Story and photo by Eric Francis Coppolino
From www.chronogram.com
Editor's note: We read a lot of online media stories about Burning Man, most of them following the same sensational, overused storylines, most of them failing to capture the true soul of the gathering. This one from Chronogram magazine is a wonderful exception, and manages to hit on several themes we can relate to. It ruminate on the collective powers that get raised on the playa and positions the gathering in relation to mainstream society in an authentic and insightful way. The author knows what he's talking about, though we may not follow all of the astrological references, and we're thankful to read somebody else's thoughtful interpretation of Burning Man. (We bold-faced ideas that are especially meaningful to us.)
I spent a week in early September at something called Burning Man, a kind of festival in the Nevada desert held each Labor Day. The event takes its name from the burning of a giant neon and wooden effigy of a man, which is burned on Saturday night as 40,000 people gather around and watch. The photo above is the Man, which has become something of a cultural icon, now more than 20 years in circulation. Burning Man traces its history back to 1986, when the founder, Larry Harvey, burned an effigy of a man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach. The event was moved to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada several years later and is now the annual meeting place of a far-reaching, extremely energetic subculture.
Astrology is about symbolism, and in this article I’d like to look at a few of the messages of the fire ceremony that’s at the center of this elaborate, creative project called Burning Man. I think for most people who participate, the theme is so intuitive, they don’t really think about it much. You get the message in the creative fire that surrounds the symbol; it comes across as real world. Given the freedom and the safe space to do so, women strip to the waist and walk around in public. Many guys wear skirts and tutus. Everything is connected to a concept, an idea, a game of twisting logic around into something sensible in a different way.
In effect, Burning Man grants many people permission to be who they are, and, in the absence of concrete knowledge, to test out some ideas of who they might be; and not have to worry too much about the legacy of who they were yesterday...
What we struggle with the most, if you ask me, is the unspoken requirement to be who we were, feel how we felt, and love who we loved yesterday. We allegedly must, by some strange set of unwritten rules, get up in the morning and do what we did the day before. If you look closely there is actually very little to intervene in this train of experience. This is why key life transits such as the Saturn return, Uranus opposition, and Chiron return, are so often experienced as train wrecks. We make next to no room to ritualize the idea of change that would allow us an opportunity to in fact actually change.
Much of this process is encrypted in our social patterns: that is, our relationships with friends and family. We tend to stay the same, fearing their judgments, therefore trying to live up to their supposed expectations. Some of our most fundamental values, such as whether we think marriage has any validity for us personally, are bound up in these social ties. Deep beneath our fear of being ourselves, which really is a phobia on a cosmic scale, is the fear of being cast out of the tribe if we violate its social order.
This by the way is what I would call Chiron in Aquarius stuff: the tribal wound as it manifests as the fear of individuality. Here we have a convenient illustration because this year and next, Aquarius is such a focal point of the astrology. (The once-in-a-lifetime triple conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron, and Neptune is still working out in that sign, the peak of a five-year transit of Chiron in Aquarius.)
From all of this, we get the idea that people don’t change; we merely get locked into patterns. The times we expect to change are generally the moments of the train wreck. Maybe you’ll be different after a divorce or a death in the family, but even then there is only so far the rules of society allow us to go.
Enter Burning Man, where we ritualize and embrace the process of growth. We show up, facing the extreme conditions of the high desert, forced into both radical autonomy and the need to embrace community, both consciously, as a matter of survival.
The thing about the Man is that he’s this elaborate artistic creation, different every year, and then we do something very odd by our society’s standards: We burn him. This is the Death card (Trump XIII) on a grand scale: the point of no return; the actual moment of transformation. We release the form and some new element of energy has the room to express itself. By the time this ritual comes, most participants have been pushed to the limits of their physical and emotional reality. Burning Man is “fun,” but it’s fun only to the extent that we give up some of our worldly trappings, our sense of time, our daily routines, our names, and so on. Like most valid rituals, this is one that takes preparation.
Part of that preparation is what we bring to offer the community. Unlike most enterprises in a capitalist system, Burning Man is about what you give rather than what you get. The whole purpose of capitalism is to maximize profit at the expense of the worker and the consumer. The idea of Burning Man is to give resources to the community, at your own expense. This is a missing experience for most of us, who don’t think we have so much to give; and if we do, the idea of actual generosity is often repulsive or seems inappropriate.
The gift culture ranges from the most elaborate perks from corporate America (somebody with a lot of cash on their hands paid for the Opulent Temple) to the most modest offerings of self. The camp that I was staying in, Poly Paradise, offered a daily Human Carcass Wash, where up to 600 people a day came to be washed down from their coating of playa dust.
Part of the preparation involves developing a new relationship to physicality. I’ll give a few examples. It’s really easy to dehydrate in 110-degree heat. Therefore it’s necessary to constantly think about water, which reminds us that we’re made of water. There are ways to measure hydration; you can figure out how much you drink; or count how many times you pee. My personal method is, if my nose is dry, I’m dehydrated.
There’s nowhere to buy food; therefore every meal is a conscious act. You cannot simply “grab a sandwich.” If you run out of food or water, you’re at the mercy of your neighbors, who are usually generous; everyone is in the same condition. (This particular part is easy for me, because my first gig as a cook was in the galley of The Pioneer, a century-old steel schooner, cooking for 14 people. I was reminded again what a valuable talent this is, to be able to prepare safe, tasty food for myself and others under odd circumstances.)
