It’s been about a month since I first stepped foot on what is known as the ‘playa’, a dried lake bed of nothingness that for most of the year would be an inhospitable bore to visit but that for one week out of the year, nearing the end of the summer solstice, becomes alive with people, and lights and “art cars” and more importantly ideas and hope and belief and…the most important of all…fun.

It’s a festival that others who haven’t been try and pin down in understanding.  “Is is a music festival” some ask?  No, though there is music in copious amounts, and usually until the sun comes up.  “Drug fest?” other Google savvy searchers say knowingly, as though people would drive hours out of their way to one of the most inhospitable regions of the United States just to get high.  No, though just like with any festival in general there are those who choose to take drugs.

No, Burning Man is more than all that.  It is for sure a collective, just not exactly ‘only’ a collective of Hippies, or ‘only’ a collective of drug users, or ‘only’ a collective of music fans.  To try and simplify something so complex and dynamic would be to cheapen it.  The founders are very, very keen on letting Burning Man be what it is to anybody who chooses to attend, and this can be very maddening in a world that year round tries so hard to box our spirits down into the tiny summaries that tell us what to wear, and what cool brand to identify with next, and (most especially in the case of women) how much to weigh and to swallow our own true voice in the name of agenda.

At Burning Man, you don’t have to worry about that.  You can be whatever the fuck you want.  You can dress like a chicken, or dress in nothing at all.  If you drive down the street on your bicycle with a short skirt and no undies nobody will judge you for not being a lady and letting your “va-j-j” hang out.  And in truth, there is something liberating in this.  The ability to just Be, and Hang Out, and Have Fun, and Express Yourself with a bunch of other crazy motherfuckers doing the same thing for one week is very, very liberating.

Of course, there is More.  If you want there to be there is.  There are many Theme Camps (as they are called) that are set up to push the boundaries found in every day mundane life.  There are swingers camps, and dominatrix camps (must accept a slap across the face to receive a shot of whiskey before going on your merry way) and camps that are purely devoted to giving oral pleasure.  But there are also spiritual practices, and lectures under stuffy tents on how to find yourself by being celibate, and yoga, and classes on how to be a better person.

The most potent force found at Burning Man is the force of fire.  Fire is a transformative phenomenon.  There are many layers to this at the festival.  The biggest is the building and destroying of the art.  Burning Man, if we had to really give it some sort of title, is a devotion to the human creative spirit in art.  This is why you have wooden art installations.  This is why you have the Ultimate Wooden Art installation known as ‘The Man’; this is why you have art cars that breathe fire. Through art man (and woman) is most freely able to express themselves without fear of retaliation and judgment.  Most of the art at Burning Man is wooden.  Most of the art installations are made to be climbed and interacted with (the opposite of the art you find at museums with hefty price tags and large signs saying DO NOT TOUCH AND NO PHOTOGRAPHY).  No, at Burning Man you can touch the art.  You can take as many pictures as you like.  You can hug the art, and kiss the art.  You can fuck another person on the art.  You can’t put a price tag on the art though because it won’t be around long enough to be sold, as by the end of the week most of it will burn to the ground.  And in this you find the ultimate key:  liberation.  The art, just like life, is meant to be loved and celebrated and experienced but will never, ever remain stagnated nor will it remain dormant.  It instead will transform and evolve, always.  Because the burning of the art isn’t done in private:  It is done in celebration with others.  People gather around and watch it burn.  They cheer, and after the last piece has fallen they pull out hot dogs and marshmallows and graham crackers and chocolate and they roast a feast fit for kings and queens over the fading embers of the fire and art.  This isn’t something though that is being exploited, or something that is being wasted.  It is rather a testimony to the fiery evolution of the human soul, always moving and transforming.  This is why you can find peace and joy in the Now of such art.

During the day, you can easily amuse yourself with the hundreds of theme camps offering up free drinks and food, or dance parties, or costume decorating, or maybe pussy paintings of your vagina where you strip naked with your fellow man and woman and press up paint drenched art cards into your nether-regions (I decorated mine with beads and red and gold stars, just using a glue gun and just like I would have done in 3rd grade art class), or perhaps sword fighting!  Remember, you are free to be and do anything you want.  This might include making PB&J sandwiches at the PB&J stand with your fellow man (with dozens of options of fillings including Nutella and honey) or maybe you just want to relax under the tent that is filled with hammocks.  There will always be somebody strumming an acoustic guitar, or a soul with a microphone and story to tell about the struggle to survive.  The creative possibilities never end, and in this you will find the usual paradox of choice and yet complete satisfaction.  Our camp discovered a pilot of a Cessna plane one sunny afternoon thanks to another camp mate, and he let us ride high above the sky of Burning Man for free, his “gift” to the Burning Man community.  From above he told us stories of his life, and how the previous Burners he had taken up before us were there on their wedding anniversary, and how they celebrated by having sex in the plane as it dipped above the half-moon shape of the village far below.

