I did it! I went to Burning Man! At least, sorta. Mostly. Granted, this year was the “Rogue Burn”. It wasn’t officially Burning Man. But in a way, I think it was - for me - even more Burning Man than Burning Man would have been.
Flash back to last Tuesday or so. I was feeling a bit down because I wasn’t going to get to go to Scotland. I pinged Carla to ask what she was up to and whether she wanted to go sailing. And instead she asked me to go to Burning Man. This is why you have friends. She proceeded to throw me in a car along with half of her tent and an air mattress and a sleeping bag, and 48 hours later off I was to the Nevada desert with her, her boyfriend, her boyfriend’s dog, and two other friends Dave and Rene. I told myself I would just have a chill time and enjoy being out there in the desert, and, you know what: I did! I didn’t party hard, just hung out with friends, had some good conversations, probably one too many cheap beers, and rescued a 21 year old by driving her a mile back to camp on a Panda.
So, here goes:
Notes From The Playa - Day 1
Notes from my experiences, here in no particular order. Typed out on my MacBook Air as I sit on Carla’s boyfriend Andrew’s very nice chair, at 7:45 in the morning on Saturday while watching the sunrise over the dried lake bed that everyone calls “The Playa”, I assume ironically since water is the one thing that nobody has.
1) Coming In Was Surreal - even though I was expecting it to some degree, coming in to the lake bed was surreal. Until you hit the turn off, it’s a pretty standard Nevada desert experience, familiar to me since I rode my bike across Route 50 with Bike the US for MS - pretty sparse, rolling two lane country highway, with some vegetation along the sides. But once you turn off, it becomes surreal. Carla tells me that in a normal year, there would be a line of cars and civilization starting right from the get-go, but in this weird renegade year, there was literally nobody there - nobody to greet us, nobody else to see, just a great vast expanse of nothing, as far as the eye can see. There’s nothing to break the skyline, nothing for your eye to latch onto. It reminded me of the Nothing from NeverEnding Story, or possibly a new map in a video game. Just clouds of dust and a perfectly even white horizon.
2) The Tablua Rasa - this is obvious, of course, but the tabula rasa of the space really is powerful. The fact that nothing is here - nothing to fight against, nothing to act with or against - just the freedom to define your own time and experience.
3) My Phone Is Chatty - I woke up this morning and looked at my phone screen and was surprised to see a dozen or so notifications. I thought perhaps I had gotten a minute of internet - that does happen from time to time. But it was just my phone telling me things that various app owners thought I might want to know - from The NY Times Crossword to Tinder and everything in between. No wonder we have short attention spans.
4) Bikes - My god, the bikes! Bikes everywhere. Little ones, big ones, nice ones, crappy ones, fat tires, skinny tires, most of them lit up like Christmas or more. As someone who loves bikes but in a totally different context and for a radically different reason, it was really awe inspiring to see so many bikes and it also weirdly made me feel like I was home, and welcome. I think it’s my favorite aspect of the whole experience so far.
5) The Dust - it really does get everywhere. It’s not as bad as people made it out to be - my asshole is not encrusted - but boy, don’t bring anything you want to stay clean, ‘coz it ain’t gonna. I literally just sat my laptop down for a minute and came back to it, and the dust already was coating the keyboard.
6) The Music - Someone is always playing music, all the time. Like, 24/7. You get used to it. I even managed to sleep through it, which is very unusual for me. If I had one request/criticism, it’s that 99% of the music is the same basic EDM. I would love to hear someone mix it up and start playing blues, or even rock. So much great music out there, and really who’s dancing at 8 in the morning? Couldn’t you take a 5 minute break?
7) The Temperature - it’s pretty damn cold at night, and pretty damn hot during the day. Honestly, people exaggerated this part a little bit; but still, it’s interesting to watch the change of the way people dress and interact with the environment, between the hot, bright day and the cold, dark night.
8) The Lights - The environment at night is beyond surreal. The bikes play a big part in this, as do the art cars; the sensation of random stochastic movement is intense, and could be disorienting, except that it is all so friendly and you don’t really need your sense of orientation anyway.
9) Backpacker Pantry meals - they’re tasty!
Thoughts from the Playa - Last Day
10) I really admire people who are emotionally and logistically self-sufficient, but are still capable of being emotionally and physically available. I bonded with a friend of Carla’s named Dave Porter - he’s the guy that came and fixed my bathtub - and I admire his self-sufficiency without being distant.
11) I really would love to see what Burning Man people can do with the full art and organization. I’m not looking forward to 8 hour lines and $500 tickets, but I guess I will have to come back.
12) One of the things that struck me immediately upon arrival was my perception that I felt I was in the company of mostly white people. In the interest of fairness, there certainly were some non-white people but I coudn’t shake that feeling all weekend. I’m sorry about the next sentence because I’m sure it will rub people the wrong way but it really struck me as a bit of a tribal experience for white people. It certainly was not that I experienced any exclusion or racism, but still, I couldn’t ignore my feelings.
13) Living here for 7-10 days would require a whole new level of commitment and organization. In general, you *can* sorta just plan to be here last minute, and you won’t die or anything, but the more money and time you put into it, the higher quality of life you can have.
14) Unsurprisingly, taking a break from the Internet is really great. It’s funny though because there is some remote cell service, so occasionally the Internet pops in and dumps a whole load of notifications and such. I call it the “Internet coming by to say hello”.
15) Carla’s boyfriend Andrew had these two cool scooter-type things for kids in the shape of animals - one a Panda, the other a Leopard. They don’t go very fast but boy were they the highlight of the show. One day a random stranger - a woman who looked about 21 - wandered into our camp, utterly lost. I ended up taking her back to her camp on the back of the Panda (“Ling-Ling”, if you must know), and it was one of the best parts of the trip just because it was so fun to ride that thing, so fun to problem solve and fun to be useful and wanted. She was really lost!
16) It is so easy to get lost out here; I hear that the regular organization builds in roads and other such, but this being the “renegade burn” there was none of that. I brought an AirTag that I left at camp, and that ended up being a huge success because even without any service or anything, it was easy to navigate back to camp. For folks who don’t have that - like the lost 21-year-old - there is an app, What 3 Words which, while not perfect, is a lot better than nothing. It basically just lets you communicate a point in space to someone else and then just sorta guides you to that point. It doesn’t work anywhere near as well as the AirTag but you don’t have to have an AirTag.
17) My friends - and especially Carla - really went above and beyond for me on this one. I have to do something nice for them in return. I owe them one, big time.
18) I think one of the things I liked the most about the experience is that it genuinely inspires a desire to give back. All cynicism aside, there is something about the event that makes you say “I want to do something cool and then give it away to everybody”. If for no other reason than that, I think it’s an amazing event and accomplishment.
19) I told Porter I was going to blog about it and he said “let me know if you manage to describe Burning Man because I don’t think anyone ever has”, and I see what he means. On one level it is just a prosaic camping event/music festival/art show in the dust, but on another level it’s a bit hard to really pin down. I think you would need some poetry; perhaps I will feel inspired in a few days.
And that’s it! Pics to follow.