There are no flush toilets. port-a-potties are glorified outhouses, and if we make a mess out of them, they are messy for the rest of us. We literally have to deal with one another’s shit (something that most of us know not about, in the industrialized world). One result is the most impeccably clean public bathrooms you’ve ever seen at an outdoor event. The potties are plastered with public service announcements created by various camps and factions reminding what and what not to drop down the hole—and the admonition that someone will, in fact, have to dig out your Pepsi bottle if you toss it down there.
By my second day on the playa, I was planning my self-care activities one at a time. Find dental floss. Use dental floss. Find toothbrush. Brush teeth. I shaved once; it was a memorable project, involving the spontaneous discovery that I had left my shaving gear in the glove compartment, then boiling half a gallon of precious water. Every step was a conscious act. The result felt like no shave I’ve ever experienced.
Then there are relationships. Those tend to be rearranged in this environment. It’s true that I was in a camp that had relationship-oriented discussion groups every morning (called Poly High Tea) and where we hosted talks on the history and sociology of monogamy. However, all around, people seemed to be tossed around in a kind of relational anarchy—sometimes pleasant, sometimes not—as a result of being confronted by so much intense beauty and so many people bringing out some aspect of their creative fire. In reality, one makes one’s boundaries, rules, and agreements; then what happens, happens.
Synchronicity is the name of the game at Burning Man; this thing we call manifestation is in full force. The stories are too many to count, and it’s fun to see it in action. I really had to surrender to the notion that if I think of something, it could happen in a matter of minutes; and even if I wasn’t consciously thinking of it, but I secretly wanted it, it could happen in when I was least expecting it. Some of these stories are more appropriate for Book of Blue. Synchronicity messes with your idea of how physical reality intersects with consciousness. It’s true that we were in an alternate plane of reality that was a lot closer to the astral/causal levels. If you play this game well, it’s possible to let go of a lot of negativity.
Then, after a week of this, the whole community gathers for the Burn. This year, all day Saturday was in what I’ll call a category 2 dust storm, caused by persistent winds blowing across an ancient lakebed. The storms do get worse: absolute whiteout. But this one was pretty bad, and it seemed to last forever, all day and into the night, threatening the ritual itself. I got myself there early, to have a seat in the front row, the better to photograph for you. And I sat there as the dusty wind pounded my body and my cameras and my lenses, catching dust in my mouth and eyes despite my mask and goggles.
They can’t safely light a fire that big with 40,000 people around it in such a stiff wind, but unlike last year (when there was a similar problem) the higher-ups made the decision to start the preburn festivities: A lot of fire dancers and musicians and acrobats came out and performed in a vast circle to the audience/participants. These performers were dedicated, doing their thing at full strength despite being slammed by the elements. Most of them had prepared for a year for this event.
Finally, the wind stopped and the arms of the Burning Man were hoisted into burn position: high above his head. Then came the fireworks and the pyrotechnics, and then he burst into flames, taking all of us with him.
This Burn was my third (nonconsecutive) pilgrimage to the playa and the most powerful by far. Seeking a way to ground my energy and emotions upon returning to my homeground in the Pacific Northwest, I headed out to the San Juan Islands last weekend to visit two dear friends at their home on a cliff above the wild shore. I told stories about my experiences at the Burn for hours; a few days later, one of the friends commented "you seem humbled by your Burn this time around." That is a perfect description of my current state: humbled. Also: in awe. thankful. blessed. in love. connected. pregnant with possibilties. floating in a state of grace, not fully existing in this world or that.
"Tell us about one of your defining moments on the playa this year …" is the question John Curley posted on the Burning Blog last week, and over 75 Burners fresh from their Black Rock City tenure answer with stories that are moving, hilarious, sacred, bittersweet, transformative and heartfelt. I connect to the thread of humility that is braided through the many impressions shared. I feel waves of playa-love pulsing through my newly-reinvigorated heart as I read these personal reflections. I hope you can feel them too, and I invite you to share your own defining moment in the comments at the end of the post.
* * * * * *
One evening early in the week, as the
sun was setting, I walked out into the desert alone, behind BRC,
where there was no one. I was utterly alone, no other humans near
by. I asked my creator what I should do. My creator informed me
that I must lose the costume first…and so away it went, layer by
layer, and then the jewelry, and necklaces…all of it off, I stood
completely naked, bathed in the blazing colors of the setting sun.
I walked away from my belongings, and my footprints appeared in the
cracks before me, before I stepped into them, the footprints
appeared. They were already there, waiting for me to fill them. My
body found a rhythm and I intuitively moved in a kind of slow
ti-chi-yoga dance, that let my joints crack and free themselves of
their restrictions. I have been in several accidents, have broken
many bones and have limited range of motion, but I felt freed of
all of it. Free of pain, regret, fear…..FREE. With my creator that
evening, I found myself once again. A child, an embryo, a man, a
woman, all together, all encompassing, a creative being of
light….free to BE… as I was gifted this life to be.
Later that evening, a fellow burner gave me a bumper sticker that
says ‘Fear is Funny’.
And I have not stopped smiling since.
* * * * *
*
I decided to trek to the temple alone
on Saturday afternoon after much debauchery. I was delivered into a
dust storm on the way, and couldn’t see a single structure or
living person at first. Rather than feeling worried it was the most
peaceful experience of my life. Later, I would come apon pockets of
people and art that would recede into the dust again like
apparitions. I finally made it to the temple and cried like a
little girl- for me, for loved ones, for everyone there. It was
like my soul was wiped clean for the very first time. It was so
stunning and surreal.
* * * * * *
Watching the temple burn with friends, we were awestruck when a
phenomenal cellist humbly played next to us. We listened for a half
hour while he drew all the sorrow, love, yearning and spirit of the
temple through his strings, and then moved on. I am so grateful for
that beautiful experience.