My favorite part of Burning Man was at dusk, which was the important transition between Day and Night when the sun would set over the mountains (causing many people riding around on the playa to break into cheers of tribute to the setting sun). I tried as much as possible to be at The Temple during this time.  The Temple is a sacred space of remembering at Burning Man.  It is made out of wood.  It has black sharpie markers randomly laying around.  In the middle is a fountain of water.  There are chimes attached to the top of the temple that gently chime when the wind blows.  People come here to grieve.  They come here to let demons out.  They come to remember.  By the end of the week every possible open space of wood has been covered up in some sort of poem or eulogy to those lost or loved.  The big theme is parents, and what they gave or didn’t give.  Lost loves are huge too, and it is very common to find old wedding dresses hanging up all over the temple.  But maybe, just maybe, just as equally a big of theme are those pets that those have loved and lost.  If there were ever a tribute made that instantly made tears stream down my face it were all the loving tributes made to the various cats and dogs that came and went from people’s lives.  The temple was always the most quiet spot on the playa, and it was nearly impossible to go without hearing quiet sobbing.  But the most beautiful thing to me was the fact that no matter how much pain was being expressed it was still being expressed.  And in this there is nothing in the end but Love:

On the last night of Burning Man, the Temple becomes the last thing to burn.

After the sun sets Burning Man is transformed into a whole other event.  These are the times when you go back to camp, you eat dinner, and you take a disco nap and then get dressed.  You can’t leave your camp site until you put lights on your body and your bike, as Burning Man is after all in the midst of a blackened desert with no light whatsoever.  At night you can see and feel the fire.  One of the first nights our group checked out the Charcade, which is a series of games you can play that are all rigged to fire and explosives.  The most popular is their Dance Dance Revolution, which requires the participants to wear full body flame retardant suites since one misstep on the dance floor means that propane tanks set up inches away from the dancer will blow fire into their face.  The skeeball game also blows explosive fireballs up into the sky every time an expert player hits the 40 or 50 mark:

(I myself carried the night’s highest score of 570, until alas it was broken by another skeeball player the 2nd night).  The art cars that drive around during the day are most noticeably transformed at night, some becoming almost different creatures all together.  Most art cars are meant to be climbed on, and they carry loud speakers that allow for dance parties that will continue on into the dawn.  Tiesto came to Burning Man this year to perform (as he does almost every year), as did other famous DJ’s from around the world, though you wouldn’t see their names listen on any official website such as the spirit of the event.  This is because as always names don’t matter, as neither do brands or titles.  We are all here to escape ironically into that which we came for:

One of my most favorite things at Burning Man is very difficult to find, and it is because it is located in Deep Playa.  The playa is the desert region that stretches out from the main, half moon shaped camps where you can find The Man and The Temple.  The Temple technically represents the highest point officially at Burning Man which is the “12 o’clock”.  But if you go North beyond The Temple there is still more Burning Man.  This is known as Deep Playa.  This is the part of the desert that is very remote, and spread out.  It is difficult to ride your bikes out here because the wind blows harder, and the sand is very deep.  You will become very isolated at night, and you might stumble and cry in the pitch blackness of such.  But if you can keep going you find many wonders.  People have set up art in Deep Playa, and it is remarkable.  Dance parties happen in the dead of the night out here.  And the best part to me, as just mentioned, is the retro movie theater. 

This is something that is top secret, yet isn’t.  It isn’t because weeks prior to Burning Man you will find its creators asking for money to build the retro movie theater on Kickstarter (which I of course helped to fund this year):

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackrockbijou/the-black-rock-bijou-2013

But weirdly, once at Burning Man, you will find that very few know about this Place of Wonder, which is just as well.  It isn’t very big, and they show movies only after midnight and into the dawn.  But if you are brave enough to bicycle out to the deepest pit of what Burning Man has to offer you will be rewarded with popcorn, candy, and the voice and words of significant bygones of history such as Frank Capra and Judy Garland…the only picture of what I was able to capture during the day on an excursion into what I was going to be getting myself into only to find that during the afternoon they actually show kids movies and only allow kids inside the theater to watch:

My first Burning Man experience was definitely unforgettable, but mostly made so by the people I got to experience it with.  There are those whom I met and shared time with that I will never speak to again, which is exactly how I wanted it.  This isn’t meant to be done in a space of loss, but rather in a space of gain.  For holding on to something means that it will become something else over time, and what I wanted was for this experience to live in what it was during the time that it was, so that even when I’m 90 and looking back it will still remain unchanged and perfect.  The rest of life will continue to grow and change like the art that gets created and burned, but I will always have this moment in year 33 of my life to cherish.  When you come into Burning Man for the first time you are known as a “virgin”.  You identify yourself as such when you drive up in your vehicle to meet the greeters.  They will then have you get out of our car and make “dust” angels in the dust, and then ring a large metal bell while you scream out I AM NO LONGER A VIRGIN!!

And though this may seem weird to some, and confusing to others, and perhaps even quaint to other still, there is significance in this exchange.  It is an acknowledgement in all of us that we transform and in this the biggest changes are those that result from being innocent to wise, some paths to this being violently painful and some peaceful.  You will find all of that and more at Burning Man if you so choose, the biggest outcome being how big and wide you want to cast your net…and how willing you are to looking into it to see what’s inside.  As always, Burning Man reminds us it is up to You.