This piece is called “I’m Fine.” It’s made of street signs, satellite dishes, gates, and other metal bits of structures that were taken from Ukraine. Like everything at Burning Man, you can walk up to it, walk around it, touch it. Feel it.
I don’t often touch the street signs and metal structures in my life. In a world made primarily of drywall, particle board, and plastic, I rarely touch metal at all. I certainly don’t think much about it when I do. It’s just material.
But it’s strong material. I do sometimes deal with metal when doing construction. The first few times I really interacted with it I was surprised just how unrelenting it is. My most common exposure to metal previously had been aluminum soda cans, which are made to be as thin as possible while still holding a shape. Even a bit of thickness makes a joke of human strength. Specialized tools are necessary to do anything. It’s humbling.
I walked up and touched I’m Fine, as everyone should. I put my fingers through the holes in the metal. I gripped it on both sides and pulled. I scraped my skin on the jagged bit.
It’s solid, thick metal. It is unyielding, it doesn’t budge. Of course it doesn’t, it’s metal and I’m flesh.
And yet it’s been torn to shreds. Like tissue paper. Like water bursting from a pond, just after the stone’s impact, reaching for the sky and frozen in time. Absolutely immovable to me, but insubstantial to the shrapnel that pierced it. Virtually a liquid in that millisecond.
It’s shocking, my fingers through those holes, comprehending the force that did this. It’s probably impossible to truly grasp it, until you’ve had the chance to literally grasp it. We did this. Us, humans. We dug this solidified force from the bones of the earth and shaped it to serve us. Then we created a tiny monster that can rip it apart in an instant.
The energy of the shrapnel to tear right through this artifact, the speed it must have been traveling… it’s preserved in the blooms of the punctures. The jagged edges splitting out like unfurling petals. We made this. We made it to kill humans.
It overwhelms me to realize how absolutely helpless we are. There is no dodging anything moving that fast. There’s no preparing. There’s no defense. If those bits of hurtling metal will do this to a street sign our flesh won’t even be noticed. Either we’re standing in its path and it tears right through us, or we’re lucky enough to be spared. No amount of strength, muscle, size… nothing can save you. I can’t fight against this. No matter how much I train. There is no righteous combat, or even desperate combat. There is only being shredded. Helpless.
This is war. This is what we send men into.
There is a gate, lying horizontally, that looks like it came from a courtyard. Old style, probably at least 50 years old. Very thick. I see two big raised dimples in it. Places where shrapnel hit, but didn’t pierce through. This gate stopped them. This gate protected someone. It took the hit and held strong, and I feel like it did its job. It held out and performed it’s duty as faithfully as it could, even in the teeth of that monster. Seeing that broke me.
My brother fought in Afghanistan. He saw friends shredded in exactly this way, torn apart right next to him. All I’ve done is looked at a piece of art in the desert. It feels stupid that I’m the one crying here, when he stared right into the eyes of horror. I’m glad most people won’t come any closer to what he saw than art pieces like this. I know war is necessary sometimes, but good fucking god it had better really be necessary.
Eventually I had to walk away, because you can’t cry forever.