Also, I got to surrender to the moment many times this year – going
with the flow, against my programming and typical behavior or
responses, I got to experience immediacy more than I ever have
before in 10 years of participating in Burningman. Here’s to
playadipity!
* * * * *
*
2 years ago I was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. Last
November, after a year of radiation and chemo I was told I only had
‘weeks or months’ to live. Being at Burning Man again this year was
a triumph for me and an affirmation of life. When I put a message
on the temple I started to cry because I suddenly realized I had
changed from thinking about dieing to thinking about living. That
was a moment I will never forget.
* * * * *
*
Sunday, before the gates opened, I was
exausted and broken. We had been working since Wednesday to finish
our art project and it was nowhere near done. Sitting in camp I
noticed a lost stranger, someone who just arrived. Im normally shy,
and not very touchy but something in my head told me to give her a
hug and help her with anything she needed. I needed to escape from
my imaginary walls. I walked to her, explained my story, and she
gave me the best hug I have ever recieved. We wandered around, left
each other then found each other later that night. I walked with
her all over the playa, pointed to our unfinished art and watched
the sunrise on top of another artists art, with the artist in
center camp. We bid each other farewell for another night.
By Friday I had made it a habit to say hello and hug as many people
on our street as possible. I had to pass on the gift of that first
hug. We had a shy 3 year old in our camp who I had finally
convinced to give me a hug. After the hug, I asked her “Would you
like to hug some people with me?” She nodded and we walked to the
street.
I
have never seen people with bigger smiles. She gave each person she
saw the biggest hug she could, and I followed up with the biggest
hug I could. We were both smiling, and sharing that with complete
strangers.
On Tuesday after the Burn, I was alone, in the deep playa
de-mooping our art site. I felt alone, lost and confused. I was
unsure what would help, but I was optimistic the playa would
provide. It had worked for the past week, why not
now,…
As
I turned to view the city, I noticed a lone bike rider coming
closer to me. It was my wonderful friend from Sunday. We embraced
in the silence while I returned her gift to her. It felt like we
had known each other for a lifetime. And I know we
will.
* * * * * *
This year marked my 7th burning man experience. Eyes closed while
dancing at the Opulent Temple I allowed my other senses to absorb
the sounds, the scents and feelings as fire blasts warmed my body
and the night air slowly cooled me. During one such blast of flame
I slowly opened my eyes and found myself surrounded by dozens of
like blinded dancing isolationists. A lunatic bunny engulfed me.
The moon shone full above me with Saturn at it’s side alone
together. The bunny smiled and kissed me then disapeared. I closed
my eyes and found the groove again and the distance between me and
the moon, the rocket , the temple , The art , The Man and the
multitude disapeared like the bunny. The days and nights following
were serene and comforting like the feeling one gets being alone
with family at HOME.
* * * * * *
Before my first burningman my boyfriend told me that I should make
something for my dad, who commited suicide when I was little, to go
in the temple. There has always been such a stinging pain over the
loss and absence of my dad that I have never been able to overcome
the pain and resentment that I felt. After thinking a bit, I
decided to paint a picture for him…which I thought was fitting
because he was an artist himself. I painted a picture that I
thought conveyed a fitting message but was largely unattached to it
because I hadn’t allowed myself to feel very much in the way of
sentimentality towards my dad.
On the day that we went to put my painting in the temple I had the
attitude that I would simply put it somewhere, maybe write
something around it and leave..very brief. I found a place on the
walkway up to the second floor and put it there..by this time I was
already crying, so I put it down and started writing a letter on
the baseboards. What came out of me was a message of love and
understanding instead of what I was expecting..a letter of anger
and accusation. At the end of the letter I wrote something that was
so true I could feel it down to the very bottom of my heart: “I
Forgive you daddy, and I love you with all my heart.” That was
unbelieveable because I literally felt the weight of 13 years of
anger lift off my shoulders.
The second moment was when I saw my painting go up in flames and
fall. It was my dad being freed of the resentment and at that
moment I knew something that I never could have believed before. My
dad loved me. He didn’t do what he did because of me. I have a
different outlook on life now because of those moments.
* * * * *
*
The Temple burn will always stick out in my mind as one of the most
moving experiences of my life but the most defining Burning Man
experience came on Tuesday night when...This was my first year and
so I had no idea what to expect when it came to the city itself. I
mean, my roommate and a large number of my friends have all gone
for the last 3-5 years so I had heard plenty about the atmosphere
and the energy and the people and the camps, but very little about
the city itself.
So yes, on Tuesday night a bunch of us ate some mushrooms and went
out to deep playa to explore and adventure. Our first stop was the
slide. We basically b-lined it straight out there without looking
back. It wasn’t until I scaled the slide and looked back out at the
city did the scale and beauty of it all really hit home.
I was awestruck by the lights and the fires. By the massive art
cars. By the people and the bikes roaming freely. By the massive
domes and the little blinkies. It was incredible. I had gotten
through the lineup and to my campsite around 330am on Monday
morning and just after dawn I wandered out past the esplanade to
look at the city. Very few camps were up and built so the city
didn’t have any real definition to it yet.
By the time we scaled that slide though, the city was really a
city. A beautiful, colourful, vibrant, utterly mad city.
* * * * *
*
My personal favorite moment was on Thursday night when a group of
four of us trekked out to deep playa. The moon was enormous, there
was a gentle wind that spared us the dust, and there was a
hightened mood of celebration. Way, way past the Temple, we sat
down for a smoke and to take in the sights. Looking back at the
city, it seemed like a huge, loud, beautiful, sparkling, surreal
mirage. We talked for a while about how amazing it was that all of
us who had planned and struggled to make it to Black Rock in 2009,
had made it happen and created this crazy/beautiful fleeting thing
which was impossible to describe and breathtaking to witness, and
that we could try to explain the exhileration of that view, but one
would truly have to be there to understand. It was a perfect night
at Burning Man and I’ll never forget it.
