-writer to turn my short story ‘Axe‘ into a drama for TV or the ‘big screen’. Currently, many scenes have been written, both from the story itself and from additional narrative material I have provided – and it’s looking good!

However, the screen-writer has had to pull out, for unforeseen private reasons, and he’s not certain whether he’ll be able to take up the task again. I fully understand the reasons he gave me, and he left the ball in my court as to what to do next. Between us we have a substantial amount of material. I think my choices are as follows:
1. Do nothing, in the hope that the screen-writer may be able to resume the project at a later date; this of course runs the risk of the whole project stalling completely.
2. Try to finish the script myself; this is not my area of expertise, and I am, after all, on a writing sabbatical.
3. Get together with my literary agent and look for another screen-writer; my previous collaborator would be okay with that, but it would need someone who could build seamlessly onto the work already done.

I’ll let you know what turns up.

I Tamburisti di FIREnze. If you don’t already know about Burning Man, find out about it. It’s a festival, for want of a better word, or rather an annual gathering of people in the middle of a desert in Nevada, USA. Whilst there, people perform, make things, share, live together, interact, laugh, work, and generally enjoy themselves. But the main thing is that they do so entirely without money transactions, or even barter transactions. Everything that is provided is a gift entirely without strings, given in the hope that everything will be paid forward in some way. It seems to work, right down to the clearing away of site debris afterwards.

ren This year the theme is The Renaissance. I was contacted a few days ago by the Project Coordinator of ‘Camp Thump Thump’, a group that regularly attends Burning Man, giving lessons in drum-making and drumming, letting people build, play, and take away their own drums. For 2016 the group has adopted a theme based on renaissance Italy – the time of the Borgias, the Medici, and Leonardo da Vinci – and have reinvented themselves as I Tamburisti di FIREnze for the duration of this year’s Burning Man. The Coordinator asked me to provide some Renaissance-flavoured text for their use, and I have been working on pen-portraits of (fictitious) 16c Guild-members for her.

I’m not yet sure whether or how my work will be used, but again if it is, I’ll let you know.

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July 17, 2014

Membranes of Marrakesh

I often say that the strangest place I have ever ‘published’ a poem has to be the time one was etched into an African drum, which is now at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The poem was called ‘Djembe’; I wrote it several years ago, and that’s it above. The image I have used to accompany it shows the raw, waiting bodywork of drums made in the same workshop as ‘mine’ was. If you click on the image you will be taken to a fundraising site for the workshop’s new project. They hope to give away 100 drums at the Burning Man festival in Nevada this year. Have a read through their promotion and watch the video. If you can help this celebration of giving please do, even if it is only with good vibes and good wishes. Thank you.

By the way, if you happen to be in Nevada between August 25th and September 1st this year, then go and experience the Burning Man. If you visit the Membranes’ stall in the Souk, then the patter with which they address you may well have been written by… me! Find out how the young Berber woman, Yasmine, got the better of a mighty desert djinn!

Tag: Burning Man