David Best’s temple-like monument will be filled with mementoes and notes from bereaved relatives – then torched. The Burning Man sculptor explains how this will create a path to peace
I’m asking David Best about the significance of objects and there’s a stunned silence on the line. “When you ask me that, I’m still thinking about your husband dying in 2018,” he finally replies before pausing again – overwhelmed by my very personal cue. “Just the fact that someone is willing to tell me that their husband died. That’s a really generous gift that you’re sharing. My god, it’s just such a privilege to be in this position.”
Best spends about a third of his time talking to people like me who have lost something irreplaceable. Whereas my exploration of grief reluctantly began at a hospice in London, Best’s was initiated, over 20 years ago, among the arid crests of Nevada’s Black Rock desert. The sculptor was working with a young artist called Michael Hefflin at the time, making a contribution for the Burning Man festival, when Hefflin took off on his motorbike one night, “racing at the moon at 140mph”, and was killed. At the cemetery, his friends said that Michael would want them to go to the festival. So they did. Best brought some scrap wood from a toy factory, “and we built this thing – nothing to do with spiritual bullshit, just a thing. But as we started building, it became obvious to these kids that we were making something for the friend who they had lost.” They lit it “unceremoniously” and it went up in flames. The next year, Burning Man asked him to build a temple.