* * * * * *
My 6th year in a
row, SO many perfect, magical moments.
This year, I think it was when I woke up early Thursday morning
after a long night of partying and took a stroll. I was in my pj’s
(Leopard print shorts) and I really just meant to step outside of
the rv to get fresh air but before I knew it I was on a very
spiritual journey. I had no sun glasses, no bandana no spf…just a
bottle of water and off I went. What a rookie mistake to leave camp
w/o the necessities! However there was a force within me that was
stronger than reason. I walked and walked and walked and before I
knew it I was out at the trash fence. There was no one one within a
1/4 mile of me. I was at the 10 o’clock side and it was incredibly
serene. I sat down, and had the most amazing conversation with
myself. I kept getting a “Message” over and over…”Does it matter?”,
I kept hearing this. I’ve been so frustrated with some things in my
life, and when I heard this it was so fitting. A tear came, as I
answered…NO! I started to think about what really does matter in my
life and it filled my heart with Joy. The Love in my life is the
only thing that does matter.
Thank you Burning Man for always being a place of spiritual
growth…and evolution.
* * * * *
*
It was my first burn. On Tuesday night everything still felt new
and crazy. After insane dancing at Opulent temple and Hokkahdome
(which had best dj and music), and still feeling pretty high, we
wandered into the middle of chaos of moving lights and sounds that
reached the furthest corners of the desert (damn, they have bad ass
speakers). 360 degrees around us was everlasting party celebrating
humanity. And I said to myself: WHAT A CONCEPT, man, what a
concept! people make all this effort to come here and get loose.
And if world were to end tomorrow, that’s what I want my last day
to be like. If I am to die tomorrow, I am happy that I witnessed
that!
And
then when the sun started rising, we found a big tent near the Man,
where they served us tea. How nice of them to welcome morning
strangers. And a ridiculous yellow duck doing his morning dance to
the sun along with a runaway clown standing among nomadic looking
people – what a surreal picture.
* * * * *
*
My first ever burn after a decade of being a naysayer, and it was
magic for me.
There was a terrific piece of fire art made by a group called the
flaming lotus girls called “Soma”. It was two beautiful, ornate
tree like structures the larger of which was perhaps 30 feet high
with a flaming rotating core that had many small flowerlike
projections that had either lights or fire coming out of them
(meant to represent axons). One large and one small structure (each
meant to be neurons) were connected by a large spine (meant to be a
dendrite). The whole piece could be operated to emit bursts of
flame that are loud and hot enough to be felt both as heat and
pressure waves to the surrounding crowd from various parts of the
neurons and the dendrite, at the artists desire. Lovely.
So Tuesday evening we are strolling across the playa and stop to
see it in more detail. An enormous robot themed art car, Robot
Heart, pulls up (constructed of a double sized commuter bus) with a
giant dance floor and DJ booth on top. It has a perhaps 30 foot
long video screen that is synced to very loud and very compelling
techno/electronica. A large group gathers and starts dancing
ecstatically and with increasing energy beneath and around the
sculpture, and for over half an hour the DJ on the car and the
artist operating the sculpture talk to each other – the robot sings
to the sculpture and the sculpture talks back with bursts of fire,
while the crowd dances and cheers. Utterly magical and amazing and
moving.
While I expected fire art, and amazing art cars, and creative music
and spontaneous dancing, it had not occurred to me that all of
these things would inform each other spontaneously and
improvisationally. It reminded me of an incredibly moving and
energetic jazz performance but with visual and even heat and
pressure pulses adding to the effect. Now imagine that this type of
thing happens maybe a hundred times a day for a week, and 10,000
times a day on a smaller scale, not necessarily loud and energetic,
sometimes quiet and contemplative; and that no one is getting paid;
rather people are spending their own time and money to make it
happen for the art of it and the enjoyment and pleasure of others.
Understanding that was a significant part of my entry into the city
and informed my whole week.
I’ll be there next year, for sure.
* * * * *
*
Thursday morning I felt a strong desire to be on my own, and took
off for the Temple. I had something I needed to do. Armed with a
notebook, sharpie and handkerchief, I set off to heal and let
go.
I felt strong waves of compassion and loss as I approached the
Temple. I settled in a peaceful spot, overwhelmed by emotion, and
spent the next 30 minutes weeping — for loves lost, for wounds that
still hurt, for regret. For one lost love, the Playa is his sacred
ground, something that makes his eyes sparkle every time he talks
about it. It was all the regret and sadness around our relationship
ending that I needed to release.
I wrote a long and heart-felt note, full of rage, sadness and
forgiveness. Words I’ve said before but needed to say again. The
only thing I may never get to tell him was how wonderful Burning
Man turned out to be for me. I finally understand.
I tucked that note into a spot in the Temple and felt relief for
the first time in a while. On his sacred ground, I let him
go.
* * * * *
*
A camp in my village hosted a David Deida Meet Up – he is a
well-known writer and tantric teacher. About 35 men and women
gathered to discuss his philosophies. After the discussion, a
dark-haired, smiling man approached me and told me he was drawn in
by my radiance. He asked if he could share a poem that had
spontaneously dropped into his head, a gift from “source.” Of
course I was flattered and excited that a stranger had written a
poem just for me so I happily agreed, expecting something short and
corny. Instead he opened his mouth (and heart) and recited for
about 7 minutes an incredibly spiritual poem about divinity,
radiance, love. At first I smiled politely. Then I started to cry,
so moved that he had seen my soul, my worth. Then I smiled and
cried and sparkled and let my emotions flow out of my heart and
toward him. I felt seen, received, touched, honored, and wildly
impressed that he was able to compose a brilliant, very long poem
on the spot. A moment of beautiful Playa magic!
