A Fool’s Attempt to Describe Burning Man

Note:  I visited Burning Man twice - in 2010 and 2012 - before the festival exploded in popular culture, having developed a mythical reputation in alternative culture.  I wrote the report below for my defunct blog after my first visit.  It found its way to Burning Man organizers, who shared it on their social networks as one of the best stories they'd read about the event.  It received hundreds of thousands of views.  Since then, the festival has grown significantly in numbers and received much media scrutiny , particularly around increasing commercial activity, celebrity attendance and climate challenges.   A condensed version of this report was published in my book, The Great Global Bucket List.   The full version deserves its place in the sun and on the playa.  All photos are my own. 

Burning Man is so famously impossible to describe, I’m not even going to try.   I won’t talk about flying into Vegas to rent an RV for a 10-hour drive to Black Rock City, even if there was an opportunity to play craps with a purple-haired transvestite, but that’s another story.   I definitely won’t talk about driving past the massive US military installations in Hawthorne, Nevada, since that, along with nearby Area 51, has severe access restrictions.  I could tell you how, upon arriving in Burning Man, us virgins were made to roll around in the white flour dust of the Playa, embracing the dirt that we’d mentally prepared ourselves to combat.    It took mere seconds for the dust to cling to our clothes, skin, and psyche.   Look, I’ve spent the last five years waiting to get to Burning Man, and was as nervous and apprehensive as anyone.    Nothing to buy?  No taps, showers, or garbage bins?   50,000 plus people* in a hostile environment, and somehow this is meant to be fun?  All these adventures over the years, and just when I think I’ve seen it all, something shows up to smash my head with an experiential baseball bat, letting my brain ooze into the mud.  Something like Burning Man.

For those unfamiliar:  It’s an art festival, showcasing thousands of sculptures and modified cars and creative structures.  It’s a music festival, with hundreds of makeshift venues for DJ’s and musicians.  It’s a costume festival, with everyone wearing something extraordinary, if they choose to wear something at all. It’s a conference for the mind, offering free lectures and educational seminars from thinkers across the creative-arts-and social science spectrum.  It’s a religious festival, steering clear of organized dogma into the realms of free expression, open worship of the universe, and a deep reverence for the beauty of diversity.  It’s a love festival, where nudity is accepted, sex is acceptable, and tantric workshops are held.   It’s a community of likeminded individuals gathering in a remote place to avoid the confused, ignorant reaction of those who simply don’t get it, and probably never will.  It’s a backlash against corporate America, where no brands or advertisements or promotion is allowed.  It’s the wildest, most hedonistic party you’ve ever seen.   And most of all, Burning Man is none of these things at all.  

It started with a small group of artists in a hostile desert, challenging their creative limits and engaging in a form of self reliance and personal responsibility – this in a country so drunk on blaming others and passing the buck.   Fundamentals evolved: 

• Only mutant cars allowed on the Playa, and by mutant, that means nothing that wouldn’t give a cop whiplash if you passed him on the highway.
• Leave no trace, pack it in, pack it out, and no moop (matter out of place) such as feathers, glitter, cigarette butts or cheapo crap from China
• Commerce:  You cannot buy or sell anything, although water and ice is available at the central camp.
• No firearms, no pets, respect public boundaries…

It’s jarring to read the Survival Guide in an age where long form legal disclaimers are posted on parking lots.    There are countless ways to kill yourself at Burning Man, from exposure to extreme weather to getting toasted by a rogue art piece.   It’s your responsibility to stay alive, even though just about everyone you meet will gladly help you out (including volunteer rangers and medical staff).  You can scream and shout and spit and sue, but in the end, this is a community that lives according to its own rules.   The guide sets it straight on the front page: “Above and beyond the provision for individual survival, everyone is requested to help ensure our collective survival by following very basic rules relating to public safety and community well being.  Community membership is a privilege. “   If you don’t get it, please don’t come.   You’ll hate every second of it.

Within hours, every expectation I had about Burning Man was blown out the water.  I just didn’t expect the scale of the event to be so huge, the creative energy so vast.  Black Rock City emerges almost overnight, shaped like a clock, organized by the hands of the hour and 12 long, circular promenades. Bikes are essential if you want to see a fraction of everything, with the city stretching over 5 miles across.   There are hundreds of camps and villages set up along the grid, tribes ranging from a few members to several hundred.    Each camp offers something of value to the casual passer by:  Free cocktails, hot tamales, engaging conversation.   Free massages, games of tennis, bowling, a mechanical bull ride.  Free rides, free bad advice, free hugs, free drugs, free kisses, free help.   Free beds, free art, free costumes, free decorations for your bike.   Everyone seems to bring more than they need and need less than they want.   It’s a free for all, and it took a while to recalibrate my capitalistic conditioning so that I stopped asking “what’s the catch?”  There isn’t one.   “Where am I?”  It doesn’t matter.    “Who are you?”  A burner just like you.   “Where are we going?” I don’t know, but there’s no rush, so lets take it slow. 

