17. Burning Man

I myself have been the victim of more than one inveterate bore who has trapped me in a corner and proselytized about Burning Man. I don’t want to be that guy.

However, I do want to describe this extraordinary event.

Burning Man is an annual week long event held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, about 7 hours drive from San Francisco. The event attracts up to 50,000 visitors whose camps and installations form a temporary city in the middle of the desert. The city is carefully mapped out in the form of a giant horseshoe, approximately 6 miles from side to side. The open space in the middle is known as the ‘playa’. It is a vast and flat white surface on which enormous works of art are exhibited, including the eponymous effigy of the wicker man which is burnt at the end of the week.

Pyramid Lake, 70 miles south of Black Rock Desert

Black Rock Desert, Nevada

Within ‘Black Rock City’, as it is called, the normal rules do not apply. There is no currency: you either rely on your own supplies, or you barter for goods. Many people set up lounges, bars, clubs and disco tents in which everything is free. There is no requirement to wear clothes and many people wander around naked. There is an attitude of extreme permissiveness; the freedom to take drugs is a part of that.

So, those are the facts. Does it actually work? Well, to an astonishing extent, the answer is yes. I found it very interesting to see that, when people are trusted with the freedom to behave as they want, they tend to behave responsibly. When people visit a bar or lounge where food and drinks are provided through a stranger’s generosity, it is remarkable how rarely that generosity is abused. Admittedly the event only lasts a week; I am not sure what would happen if resources became scarce, but everything seems to function very smoothly for that week.

You certainly don’t have to set up a free bar or disco tent. One of the aims of Burning Man is that people should feel free to offer whatever skills they have. Artists display their creations - there are many spectacular works on display in the desert and many of the pieces would have taken months to create. Other people give trampoline or trapeze performances or set up anything from healing tents to padded dungeons for couples who want to explore S&M and bondage fantasies. And if you just come as an observer, as I did, no one seems to mind.

At first it is disconcerting to be invited into people's lounge-bar style camps and to have drinks pressed into your hand by strangers. However, I thought of Khalil Gibran and reminded myself that there is charity in receiving as well as in giving:

And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;

For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.

From The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran

Another interesting aspect of the event is the extreme friendliness of participants. It is of course possible to question to what extent this is real and to want extent it may be fueled by psychotropic drugs. However, it does go hand in hand with the attitude fostered by a community, albeit a temporary one, based on gifting and not selling. I noticed people's friendliness most in the early morning, when I was wandering around by myself, having been woken by the sunrise (since I was sleeping out in the desert in my sleeping bag). Everyone I walked past – everyone who wasn’t doing yoga, that is – would smile and say hello. I started greeting strangers in that way myself and I certainly begun to feel better for it. It makes me think of the school of psychology which argues that certain behaviors will, in and of themselves, lead to certain mental states. Adherents suggest that you should smile at yourself in the mirror every morning because that muscular action will automatically trigger a more positive mental state. It sounds silly but perhaps it works.

For many people, planning for next year’s Burning Man begins as soon as this year’s event ends. My own trip this year was much more spontaneous and only came about because a friend had kindly left a spare ticket for me at the gate. So, I drove the 7 hours into the desert with a sleeping bag, a lightweight camping gas burner, a few tins of chili beans, some trail mix, and a few water bottles. I parked my car on the outside of the outer ring of the horseshoe. From there I was able to walk into the desert and to sleep near the foot of the encircling mountains, hundreds of meters away from the nearest tent.

When I left Burning Man after two nights and three days, I opened the boot of my car to change back into my jeans. As I did so, I had a strong sense that I myself had changed, that I was no longer exactly the same person who had stowed those jeans in the back of the car upon arrival. I think a lot of people have this feeling, and it is partly what keeps people coming back. However, it is hard for me to be scientific about it. Hard to investigate the reasons for this feeling. There are too many variables.

For a start, I love the desert. I have always loved the desert. I love its dry heat and the unabashed intensity of the sun. I love the feeling that the desert is very clean – sure you get dusty but there are no flies, no unpleasant smells. Despite not washing for three days, I never felt dirty. I love the extremity of the desert, its absolutism. Everything is black or white – alive or dead – there are no shades of gray, no gradual processes, no slow rotting or decay. Throw away a banana peel and it will have disintegrated by evening. I love the fact that the desert forces me to confront these extremes and, in doing so, maybe to gain a new perspective on my own day to day concerns.

There are hills and mountains surrounding black rock desert, but the desert floor is flat and white. It reflects the sun’s rays and creates a very intense and unusual light. On the second day I had a feeling that I usually only get when I am high up in the mountains, and even then only rarely. On those occasions, I have the impression that I can see objects more clearly, that the objects themselves are more individualized, more clearly defined. I feel that each object is sufficient unto itself, each object is dignified by its own sphere of existence. The things in the world seem more lonely but also more proud. It is hard to explain but I certainly had that feeling in the desert.

There is a very interesting aesthetic at Burning Man: it feels like a millenarian vision, a Mad-Max post-apocalyptic phantasmagoria, sci-fi meets Conan the Barbarian. It may be what the future will look like. People wander around in every conceivable form of dress (and state of undress) though most wear dark goggles in case of sand storms. Fantastical ‘art cars’ prowl around in the distance – these are the only vehicles which are allowed to cross the immense ‘playa’. They are the creations of Burning Man devotees – for example, a huge metallic spider with eight functioning legs, a fire-breathing dragon and a giant pirate’s ship on wheels. At night these vehicles weave their way across the vastness between floodlit works of art, their edges defined with electroluminescent wire. It is quite a spectacle.

art cars

Tree made from animal bones

You don’t have to be high to enjoy Burning Man, but it helps. I dosed myself with a cocktail of LSD and ketamine and spent some time in awe at the miracle of my own breathing; I felt as if I were breathing life into the universe with each breath. Then I walked some distance out into the desert and conversed with my own shadow. I lay down, limbs splayed, beneath the burning desert sun. I spent an hour staring at a piece of mud (and exploring the interstices of stellar space). I thought I saw infinity in a handful of dust.

Later, when the effects were beginning to wear off, I made my way to one of the music tents on the very edge of the Black Rock City. I sat in the shade of the white canopy and stared out into space; there was nothing between me and the distant mountains. I felt as if I had arrived at the ragged edge of something. I was reminded of the end of Philip Larkin’s magnificent poem, Here:

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

I certainly intend to return to Burning Man. It is a fascinating human experiment as well as a tremendous visual spectacle. There were a number of things I was apprehensive about before going, though I need not have been. Firstly, I thought the event would probably take itself too seriously. I don’t think that is the case. I particularly enjoyed the piece of art below, in which a ‘spiritual’ looking woman says, ‘Art will save the world’, to which her interlocutor replies, ‘Fuck Art, I’m here because breasts.’




Secondly, I was afraid of encountering a lot of holier/greener-than-thou attitudes. If anything, the opposite was the case. I was surprised by the wanton burning of refuse, petrol and propane as part of the installations and art cars, and by the generators of the thousands of RVs.

Thirdly, I was afraid of a lack of sanitation and a sense of being packed in like sardines. However, the desert feels pure, the portaloos are plentiful and cleaned with impressive regularity, and space is really the last thing that I needed to worry about.

short self-interview