The Canticle of Necessity
This years Burning Man post, abandon hope of not being exposed to overwrought prose all ye who enter here.
I’m buying a pair of trousers at the Alternative Bring and Buy Sale when the stallholder stops me, wanting to point out a flaw in the hem. I push the money towards her shaking my head “I’m taking them to Burning Man”. What I meant was: I’m not going to get attached.
Between our two drivers we arrived at Pyramid Lake Reservation seven hours ahead of the time that we would be allowed to start queuing without being put in Detention Lot, the penalty box. Killing time we bought a permit and drove out to Pyramid Lake. On the beach trying badly to skim stones before giving up to spot lizards in the rocks and take deeply pretentious photos I kept being drawn back to the lake; a miracle of water in the desert.
We were all jittery calculations about time and distance and loud music playing as we inched through Gerlach’s mini queue by the last petrol station before the playa. Then greenery became sparse and the desert, the playa, opened up along side us and we kept driving forward against the sinking sun and dust storms on the horizon until we could see people making that right turn. Somewhere along the way meaning flipped over, for if Pyramid Lake is water in the desert then surely this is a desert of necessity. A miracle turned in on itself.
White outs in the queue and a 40-minute wait for tickets at Will Call meant that we didn’t roll into camp until late, somewhat fractious. But when I got up the first morning and walked out to see the Man, my bicycle still in pieces while we were on the hunt for a generous soul with the right tools, I felt stunned because it was exactly how I remembered (and I was scared, so scared that it wouldn’t live up to the new expectations on top of my previous expectations). At the same time, it will never be the same as last year and it can’t be. Everything is different and yet, long shadows crossing the playa from the dawn I’d just missed and it felt exactly the same. The last piece clicking in to place.
After they’ve searched your vehicle and you’ve got through the gate the greeters will say welcome home. Home. Later in the week one of my camp mates said that this was the place he’d been looking for his whole life.
One of the things that Black Rock City does is inspire great depth of feeling.
On Tuesday I turned up for my first shift at Center Camp. Making coffee is my most marketable skill that allows me to interact with people at a safe distance. Standing for hours as a volunteer is no less exhausting than standing for hours for your job and it felt oddly uncomfortable to be handling commercial transactions. It’s almost as though something in people defaults to consumer when money is involved. I’d foolishly signed up for a mid morning shift later in the week where I was slammed solidly for four hours, still working as a runner, my cashier was a veteran who in her other life is a New York pharmaceutical rep. She was aggressive, she jumped up onto the counter to yell at the queue about how they should hand their money over, she insulted almost everyone and she cried when a woman handed over a $20 note and said that we should use this to pay for the drinks of however many people it would cover. Further down at another till I heard one of the cashiers get up on the counter and yell “this isn’t fucking Starbucks, we’re all as hung-over and desperate for coffee as you.”
Somehow that felt better.
I only went to two scheduled events, something always seemed to come up and I let it. Some of the experiences that left the deepest impression on me last year were those unexpected moments of grace which the playa delivers. The things you can’t plan for. Biking out into deep playa to visit the cinema Mathias had seen during the ultra marathon we found two men fussing over a drone. They turned out to have done last years arieal video and were shooting footage for another one. Out of nowhere a vintage artcar rocked up playing the B-52s and 15 people jumped out and started dancing. On our way back we came across a speakeasy, the owner had a fuji instax and instant photos were stapled all over the bar, I offered to take a polaroid of him which is now attached there amongst all the others.
When I say you have to be there to understand that’s what I mean, you have to have dust in your hair and the noise from every side even when you make it out to the trash fence. The raw space of the playa leaving you breathless. That wholehearted commitment to everything you do, walking down the street as much as dancing under the stars as much as celebrating Shabbat with the sun slipping down past the mountains. You have to be there because it would be different, if you were there, and I can’t tell you what that would feel like. In the Sukkat Shalom talk on dust in Judaism a girl with bright pink hair said that the desert makes you accept your gifts as much as your weaknesses. The gifts that you might be rejecting because you want different gifts instead.
