Burning Man thoughts
This is a wonderful essay about Burning Man.
You don't get it. You don't get what it's like to have 50,000 people circle around a wooden effigy, with 1000 people spinning fire and 500 more playing drums, all encircled by 200 art cars -- and then all roaring in unison as the effigy is set afire. You might think you get it, and it may scare or tempt or delight you, but I assure you, you don't get it. None of us do, because it's not about any one thing in particular; "it" can be an orgiastic celebration, or the sad mourning of a lost loved one. Or a warm, hippie-like community. Or a mean, Mad-Max-like apocalypse. "It" is chiefly a space in which all these things are possible.
I like his observation that none of us get it -- it explains why the Burning Man experience is so hard to describe, does it not? But it's true; the essential experience is so raw, so unshaped, varying so much in nature and intensity from person to person, year to year, that it is difficult to pin down anything about it except the degree of its possibility.
My last three years have not been as transformative as my first year; only incrementally so. But every year I seem to go through the same pattern -- I spend the first few days kind of disconnected and lonely, wondering if it's lost its magic for me and if I really want to be there. Then I gradually start to loosen up and am starting to see the world a little differently by the end of the week. And suddenly it's Sunday, and I leave Black Rock City with this faint, nagging feeling like I am abandoning a trajectory towards some more transformative change. Not "I'd be a different person, you wouldn't recognize me" kind of change. But the kind of transformation where I find an internal anchor that lets me really let go of stress, insecurities, all that bullshit. The kind where I end up being a lot more "me" than I was before.
Intention is so powerful out there. Perhaps I should enter next year with a stronger intent to transform. I don't think I have really been ready for it these past three years. I would like to go out a week early; it would probably be miserably lonely for a little while, but without the distractions I have at home, it would force me to engage with the world more quickly.
And just being there, just participating [emphasis mine] in the creation of an entire city devoted to what we want to do, rather than what we have to do to make money, has the tendency to invite self-reflection... Who am I? What do I really want to be doing? If people can create a twelve-ton sculpture of a bird's nest made entirely out of plumbing pipe, what are the limits on my own creativity? "Once you are free," said Baudrillard, "you are forced to ask who you are."
This really nails what makes BM special, I think. These are the philisophical underpinnings that make the event as transformative as it is for so many people, even if some of them aren't conscious of it.
He mentions participation as a key to self-reflection... my participation has been somewhat limited during my tenure as a BRC citizen... maybe I should try to do more.
I enter the playa each year pretty absorbed in myself, my stresses and tribulations of the time. Perhaps exploring more creativity and expression would help me more deeply face the question of who I am.
You don't get it. You don't get what it's like to have 50,000 people circle around a wooden effigy, with 1000 people spinning fire and 500 more playing drums, all encircled by 200 art cars -- and then all roaring in unison as the effigy is set afire. You might think you get it, and it may scare or tempt or delight you, but I assure you, you don't get it. None of us do, because it's not about any one thing in particular; "it" can be an orgiastic celebration, or the sad mourning of a lost loved one. Or a warm, hippie-like community. Or a mean, Mad-Max-like apocalypse. "It" is chiefly a space in which all these things are possible.
I like his observation that none of us get it -- it explains why the Burning Man experience is so hard to describe, does it not? But it's true; the essential experience is so raw, so unshaped, varying so much in nature and intensity from person to person, year to year, that it is difficult to pin down anything about it except the degree of its possibility.
My last three years have not been as transformative as my first year; only incrementally so. But every year I seem to go through the same pattern -- I spend the first few days kind of disconnected and lonely, wondering if it's lost its magic for me and if I really want to be there. Then I gradually start to loosen up and am starting to see the world a little differently by the end of the week. And suddenly it's Sunday, and I leave Black Rock City with this faint, nagging feeling like I am abandoning a trajectory towards some more transformative change. Not "I'd be a different person, you wouldn't recognize me" kind of change. But the kind of transformation where I find an internal anchor that lets me really let go of stress, insecurities, all that bullshit. The kind where I end up being a lot more "me" than I was before.
Intention is so powerful out there. Perhaps I should enter next year with a stronger intent to transform. I don't think I have really been ready for it these past three years. I would like to go out a week early; it would probably be miserably lonely for a little while, but without the distractions I have at home, it would force me to engage with the world more quickly.
And just being there, just participating [emphasis mine] in the creation of an entire city devoted to what we want to do, rather than what we have to do to make money, has the tendency to invite self-reflection... Who am I? What do I really want to be doing? If people can create a twelve-ton sculpture of a bird's nest made entirely out of plumbing pipe, what are the limits on my own creativity? "Once you are free," said Baudrillard, "you are forced to ask who you are."
This really nails what makes BM special, I think. These are the philisophical underpinnings that make the event as transformative as it is for so many people, even if some of them aren't conscious of it.
He mentions participation as a key to self-reflection... my participation has been somewhat limited during my tenure as a BRC citizen... maybe I should try to do more.
I enter the playa each year pretty absorbed in myself, my stresses and tribulations of the time. Perhaps exploring more creativity and expression would help me more deeply face the question of who I am.