At right is a detail of the wonderful Hayes Street David Best sculpture. David Best is known for building immense temples out of recycled wood sheets (discarded from making toys and other punch-outs) at Burning Man, where they’re annotated by the community with their hopes and dreams, and then burnt to the ground in a fantastic spectacle of light and heat.

Today, as I was shooting some photos, I heard some tourists tsk-tsking at all the writing on the sculpture. “Look at this,” said the guy in the suit. “Shameful,” said the woman in heels.

They caught me staring at them so I had to speak. I said, “Um, you’re kinda supposed to.”

The man in the suit says, “Yeah, Picasso would have loved that!”

As I walked away, I murmured, “Picasso didn’t burn his art down, either.”

Have we been so trained by museum rent-a-cops and hardcover art books that we can’t see art as a participatory thing anymore? That the best we can do is stand 5 feet back and ooh and ahh at the artist’s genius without realizing that art is something we all have inside us?

The temple is coming down in a couple months, so go see it while you can. And bring a pen. Picasso will understand.