* * * * *
*
This was my eighth and my favorite burn. Yes, it WAS a particularly
ease-filled and redonkulously fun year, but really, it was the best
because of my intentions. Intentions usually come true out there.
To find a new magic friend, the best music ever, figuring out my
next professional move… something like that. This year, mine was
different. I arrived to the playa with only the intention to
continue to truly embody the present moment and to rest deeply into
the seed of who I am, of who we all are. Having already found
myself over the last couple of months finding that my real home
exists in the “now”, I was very excited to bring my new home, ahem,
home with me and try it out there!
So there I was, having all these cool shifts in my awareness and
having so much fun and then it all get taken to the next level,
whoo-hoo! Thursday night we were dancing at Nexus, he and I. Freak
Nasty was approaching the decks. The sound system was killin! The
place was perfectly packed…we sat down to rest. Eye contact for a
long minute. I asked, “What do you see?” He said, “A kind of
stillness and peace in you. What do you see in me?” I told him that
I saw that same stillness but that somehow he was not letting
himself experience it. That he was holding on too tight. “Yes,” he
said, “It’s true.”
And that’s when I let it happen. I let myself come completely into
the present, in a way that I have never before. And from that place
words came through me. And as I spoke the words to him I was also
speaking them to myself and we sat outside for over an hour on a
weird little pull cart on the back of someone’s bike and had a good
old fashioned satori experience… enlightenment on the playa? HELLS
YES BABY. Does it get much better than that? Nuh-uh, it doesn’t! Oh
and then I got to sleep in a perfect naked puddle of awesomeness
with him for days…that was rockin too ;)
photo by Ramona Mayhem
It’s like a memory now,
isn’t it?
The dust is out of your hair and your clothes. You’ve been sleeping
in your own bed again, and maybe you’ve been out to eat. And you’ve
gone to the refrigerator in the middle of the night, and you’ve had
whatever you damn well pleased, because you could.
And isn’t it sad?
Everything was still ahead of us then — the light and the dust and the music and the art and the wonder.
I waited a week before getting the playa out of my car. It turns out that after all that time and all that wind and all that heat, I discovered on the long ride home that I really really loved the smell of the dust, and I wanted to hang onto it as long as possible. And when I washed the car, the last physical remnants of the experience would be washed away, too. And I wasn’t ready for that. Not at all.
I had thought, after more than three weeks out there, watching those amazing people build the city and install the art, that I’d be really ready to leave. But of course I wasn’t. When it came time to go, it turned out that I wanted to stay forever, or at least until I could help take the city down. Complete the cycle.
But I couldn’t stay, the default world was calling, and when I hit the road, it was a jolt.
I couldn’t believe what a rush people were in to get off the playa; granted, they wanted to beat the crush, but even late Saturday night, the exodus had begun. People were going fast, passing each other, not caring about kicking up the dust anymore. That brought me back to when I was a kid, in the back seat of the car as my parents left the church parking lot, and watching cars cut each other off, all the rudeness and impatience. And I thought, all that talk of love and peace inside the church, and look at you now. And I’ve always believed that those parking lot scenes were the beginning of my disaffection with organized religion.
But that’s another story, and that wasn’t the feeling that stayed with me as I hit the road to Gerlach, and then past Empire, and then into the darkest hours on Indian land. Because there was too much to remember, and too much to look forward to.
There was all that selfless work: the fence, the Man, the Temple, the Cafe and everything else; the trucks, the hauls, the digging and pounding, the sweating and grunting. And all of it done in that incredibly harsh desert.
And there were all those times that you got the feeling that people cared about you, and you found yourself caring about them, too, in the most fundamental ways. You getting any sleep? You drinking enough? Don’t worry, man, it’s cool, she’s gonna come back.
And there were all those people who wanted to know more about you, what you were about, and you felt like it was ok to talk from the heart, and for a change you didn’t worry about what they’d say or think later. You didn’t feel the cynicism creeping in the way it normally does, because it was a different scene. Yeah, you still made fun of funky hippies (How many hippies does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Hippies don’t change anything”), but most of the time you went for it, you decided to be genuine, and it came right back at you.
Alright, alright, maybe I still have a little dust in my eyes. But it felt that way more than it didn’t.
I’ll say this, though: It wasn’t the crazies and party hearty-ers on the playa after the Burn who made me want to stay. The bizarreness and randomness and kind of desperate revelry weren’t much of a lure. People were too weird, too out there, too nutsy. (And it seemed like the words “leave no trace” didn’t hold much weight that night; there was lots of crap being tossed around pretty casually.)
But we don’t want to be a scold. There was something raw going on, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. You don’t burn a 100-foot Man and dance around the embers and get caught up in the swirling mass of bodies and come away feeling centered and grounded. You feel amped and ramped, and you want to keep that primal feeling burning for awhile. I get it. I got it.
But even that crazy scene, that culmination, is getting stowed away with all the other crazy scenes, both good and bad. The list of incredible moments is way too long, and way too personal, to hold anybody’s interest but my own for long. Besides, you have your own memories, your own incredible moments, and they’re going to make you smile, or make you think, for months to come.
And by then you’ll begin to forget about the hardest stuff; the packing, the money, the dust, the heat, the cuts on your fingers, the cramps in your legs, the pounding in your head, the dizziness, the lonely moments in between. And then, when you begin to forget about the hard stuff, when the weather has turned wet and cold, and the warm sun is only a memory, you’ll start to get the longing again.
