Burning Down the Man

by Boyd Martin How Quantum Physics Does Health

Burning Down the Man

burning man

I finally got the opportunity to go to the 2012 Burning Man Experience, returning home early September 4th, fairly exhausted, but fulfilled in so many unexpected ways.

I had heard about the festival way back in 1989 when they were holding it on a Santa Cruz, California, beach. After a few years there, the crowds became so large, the festival was forced to find another location. Why they decided to choose the flat, dust bowl of the Nevada desert I could never figure out--that is, until I actually went there.

The Burning Man event is a small sideshow within the larger creation of what is called "Black Rock City." BRC is the city created by 60,000 or so "burners" who transform the 6 square miles of desert into the biggest, most outrageous and culturally extravagant art show in the world. And by setting all this up in one of the most hostile, lifeless places in the world, it somehow amplifies the art--like placing a masterpiece painting on a blank wall so as not to distract from it.

Yes, it's dirty--incredibly dusty, with highly alkaline desert dust that is finer than baby powder and gets into every crack and crevice (including your body). You breathe it, you eat it--you can't avoid it. It is a total immersion into Mother Earth, and soon you are riding your bike across the playa realizing you feel wild, but completely at home; half-crazed with energy, yet totally fascinated and enamored with life. The land does this to you, but the human creation of BRC takes it to galactic proportions.

"Art Cars"--huge moving structures on wheels--like giant parade floats, glide up and down the streets of Black Rock City, amped up with bass-heavy concert-level sound systems and hundreds of revelers bumpin' and celebratin' like no party anywhere. Bikes are the main mode of transport, and it is all BRC citizens' responsibility to make art with the bike--especially at night, where glowing light strands (L-wire) adorn both bikes and riders, as well as all shapes and sizes of bizarre and comic creations. For two nights I just sat at the RV camp at night watching the parade. I laughed, I cried, I was stupified.

My favorite retreat was The Temple. A four-story-high elegantly designed structure of burnable 2 X 4's completely covered in filigreed jigsawed plywood in incredibly intricate patterns. It must have represented months of work by some dedicated, in love craftsman. Thousands of citizens whipped out magic markers and wrote directly on the building about their hopes, their fears, their conundrums--things they wanted to release when the temple was burned to the ground. Thousands of citizens who had lost loved ones brought tributes and loving messages to their deceased to be purified in the fire. The emotional impact of all this brought all who entered the temple to tears, with deep primordial feelings of the grief of separation mingled with the joy of freedom.

I suppose Burning Man is not for everyone, but there is a particular segment of earth's human culture that calls Black Rock City their home every year. Now I am one of them.