Points of view do change, and back when I had first returned from Burning Man 2001, while I had little use for the Green Tortoise, I was an unreserved fan of Burning Man, and strongly leaning toward being a supporter of BMORG. This is what I originally wrote ...
" Once a year, out in the desert near the town of Gerlach, Nevada, there is a festival of the arts, and general celebration of strangeness called "Burning Man". No, that doesn't quite cover it. OK, how about this? 24,000 people get together, create a temporary city, in which there are many, many theme camps, each of which makes its own reality. During the day, much of this looks amateurish, albeit often in a charming and creative way. By night, it is positively surreal, an oasis in the midst of a 21st century desert of boredom.
This is not to say that all is wonderful. It would be a lie, for example, to say that independence of thought is encouraged, or even really tolerated in Black Rock City. Political Correctness frequently runs out of control. A lot of the "rebellion" is choreographed. As for the sense of "brotherhood" (or should that be "siblinghood"), an all too typical image was that to be found in the Temple of Ishtar, where, in a dance that was supposed to promote "sacred sexuality", the dancers were admonished to not notice each other! The only kind of "sexuality" that is going to promote, is masturbation. The real thing calls for an intense fascination with the other, not self-absorption and obliviousness.
But, you know what? The things that are wrong with Burning Man - and, yes, there are a lot - are almost all things that are wrong with most of American society right now, and usually in far greater measure. Let me tell you a little story about things going right. I've managed to work my way to the inner circle around the main Burn. "With 24,000 people there?". What can I say? Determination pays off. Also, given that I was one of the few people there who was still unclothed at that hour, getting close to that much heat appealed to me a lot more than it did to a lot of those more fully dressed.
When the man collapses and burns, the resulting fire is not symmetrical. As some of us approached an extension of the fire, I noticed a bit of unwelcome behavior, all too familiar to anybody who has ever gone to the Independence Day festivities in Grant Park. There was a chain of people, holding hands, shoving their way through the crowd, in the inner circle. Worse still, they were shoving people from behind, right toward that outcropping of flame!
Some were already all too close. So, as the leader approached me from behind, I told him to cut it out, that he was going to get somebody hurt doing that. Have you been in Grant Park, during a crowd scene? You're expecting a nasty confrontation, right? Or a lot of attitude, at the very least? So was I, but it didn't happen that way. The leader looked ahead, saw the problem, and stopped being part of it. Instantly. No argument, no hesitation. To my amazement, I then saw the response travel like a wave around the circle, as people slowed down, and stopped shoving. Total cooperation.
If only crowds worked like that at Rock concerts, eh? Sitting in my living room, right now, as I type this, it almost doesn't seem real, even though I clearly remember it. That, much more that the nastiness and pettiness of the mailing lists, was the spirit of Burning Man, in the time I experienced it. Are there dysfunctional elements? Yes, but they are ones that Burning Man inherits from its era and cultural setting, and ones that one can watch fading away during the week of the festival, with amazing speed.
What are you going to find out there, that is worth the trouble of getting out there, and dealing with a "harsh desert environment"? Freedom. Real freedom. When you watch the funkmobile working its way down one of the "streets" of Black Rock City, at its comfortable 2 mph, and you see the people dancing all around it, completely at ease with each other and themselves, you can't help but think of one thing. That scene could never have happened, here at home.
The police would have been out dispersing the crowd, and ticketing the operators of the vehicle, even if it was going down a path in a private park. People would be getting into fistfights, because somebody danced too close to somebody else, or because somebody thought somebody else looked at his girlfriend. We are so used to being told where we can walk, and what we can look at, who we can talk to, and what we can talk about, that we've forgotten what real freedom is. We've forgotten that the possibility of spontaneity is an essential part of it, and maybe what we really need is to have 24,000 "freaks" descend upon us and slap us out of our collective coma.
What a shame that it only happens once per year.
I'm not going to try to explain the experience to you, because I can't. I could have the videocameras running 24-7 with me, the whole time, and you still wouldn't have the feeling of being there. I could talk to you about how surreal and smoky the maze became as the dust storm hit, or of the illusion that somebody created of a cartoon kangaroo dancing across the Playa, as I encountered these things with a group of all-too-temporary friends, and you'd go "so, it's a special effect, so what?", because it's just qualitatively different, being on the other side of the screen, or the stage. All that I can say, is go visit the main Burning Man site, and start planning your trip. Included, for your interest and convenience, are a few links of interest to local burners. Have fun."
Did you get the impression, coming in, that maybe I had a few misgivings about this passage? If so, good, because I do. At the time that I had that experience by the fire, I took it as a sign of reasonability. But was it? A shepherd can get a flock of sheep to not wander off a cliff, but this is not a tribute to the reasonability of sheep, just to the reasonability of the shepherd who knows how to put the herd instinct of the sheep to good use. What I was to find was just how well developed that herd instinct was in much of Burnerdom, and how little reason mattered in much of what went on.
Looking back, it occurs to me that I was large (well over six feet tall), a few years older than the person at the head of the line, and visibly annoyed. In short, I probably came across as an authority figure; the lead man gave in to me, and his friends, used to going along to get along, followed suit, all without my ever having tried to intimidate anybody. This produced good results in the short run, under those circumstances, but it really was not a victory for the human spirit. I saw good things that night, not necessarily because they were there, but possibly because I so wanted them to be there that I jumped to positive conclusions which weren't warranted by the facts visible to me.
[ Return to "Bad Times on the Green Tortoise" ]