​I saw things that shocked, surprised, dazzled and delighted me.   Moments of beauty, moments of overstimulation, moments of bewilderment.   Every time I stopped to ask “how on earth did they get this here?” I was reminded to stop questioning and start accepting.   My guides were friends old and new, veteran Burners and virgins like myself.    As much as this is a community event, every single Burner develops a unique personal response to the environment.  Some thrive in the heavy dust storms that blind and sting.   Some thrive in the camps and villages. Some thrive in the scorching hot day,  others in the cool, LED-lit night.   Drawing it all in together is the Man himself, erected on a wooden platform at 12 o’clock,  looking out over the gathering.  He started small over a dozen years ago, a couple feet high, burned to the ground on a beach outside San Francisco.   The Wicker Man fulfilled a similar role in Europe for centuries, but Burning Man’s founders claim that is a coincidence.  This year’s Man stood 104ft tall, regally awaiting the climax of the week-long event, his destined combustion.  The Man is Gonna Burn.   What does it mean, this Man on Fire?  A symbol of passion and drive, signifying anything is possible?   A community bringing down “the Man” that traps us with its strangling laws and bureaucracy and tax and corruption?    The collective ambition of a nation of pyromaniacs?   I hear these and other theories under the sound of fireworks exploding at his feet, driving the massive crowd into a frenzy.  Any second now he’s going to be a giant fireball.  Sometimes he burns fast, sometimes he burns slow.  A huge dust storm sweeps in, blowing fiery ash into the crowd.  This is not cause for concern.   We are prepared with the right gear and attitude.   Only here do the harsh elements become cause for celebration.   

​The called her the Belle of the Ball.   Standing on one leg, 40ft tall, skinned in polished steel that lights up at night, Bliss Dance is a staggering creation of beauty.  This statue could compete with any major landmark in the world, stealing the spotlight with its immense size and brilliant execution.   Is the world ready for such naked beauty, such unabashed appreciation of the female form?   No, which is why this privately funded work of art will probably land up somewhere remote, somewhere special, outside the guidebooks but well worth a pilgrimage.   It took a year to build. It could be appreciated by many generations.**   

​There’s a Monkey Chant in the Centre Camp.  It’s different tribe from the Balinese one featured in the documentary Baraka, hypnotically blending their voices into a cacophony of sound.  Hippies and corporate climbers, artists and thinkers, the haves and have nots.  Is the guy playing the flaming tuba really one of the producers of the Simpsons?   Did the guys at Google donate thousands of community bikes?   Are there celebrities in the house?  What does it matter?    I spent a half hour looking for a friend at Center Camp one afternoon, and realized that even if I walked right past her, I probably wouldn’t recognize her, and she wouldn’t recognize me. I was wearing red underwear with printed eyes on my thighs, blue wings made out of recycled water bottles, a shocking green wig, ski goggles and a white dust mask.   Costumes allow anybody to become anyone or anything, and they do.   Superheroes or furry animals, desert squid or neon robots.   Women can be naked or topless without fear of harassment.   Burners just won’t stand for young, drunken fratboys.   The community is a self-regulating system, an entropic organism that shakes out the dust and arises.   While it might seem like I had a bit part in a Mad Maxian post-apocalyptic world (complete with a Thunderdome), there was order in this chaos.  You know that weird friendliness that manifests itself on a hike, when complete strangers say hello to each other even though on the street they wouldn’t look at one another?   The Playa dust intensifies that encounter, amps up the positive energy.  We’re all going through this together, we’re all brothers and sisters.  At least until the Temple burns and the Exodus begins, when you can just make out the sound of a bubble popping.

​My friend Ian is never shy to initiate a philosophical debate.  
​“Is this the real world, or is the real world out there?”   
“Perhaps the real world should be more like Burning Man.”
“It’s all well and good until the food and water runs out, and then it will quickly turn into Lord of the Flies,” replies Bruce.
Making the trek from Canada, hiring an RV, equipping ourselves with food and drinks and costumes and playa gifts, the final tally is not cheap.   Everyone appears to have committed an extraordinary amount of time, money and energy to be here, and so everyone is doing their best to enjoy it.   It’s a brief trip to Utopia, so far outside our comfort zone we forgot what a shower looked like.   That Burning Man only lasts a week is calculated.  A sustainable leave-no-trace festival cannot become permanent, even though there is talk of Burning Man owners buying up surrounding land.   Applying the lessons of Burning Man is a common theme at many workshops.   Taking away the sense of community, of environmental responsibility, of respect for those around you - it can only be a good thing.   But it’s hard to hear those messages in the real world, when marketing and advertising and signs and media keep pounding away at you from all sides.  You’re not happy unless. You’re nothing until.    No wonder Decompression parties are held throughout the year.  

The Temple is the spiritual soul of Burning Man.   There’s so much more to this festival than flame breathing dragon cars, stilt bars and half naked discos.   The Temple is a solemn place to say goodbye to loved ones lost, dreams abandoned, or anything that needs to be released.   People write on the walls, in the cracks, on the wooden platforms.   It’s an outpouring of energy so intense you can feel it throbbing.   Life size photos of Burners lost before their time, tears dripping off the face of people in private confessions, their sad waters hit the wooden Temple, like syrup leaking from a bark tree.   I could only stand and watch, aware and grateful that this week marked a personal beginning and not an end.   It was here, in a camp dome surrounded by my tribe, that I asked Ana to marry me, and it was here, that our lives moved to the next logical step.    The Temple can wait for as long as I can help it.   On Sunday, with thousands already returned to the real world, the Temple is set aflame, designed to become a raging inferno of emotional relief.      We could feel the heat from far away, an unmistakable energy rushing through us, flaming ash soaring into the sky.    It was beautiful, it was sad, it was magic.

​Cherie, our Camp Momma, gave us each a gift.  It’s a small vial filled with the ashes of three Temple Burns, attached to a leather-beaded strap.    I’m looking at it now.  The dust and ashes of the Playa still resonate, even as I wake up each morning, wondering if it was all some weird, hallucinogenic dream.   Perhaps it was.   I don’t know how to describe Burning Man to those who have not been.   Other than to say:  If anything you’ve read above intrigues you, then find out more.   It can be challenging, but then again, the best experiences in life usually are. 

​
* Attendance is now around 70,000. 
** Bliss Dance is now a permanent exhibit outside the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.