And you’ll remember something funny, like, when you showed somebody the fancy laminated card somebody gave you, the one with the structure of a molecule on it. You didn’t know what the molecule was, but SHE did. She looked at the card, and then at you, amazed. And then she pulled open her shirt and showed you the tattoo on her chest, and it was the same molecule. What are the chances of THAT happening at the coffee shop tomorrow morning?
And how many times did something strangely special like that happen to you?
And how is it possible that those kinds of things happen so often in that place?
It’s a mystery that bears further investigation.
Godspeed, and thanks for all your kind words, and see you around.
Curley
From the Burning Blog at www.burningman.com.
25 days until the Man burns in Black Rock City…and I won’t be there to see it.
I won’t be there to feel the nearly chaotic frenzy of energy, anticipation, and absolute freedom that comes as the energy reaches it’s peak and the city gathers around the burn pyre. I won’t be there to spin with abandon through the relentless soundblender of camps, people and art cars that covers the playa like an audio blanket. I won’t be at Burning Man this year and I know that I’m not alone. There will only be two of the four Broke Dudes representing Destination Burning Man...
I have heard many reasons – speculations and rants – as to why those who have sparked the Fire will not be burning this year. A few have felt disconnected from this year’s theme of The American Dream. Others are feeling the pinch of the American economic reality and are just plain too broke to go. While some who are broke are going anyway, knowing that all that they need and desire will come to them on the playa if they channel the Pure Power of Potential. Still others are skipping the Burn this year because they have grown disenchanted with the way things have changed, “It’s not the same anymore…it’s too this, or it’s too that.” Whatever the myriad reasons for not going to Burning Man this year, one this is for sure, there will still be a lot of fucking people making the journey out to the Black Rock Desert seeking a cosmic party, a spiritual awakening, random sex, art, creative self expression, community or a combination all of these. But, I won’t be one of them.
I am not going to Burning Man because I don’t want to go. I am longing to spark the fires of creative self expression and dive into the dusty melting pot of the most absolute freedom that I have ever know. I want to Light It Up and Burn It Down. I want to blow out the limiting thoughts and habits of the Default World and delve deeper into the core of who I am. I want to be inspired and entertained. I want to admire the beautiful people. I want to be among the freaky people – my people. I want to reconnect with my tribe. I want to receive the gifts of strangers and offer them my gifts in return. I want to be cracked open and filled with the power of intention, Love, creativity and deeper self-awareness. I want go to Burning Man, but I’m not.
This year I don’t have the bandwidth to go to the Burn, to prepare for the Burn, to be at the Burn, to decompress from the Burn. I straight up don’t have the time in my life to commit to Burning Man this year. “But it’s just a week. You can break out of the confines of the Default World for a week, can’t you?” No. Not this year.
My 2007 Burning Man experience (including pre- and post- playa) awakened me to the Pure Power of Potential – the ability to manifest anything that you want, when you want it; the soul attraction that draws the abundance of the Universe to you. I have harnessed that power over the last year to bring many of my personal and professional goals and visions to fruition in the Default World. The truth is, I not going to Burning Man because I am choosing to stay present with all that I have created from the energy I got from the 2007 Burn.
The Fire is still burning inside me. It has dimmed and times I thought it was snuffed out, but it continues to smolder and as we approach the pilgrimage to the playa and the burning of the man the fire rises in me. I will Burn this summer, as I have done all year. I will create space to escape the Default World and revel beneath the wide sky. I will Light It Up and Burn It Down. The spirit and energy of the playa lives inside of me.
23 days.
In a little over three weeks, the Man will burn. Over 50,000 revelers, seekers and freaks will gather around the effigy on a remote, desolate, dry lake bed in a forgotten corner of Nevada to drum, dance with fire and lose their minds to the magic of the moment.
Though I've long decided that I won't be returning to participate in The Event in the Desert in 2008, I have to admit that with the arrival of August, Black Rock City's invisible, inevitable gravitational pull is agitating my soul. I have other projects and efforts I am dedicated to this year, namely establishing a relationship and a new home with an amazing woman and very special 7 year-old boy, but that doesn't negate my natural affinity for ritual, for community gatherings in sacred spaces, for ecstatic release, for psychedelic sojourning, for intense life-reflection and inward reorientation and for creative pranksterism.
My Burn brother Edubious and I have hatched alternative plans for the Burn weekend, and we plan on some deep-delving and freestyle soul-expression in the land above tree line in Washington's North Cascades. We'll be with all y'all, if not geographically, surely in spirit. More on that journey later...
As the days lean in closer to the gathering, I feel all kinds of emotions bubbling up, all kinds of personal needs I recognize as neglected, and an intense desire to create and share with friends. The most I can muster together for now is sharing music with the listeners dialed in to this dBM network. To that end, I'm reposting my Hearts of Flame, a Burning Man tribute-trilology in a podcast formulation.
I set out to make a cohesive 1-hour mix, but got carried away on a wave of inspiration, and didn't wind the mix up until 4+ hours later. I had to split it up and the Hearts of Flame trilogy was born. It was a mixing session that lifted my skills to a new level -- I took what I knew about serving up music mixes and then pushed my own boundaries until I ended up with a blend that was like nothing I had heard before. It was strange and lucid and inspired and unpredictable, with massively overlaid sounds morphing in to a weird soundtrack emanating from my heart.
Listening to it today, there are all kinds of things I would do different, tracks I would like to get rid of and transitions made smoother. Yet when I hear it I am instantly transported to Black Rock City, as well as to those feelings of participating in the Burn from far away. It connects me to the primary vibe of the Burn, plugs me in and takes me away.
