theredbaron

And now something a little more concrete, a little less impressionist.

Burning man.

I don't exactly know what I was expecting. I know that my expectations were exceeded.

It is astounding, the scope and splendor of the thing. The magnitude of the art projects there, even the simple ones, and the amazing effort people put into them. The diversity and disparity, my word. There's no simple way to express just how wide the array of possible sights and experience and activities at any one time is. Drum circles and electric sitar jam sessions, raves, light shows, meditative calmly lit areas run by librarians, science expos. Nothing I can say will really do the scope justice.

Being there slaked my hunger for a few things I didn't even know I desired, and a number I was quite aware of. Having lived through the 90s, I felt pretty lame for having never been to a rave. My Thursday night there was spent scratching this itch. The dome I mentioned in the last post was a huge dance space. A writhing mass of burners. Many under the influence of excessive substance use, all under the influence of excessive youth. I eked out a cube to dance on, and, sure, the music was horribly repetitive. But it's like an electronic drum circle, right? It's not about the music. It's about losing yourself in the dance. And I must have danced for hours. I spent a portion of the time dancing with a stranger, in my first real successful attempt at dancing with anybody. We did sort of "goth club" dancing. We weren't touching, just kind of chasing each other. It was interesting. Rave dancing might not be something I'd ever do outside of burning man, but I am glad to have done it.

I spent a lot of time just stopping and appreciating the spirit of the event, and the things people put together in its name. In the real world there's museums around, always. There are parades with huge floats and paper dragons and fireworks displays. I CAN appreciate these things, but I have an odd taste in my mouth all the while. Something about the way it's fed to the audience. The motive for the creation of art in the desert changed my experience with the installation art. Maybe because it was temporary, or because it wasn't meant to bring in the bucks. The motivation (and this might be slightly rose tinted) was purely expressionistic. An idea festers in the somebody's mind until it explodes out into reality: conceived just for the sake of its conception. It was genuine. So much there was just completely genuine. Maybe I didn't like it all, but almost everything positively smacked of sincerity. And not in that annoying after school special sort of a way.


Every sense was stimulated. I smoked hookahs with strangers, met with old friends, and attended a lecture series on neurochemistry and politics. I saw the Shulgins speak about their adventures in neuropharmacologia. I tore down some hippies in poli-sci debates afterwards. It was satisfying.

As I may have mentioned, I was initially apprehensive about the size of this thing. In this instance it wasn't the "everything popular is lame" phenomenon. My concern just stemmed from unfortunate truths about people and my basic dislike of people. For one, Savage's law: as any event increases in popularity, the probability that somebody will do something stupid, mandating many new restrictions and regulations or simply ruining it for others approaches 1. I was afraid that it would be regulated, pre-packed carnival bullshit. While a lot of regs have come to being over the years, it was still incredibly free-form. More so than I have ever known of before. My second fear stems, as I said, from a general dislike of most people. I like individuals, but it seems that as group size goes up, average intelligence and tolerability goes distinctly downward. Regardless of why (I can think of a number of explanations) it seems to be the rule. As the festival grew, I reasoned that there would be more gawkers, frat boy types, people who hear about the "wicked big party", and want to "fuck some loose hippy chick". People who had no interest in the art or the spirit of the thing. The first half of the week, I saw virtually none of these types. It was all people who were enthusiastic and energetic and full of life and ideas and other good, if hippyish bullshit. Then came the weekend. And the weekend warriors arrived. They were dressed in their spencer's gifts imitation 'burner' attire. They came ill-prepared, contributed little, and got pissy when we didn't offer them booze. But something else new appeared on Friday. A fence. A roll-out orange plastic fence. We put it up between the main dance area and our living area, which, all week, had needed no barrier. I see this as I chill near the sofas and I realize something.



This is the circus, and I am in it.



The population of counterculture performers comes on Monday. We set up our amazing city and ASTOUND each other with our knowledge and fantastic skills and tricks. We dress up to create a surreal environment. We have fun which can only be had among our own kind. It's performers only. The sense of community is undeniably strong, and everybody basically trusts one another. Then the weekend comes and the gawkers arrive. So, what the hell, we put on a show for them. We let them marvel at all that we have wrought, and partake, for a little while, in the spectacle we put together to entertain and inspire our own. We let them peek into our world, even though they didn't really participate.



I went from a little angry at the idiots who had been littering all over, to grinning ear to ear.



I've run away with the circus. They've got me.

Very sneaky.