It would be different, if you were there, if you brought yourself and all you could do to the desert. If you were good with bikes and you ran across someone in deep playa who needed help repairing theirs. If you ran after a dust devil and other people joined you, dancing all the way along the playa. If you stopped to talk about the politics and ethics of spellchecking political rants. If you said hello, and how are you, and how can I help? If you were there to be part of those tangled beautiful connections that last five minutes or years. We connect, and knowing how something works doesn’t stop it from working. It’s made to be fragile and so we hold it dear. It’s made to be immediate and so we surrender the future for a week.
When Black Rock City is live it’s the third largest city in Nevada. A city built out of time and desire and everything we need that we are missing. It will always be different because the world is different, because we can only burn that brightly for so long, because we drag the pieces missing in our daily lives to the desert and fit them one against the other.
I picked up a copy of the Black Rock Gazette on Wednesday from one of the ultra marathon volunteers after my excursion to deep playa, my first time at the trash fence and having to push my bike through ground too soft to ride on. The city was behind me leaving me amongst all the bits of art and performance that remain off the map; the ones you have to discover. Dragging my bike back towards the Man, our pole star, I thought about one of the playa etiquette tips they’d included “concentrate on this year”. But oh, next year, as the week draws to a close we start to make those long-term plans. It cushions the shock of leaving, of knowing that we have to leave.
That night we were exploring the art by giving Burning Man ADD full reign, cycling towards whatever was shiniest, when I nearly went straight past what turned out to be one of my favorite things. It was a maze. I’d presumed it would be built to accommodate the average problem solving skills of drunk people and cycled on but then turned back because it couldn’t hurt to say yes to something unknown this time. 10 minutes later we suspected that they’d made it resistant to maze algorithms (follow one wall to get out), after 20 we were sure of it and theorize that it has something to do with the bridges, after 25 minutes we found out that they had a minotaur running round scaring people and I decided that nothing could make me happier, after 45 minutes we’d given up and were heading out when we accidently stumbled on a section we hadn’t been through before. It took us 50 minutes to solve which the crew said is the average time. It was an unexpected wonder, and when we thanked them and offered them a drink they were so pleased that we’d enjoyed it. I wanted to go back, to get lost in there again and see if I could find my way out but there’s only so much time and I didn’t have enough.
The whole camp went to burn night together, those end of Disneyland fireworks and a spark accidently set the foot of the man on fire early. Flames licking up his left side, a perfect reminder of the truth that we live on the playa: the unexpected. The variables that you cannot control. And we say: are you camping with us next year? And we say: you must come and stay with us. And we say: thank you, thank you for the offer and the gift and for this year. Before next year. And I say: we have to burn it down because Black Rock City is a dream and it wouldn’t work if we were able to keep hold of it. It’s not that we wouldn’t wake up, but that we’d never go to sleep. So we burn like hearts on fire, like speeding across the playa in the early morning light, like unexpected moments of grace and the joy in creation with no thought for the future. Finally the pillar of fire and the Man burns in earnest, we scream with one voice. One of the puppet strings has burned through and an arm sags while we bet on when it will fall.
The base burns white hot. I have to shield my face and ash tornadoes spin away one, two, three. We read the wind and breaking beams for signs of weakness like oracles. It doesn’t collapse all at once but we say just one, just one more section and we’ll go.
We go. We are the tide going out. We say goodbye, our RV positioned so that we can pull out at 4am and the camp promises to wait up for us, which they do. A knock on the door as we’re stumbling towards wakefulness and one last chance before we leave. We say: next year we can stay longer, surely we can stay a little longer. But now we creep through the city and joined by more vehicles than I’d expected but not enough to slow us down. Five lanes becomes three lanes becomes one and that left turn which makes me cry like a rainstorm, over in a moment. The sudden and jagged edge of leaving.
And we say next year, next year, next year at Burning Man like a prayer beyond hope.