So, yesterday I decided that to share it here on Destination Burning Man and plan on posting one chapter of it per week from today until the Burn. (I posted it in 2006 as I was creating it on my other podcasting website, The Podcast Cafe, but have a more sympathetic audience right here.)
I hope it will inspire those of you who are busy getting ready for the journey to the Black Rock Desert right now. I send it out with the intention of connecting all of us, those who are Burn-bound and those who have chosen other routes this year. If Hearts of Flame stimulates you in any way, I'd love to hear about it: destinationburingman@gmail.com
Love and dusty kisses, DJ Playaduster
DJ Playaduster just posted the third and final installment in The Green Man Trilogy podcast series -- you can stream it over at the podcast page right this very moment!
The story starts with the mix entitled DISORIENTATION, a sonic sound collage made up of DJ sets, conversations and weird late night soundings that were wild-harvested from Black Rock City and the open playa using a digital soundstick during Burning Man 2007. The piece represents the blissful confusion and spun-out enlightenment that can occur when one travels the city, on foot or bike, through the night until daybreak. It attempts to recreate the mad mash-up of noise that engulfs you everywhere you travel.
REORIENTATION follows, naturally, and it charts a musical course meant to symbolize the soul-navigation that must occur when one leaves the playa, with dust in one's pockets and new fire in one's heart, and begins to reassimilate back in to your daily life at home, work and in relationships. Featuring sporadic commentary from Hekter McElliott, as he attempts to explain his Yvonda version 2.0/Marsupial Thumbdrive theories, this mix also reflects the musical evolution that Playaduster underwent at Burning Man (to sample the range of influences, see DISORIENTATION!)
And so, finally, we arrive at the third chapter, REINTEGRATION. While careful listening will reveal the musical landscape to be in kinship with the groove of REORIENTATION, the tone and tenor of the conversations and philosophizing takes a distinct turn as Playaduster and Edubious look back and reflect upon the crucible experiences of the Burn.
So far as we can tell, the release of REINTEGRATION contains the last dusty tidbits of field recordings left from Burning Man 2007, and also pretty much taps the last drops of insight and inspiration for creating Green Man-themed art projects: musical podcasts, essays of reflection, movies, photo slideshows, etc. etc. DJ Playaduster is feeling, well, done. Moving on to what's next. Grateful, satisfied and grounded.
Just so happens that the release of this last bit of Green Man juju comes near the Burnal Equinox, or the pivot point on the opposite end of the year from the Burn. It was on the Burnal Equinox, 2007, that DJs Playaduster and Edubious dropped the first musical podcast mixes (which you can still access here and here). A nice bit of unintentional cosmic harmony, and entirely not surprising.
Upon sharing these notions with Edubious, the Doobsauce responded by saying, "You know, it took us six months to build it all up, and then it took 6 more months to tear it all down again." Well put. The Burn is a 10-day event in the desert, but Burning Man is a feeling, a groove, a beacon that shines in to lives all around the planet regardless of time or place. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
DJ Edubious, upon listening to the last chapter in the Green Man Trilogy, also had this to share:
Wow. I just finished my first full listen to REORIENTATION. My body is here at work, and I am trying to look like I am doing some kind of work that is related to the paycheck that I receive bi-weekly. Internally, my mind is cruising through past landscapes between here and the Black Rock Desert.
I am circling over the towering cliffs and ox bow bending river at Smith Rocks State Park.
I am standing amidst the circle of the Australian goddess tribe, reeling from a kiss that was shared through the electric buzz of a medicinal cocktail.
I am striding across the Playa toward the man, in full regalia, amidst the Love and friendship of the Boogie Universal Crew.
I am in the kitchen at Sunnyland, uttering the prophecy of the Pure Power of Possibility and Potential.
I am gone. Lost in the jumble of electro-nurf Ikea beats; thankful for the reprieve of Bob Marley and Sufjan Stevens. I can feel the cold winter air and welcome isolation of Snow Flamingo Studios through the haze of ganja smoke, belly-warming whisky and Juble Ale sippin'.
I see the tears glistening in your eyes and revisit in me the gift of clarity and commitment that you shared with me on my birthday.
I feel the closure of the Green Man/Burning Man 2007 Archival Project. It's all in the bottle. Waiting for us pick it up, dust it off and release the genie that will take us back to those many fading moments of bliss, creativity, collaboration, challenge, beauty, community, music and Love.
I am moved from this place toward the flame that continues to Burn inside of me.
It's been quite the journey. Thanks for sharing it with us during the past year. Who knows what will go down over the next...
Lots of love,
The Four Broke Dudes
ps. DJ Playduster wants me to recommend to you another podcast channel produced by his compatriot DJ Fundi; check out all of the goodness over at the Podcast Cafe, featuring Podcast Cafe episodes, a channel devoted to live music bootlegs, a direct transglobal link to Radio Free Fundi and the Fundiblog.
Check out the latest additions to the What is Burning Man page : Field reports from Burning Man 2007 as told by Ramona Mayhem and Moontroll. You can grok them right here...
In an attempt to catch a bit of the cosmic whirlwind and bottle it up like a dusty tincture, Hekter has produced a lengthy stream-of-consciousness report from his experience at Burning Man 2007...
You can download a pdf version here, or visit the What is Burning Man page to link to it online.
Your comments and questions are welcome.
Unfortunately, the resolution of this version is so low that the viewer misses out on some of the rich detail. We're working on getting Burning Man 2007 movies posted on our Films webpage, but something isn't working correctly as of yet, and Moontroll hopes to rebuild the Films section so that higher-quality versions of his movies can be shared.
Stay tuned....and if you enjoy the show, please leave a comment and/or rating at YouTube!
