14th
My First Burn
I went to “Burning Man” for the first time just over two weeks ago.
It was an amazing experience. It was, in fact, one of the more interesting (and charged) experiences of my life so far.
When I got back, full of inspiration, I had a go at describing it to people (“Imagine if a bunch of free-spirited artists and hippies took over the Las Vegas Strip and remodelled it on new age principles of peace, love and a society free of transactions, but left all the neon in place”).
Despite my best efforts, I found my own descriptions to be titillating for the listener, but inadequate for me, personally. A lot of people really loved my descriptions and got giddy, and told me how they would go next year.
Let’s face it, throw in visual spectacles, half-naked people and all-night parties, and it’s not exactly a tough sell.
However, I was the one who did not like my own descriptions of the event. I felt like I’d reduced it somehow to a mere spectacle of hedonism; somehow this was inadequate.
I think the reason for my disappointment at my own descriptions was that the visual feast of burning man (which is relatively easy to describe) is a byproduct of what made it such a great experience for me. Yes, there’s crazy art, and fantastically costumed (and uncostumed) people everywhere. Yes there are enourmous flames shooting into the sky from various bizarre structures and vehicles at any given moment. Yes, most people wear fantastic costumes with various blinking lights sewn into them at night. It’s all pretty exciting.
On the other hand, all of the sensory chaos is just a symptom of what Burning Man is all about, and if that’s all you focus on, then you’ve missed something: something important.
My old mentor Jeff Felmings was fond of referring to this country’s blander places as Generica. Burning Man is the opposite of Generica; it is the Anti-Strip-Mall. Everyone, and everything, inside Burning Man, is one-off, unique, spontaneous and alive. I’m pretty sure that when people create one-offs and surround themselves with one-offs, they themselves feel less like cogs in a machine and are reminded of their own uniqueness. From what I experienced, there’s no better way to feel fully alive.
Burning Man sits in stark contrast to the dull, routine efficiency of McDonalds, Starbucks, Walmart and the routinized version of the good life that we call the suburbs.
America is efficient. Burning Man thankfully, is not.
So the really interesting part was not what I saw, but how I felt when I was there. I felt like I could do anything I set my mind to, as all of these people at Burning Man had done. I felt like any project however weird or silly was legitimate and that I did not have to make any money or win any accolades for that project to have been worthwhile. I felt like any project I could imagine would be accepted by the community, without judgment. I loved that, at Burning Man, all excuses for not finding a way to express yourself (my boss won’t let me, my wife does’nt like it, it would be frowned on by my neighbors) were null and void.
That’s my big lesson from Burning Man. In a way its obvious, but in a way it’s profound. You have to take responsibility for your own shit. And if you make nothing, other than a wage check and a comfy house in the suburbs, that’s your choice, nobody made that choice for you. If you want something more. You have to go out and make it happen. The only thing stopping you is your own fear. So deal with it.
I’m off to make some cool shit happen. And if I fail, the only person I have to blame is myself.