A prayer of necessity.
I’m buying a pair of trousers at the Alternative Bring and Buy Sale when the stallholder stops me, wanting to point out a flaw in the hem. I push the money towards her shaking my head “I’m taking them to Burning Man”. What I meant was: I’m not going to get attached.
Between our two drivers we arrived at Pyramid Lake Reservation seven hours ahead of the time that we would be allowed to start queuing without being put in Detention Lot, the penalty box. Killing time we bought a permit and drove out to Pyramid Lake. On the beach trying badly to skim stones before giving up to spot lizards in the rocks and take deeply pretentious photos I kept being drawn back to the lake; a miracle of water in the desert.
We were all jittery calculations about time and distance and loud music playing as we inched through Gerlach’s mini queue by the last petrol station before the playa. Then greenery became sparse and the desert, the playa, opened up along side us and we kept driving forward against the sinking sun and dust storms on the horizon until we could see people making that right turn. Somewhere along the way meaning flipped over, for if Pyramid Lake is water in the desert then surely this is a desert of necessity. A miracle turned in on itself.
White outs in the queue and a 40-minute wait for tickets at Will Call meant that we didn’t roll into camp until late, somewhat fractious. But when I got up the first morning and walked out to see the Man, my bicycle still in pieces while we were on the hunt for a generous soul with the right tools, I felt stunned because it was exactly how I remembered (and I was scared, so scared that it wouldn’t live up to the new expectations on top of my previous expectations). At the same time, it will never be the same as last year and it can’t be. Everything is different and yet, long shadows crossing the playa from the dawn I’d just missed and it felt exactly the same. The last piece clicking in to place.
After they’ve searched your vehicle and you’ve got through the gate the greeters will say welcome home. Home. Later in the week one of my camp mates said that this was the place he’d been looking for his whole life.
One of the things that Black Rock City does is inspire great depth of feeling.
On Tuesday I turned up for my first shift at Center Camp. Making coffee is my most marketable skill that allows me to interact with people at a safe distance. Standing for hours as a volunteer is no less exhausting than standing for hours for your job and it felt oddly uncomfortable to be handling commercial transactions. It’s almost as though something in people defaults to consumer when money is involved. I’d foolishly signed up for a mid morning shift later in the week where I was slammed solidly for four hours, still working as a runner, my cashier was a veteran who in her other life is a New York pharmaceutical rep. She was aggressive, she jumped up onto the counter to yell at the queue about how they should hand their money over, she insulted almost everyone and she cried when a woman handed over a $20 note and said that we should use this to pay for the drinks of however many people it would cover. Further down at another till I heard one of the cashiers get up on the counter and yell “this isn’t fucking Starbucks, we’re all as hung-over and desperate for coffee as you.”
Somehow that felt better.
I only went to two scheduled events, something always seemed to come up and I let it. Some of the experiences that left the deepest impression on me last year were those unexpected moments of grace which the playa delivers. The things you can’t plan for. Biking out into deep playa to visit the cinema Mathias had seen during the ultra marathon we found two men fussing over a drone. They turned out to have done last years arieal video and were shooting footage for another one. Out of nowhere a vintage artcar rocked up playing the B-52s and 15 people jumped out and started dancing. On our way back we came across a speakeasy, the owner had a fuji instax and instant photos were stapled all over the bar, I offered to take a polaroid of him which is now attached there amongst all the others.
When I say you have to be there to understand that’s what I mean, you have to have dust in your hair and the noise from every side even when you make it out to the trash fence. The raw space of the playa leaving you breathless. That wholehearted commitment to everything you do, walking down the street as much as dancing under the stars as much as celebrating Shabbat with the sun slipping down past the mountains. You have to be there because it would be different, if you were there, and I can’t tell you what that would feel like. In the Sukkat Shalom talk on dust in Judaism a girl with bright pink hair said that the desert makes you accept your gifts as much as your weaknesses. The gifts that you might be rejecting because you want different gifts instead.