This blog is gonna be pretty quiet through the winter. This whole website is due for an overhaul to reflect the fact that we did indeed make it to Burning Man this year, along with Bellingham's kick-ass Boogie Universal crew and the ill-fated Boogie Pyramid. Did I mention that it collapsed in the first giant dust storm on Thursday? Turned out to be but a simple wrinkle in our plans: we rolled up the wreckage, set it to the side, dug some sand out of our ear holes and partied on. Took the Boogie out underneath the stars, and we're probably all the better for it.
Did I mention that the Three Broke Dudes became the Four? So many tales to tell...
While there might not be moment to moment updates and reports as during the months and weeks leading up to the Burn, we are working with the raw materials that we collected on the playa -- photos, audio field recordings, video, stories, sand, soulsauce reductions -- and plan on sharing what we craft with our friends, fellow Boogiers and Burners and random wanderers to this here website. In other words, Edubious, moontroll and Hekter will be writing stories, making movies and slideshows, mixing podcasts and the like over the dark nights of winter and posting them here and there across the digital spectrum at destinationburningman.com. This blog will make note as to when something is new, and tell you where to find it too (right now, there is a short docudrama film that moontroll made to give respects to the dust storms and double rainbow being hosted on YouTube right here; he's hard at work on another film following the rise and fall of the Boogie Pyramid and Edubious is halfway done mixing up his musical response to his first Burn in podcast form...stay tuned.)
We also invite you to share your creations, memories and tall tales from the Green Man on this website. Contact us at destinationburningman@gmail.com with your ideas, links to your Burning stuff, hallucinations, music mixes, whatever...
Stay in touch!
sweet
photo by Ramona Mayhem
The Three Broke Dudes have each made it safely back from Burning
Man!
As you might have noticed, we haven't updated the dBM blog much
since getting back -- I've received a number of emails from readers
following the journey asking, "Well, Three Broke Dudes, how did it
go?!? What happened with the Boogie Pyramid? Did you see the Man
burn early?" etc. etc.
Well, it has been a rough transition for each of us fitting back in
to our lives here at home. We're still processing the experience
& trying to integrate some of the lessons in to our day-to-day.
So, be patient. The storytelling will come. But we're gonna need
some time....
Edub and I made it about 5 minutes off playa post-Temple Burn before collapsing on the side of the road. The next morn we saw Grapenuts and Pommes Frites in Gerlach waiting for a tow truck. Then our friend Rachel in Cedarville with a dead car. Then Ramona and Hekter in the Oregon Outback talking to a police officer....sheesh. We hooked up and caravaned with the Ramona Mobile to Bend on monday and got a Motel 8 room for one of the deepest sleeps I've ever had. Edub and I stopped at Smith Rock north of Bend to mark his 35th bday and do some decompression work -- we tried to sort the week out the rest
of the ride home, and began to discover some of the deeper lessons of our week on the playa.
Didn't get back to B'ham til Wed night -- sorry to have missed the truck unloading -- and am now staring at my truck full of dusted-out shit with trepidation. Downloading fotos and sound recordings to my computer and reading up on the post-Green Man gossip, rants and raves on Tribe and ePlaya too. Haven't begun to talk about the experience with my partner, roommate or friends calling to check in. The experience feels to personal, sacred and indescribable to begin sharing it -- I want to hold every moment close, deep inside me. I want to keep these embers glowing for as long as possible before the default world sucks the magic out of me.....
Does anybody have Bassnectar recordings I can burn? I am going through heavy withdrawals...
Can't wait for the Boogie Decompression gathering, and am glad to have Bassnectar at Rumors in Nov. to look forward to!
Finally, did you hear about the 2008 BM theme? You won't believe it -- at first I was repulsed, but 24 hours later, I can see the twisted, reprogramming, ironic
possibilities and think it will work out: http://burningman.com/art_of_burningman/bm08_theme.html
love to you all and good luck with the reintegration,
moontroll
Just wanted to give a giant shout out to the Booty Universal..... I am grateful for the opportunity to share space with an amazing tribe of funks(wo)man and feel like I have a whole other crockpot of family simmering on the coastal shelf. Intertidal salad bar of O.G. goodies. If any of ya's find yourself in North Idaho or Spokane, know you have a place to stay and a story to hear. My treehouse is your treehouse!!
Thinking of quitting this appraisal business and focusing on writing and photography......
Vamos a Ver!!
Much Love and a lil' rooster sauce,
Hekter
THANK YOU ALL! I am still so incredibly blown away by the way in which we did what we did. Creation. Creativity. Collaboration. Resilience. Perserverence. Love.
I am sorry that I was not able to be up in Bellingham to help with the unload. Thank you to those of you who put forward the energy and effort to get the truck unloaded. I will definitely be coming up Bham way for a decompression party and will be happy to help refurbish the
Boogie equipment.
I don't recall the exodus from BRC as I was in a state of delerium like I have never experienced - bone deep exhaustion and the residuals of many days of medicinal excess reduced my exodus experience to a semi-lucid dream of blurred tail lights and uncomprehensible requests and comments from Moontroll. I was spent. I have never been so happy to throw down my sleeping bag on the dusty side of a highway.
The drive home was spent recalling and capturing details of the the days spent on the playa. It felt imperative to capture the memories before the details blew away like so much playa dust. As it was, it was still pretty difficult to recall it all.
I am still Burning and will do whatever I can to continue to Burn as I reintegrate into the default world. So far the transition has been slow but promises to accelerate with a return to work on Monday. I look forward to joining you all to rekindle the Burning man and woman in each of us.
Much Love & Respect!
Be the Peace. Spread the Love. Breathe deep and BURN!
~ Edubious