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Surviving the hottest, wildest art show on earth - Burning Man |
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Written by Julie Patel, McClatchy-Tribune
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Wednesday, 09 August 2006 |
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In less than a month, the desert encampment and social experiment known as Burning Man will rise from the northern Nevada sands, drawing roughly 35,000 people.
To the uninitiated, Burning Man is:
a) A drug-fueled hippie fest in the searing heat, or
b) the wildest art show in the world.
To those of us who have been there,
Burning Man is:
c) All of the above.
Imagine a 17th-century Spanish galleon look-alike sailing across the desert, a dozen cars fashioned to look like cupcakes whirling around one another, each other, and thousands of topless women riding in a parade on dusty bicycles.
Picture a 50-foot mechanical flower lighting up the night and throngs of people — high on drugs or life — dancing wildly under it. The week culminates in a night of fire shows, drumming, dancing and the burning of a 40-foot wooden “man.”
This is Burning Man.
The yearly ritual started small, 21 years ago, on the beaches of San Francisco. It’s now so big that an entire municipality — Black Rock City — is built each year, complete with temporary infrastructure: roads, a post office, a recycling center, an airport, and an informal, volunteer public safety department.
For seasoned Burners, it’s at least one time in the year when they can focus on celebrating life and fantastic, fleeting art, bonding with friends old and new, living in a collaborative way and experimenting with new personas.
The hot, dusty days are partly spent surviving: drinking water, finding shelter from the sun, protecting eyes from blasts of sandy wind. There are workshops, too, on everything from philosophy to how to better please your partner in bed.
Burning Man offers people a chance to live and work collaboratively to survive — if only for a few days. My friends and I built a geodesic dome from scratch last year. We spent about 10 days and evenings together before the festival — slicing steel rods into the right sizes, flattening the ends with a hammer, drilling holes into them and assembling the rods into a web of triangles. The dome was useful but more importantly, we made some meaningful memories building it.
The hope is that some of this communal spirit will have ripple effects back in “normal” life. Just as the first day or so in Black Rock City is a culture shock, coming home can be a culture shock.
This is especially true for the class of people for whom Burning Man is a utopian society. For these people, much of the rest of the year is spent preparing for Burning Man. They start building their art months in advance. They throw and attend pre- and post-Burning Man parties. For them, joy and freedom happen 10 days a year.
Then, there are people who see it simply as a party — an exotic party — but a party nonetheless.
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|  | "Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth." | |
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| | My name is Michelle Turley and I'm 28 years old. I live in Severance with my hubbie, Brandon. We have 2 dogs and a cat. We enjoy camping, four-wheeling, and just being in the mountains. I like to cook, clean (go figure), flea market, and play poker. I have so much to say about poker... | |
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