It would be different, if you were there, if you brought yourself and all you could do to the desert. If you were good with bikes and you ran across someone in deep playa who needed help repairing theirs. If you ran after a dust devil and other people joined you, dancing all the way along the playa. If you stopped to talk about the politics and ethics of spellchecking political rants. If you said hello, and how are you, and how can I help? If you were there to be part of those tangled beautiful connections that last five minutes or years. We connect, and knowing how something works doesn’t stop it from working. It’s made to be fragile and so we hold it dear. It’s made to be immediate and so we surrender the future for a week.
When Black Rock City is live it’s the third largest city in Nevada. A city built out of time and desire and everything we need that we are missing. It will always be different because the world is different, because we can only burn that brightly for so long, because we drag the pieces missing in our daily lives to the desert and fit them one against the other.
I picked up a copy of the Black Rock Gazette on Wednesday from one of the ultra marathon volunteers after my excursion to deep playa, my first time at the trash fence and having to push my bike through ground too soft to ride on. The city was behind me leaving me amongst all the bits of art and performance that remain off the map; the ones you have to discover. Dragging my bike back towards the Man, our pole star, I thought about one of the playa etiquette tips they’d included “concentrate on this year”. But oh, next year, as the week draws to a close we start to make those long-term plans. It cushions the shock of leaving, of knowing that we have to leave.
That night we were exploring the art by giving Burning Man ADD full reign, cycling towards whatever was shiniest, when I nearly went straight past what turned out to be one of my favorite things. It was a maze. I’d presumed it would be built to accommodate the average problem solving skills of drunk people and cycled on but then turned back because it couldn’t hurt to say yes to something unknown this time. 10 minutes later we suspected that they’d made it resistant to maze algorithms (follow one wall to get out), after 20 we were sure of it and theorize that it has something to do with the bridges, after 25 minutes we found out that they had a minotaur running round scaring people and I decided that nothing could make me happier, after 45 minutes we’d given up and were heading out when we accidently stumbled on a section we hadn’t been through before. It took us 50 minutes to solve which the crew said is the average time. It was an unexpected wonder, and when we thanked them and offered them a drink they were so pleased that we’d enjoyed it. I wanted to go back, to get lost in there again and see if I could find my way out but there’s only so much time and I didn’t have enough.
The whole camp went to burn night together, those end of Disneyland fireworks and a spark accidently set the foot of the man on fire early. Flames licking up his left side, a perfect reminder of the truth that we live on the playa: the unexpected. The variables that you cannot control. And we say: are you camping with us next year? And we say: you must come and stay with us. And we say: thank you, thank you for the offer and the gift and for this year. Before next year. And I say: we have to burn it down because Black Rock City is a dream and it wouldn’t work if we were able to keep hold of it. It’s not that we wouldn’t wake up, but that we’d never go to sleep. So we burn like hearts on fire, like speeding across the playa in the early morning light, like unexpected moments of grace and the joy in creation with no thought for the future. Finally the pillar of fire and the Man burns in earnest, we scream with one voice. One of the puppet strings has burned through and an arm sags while we bet on when it will fall.
The base burns white hot. I have to shield my face and ash tornadoes spin away one, two, three. We read the wind and breaking beams for signs of weakness like oracles. It doesn’t collapse all at once but we say just one, just one more section and we’ll go.
We go. We are the tide going out. We say goodbye, our RV positioned so that we can pull out at 4am and the camp promises to wait up for us, which they do. A knock on the door as we’re stumbling towards wakefulness and one last chance before we leave. We say: next year we can stay longer, surely we can stay a little longer. But now we creep through the city and joined by more vehicles than I’d expected but not enough to slow us down. Five lanes becomes three lanes becomes one and that left turn which makes me cry like a rainstorm, over in a moment. The sudden and jagged edge of leaving.
And we say next year, next year, next year at Burning Man like a prayer beyond hope.
A prayer of necessity.