You Burn, You Learn
by
Amy Moon,
SF Wednesday, September 13, 2000
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Amazing thing #.01: Burning Man isn't stupid after all

I officially have been christened into the world of Burning Man. This year, after many years of avoiding it, I made my first trek into the Black Rock Desert.

Let me say right off, I'm not that way. Not a Burning Man freak. So all my friends who aren't either want the full, honest report that they know they cannot get from regular Burning Maniacs who seem to be hardcore evangelists about the whole thing. I was charged with bringing back the cynical, baleful eye view.

Now that I'm back and detoxed and caught up on sleep, I'm finding it difficult answering the question: "So, how was it?"

It was intense, a little rough. Rough to spend five days in a mud-encrusted, dust-infested RV with seven people whom I didn't know (except for one), although they were all very nice folk. Rough dealing with swirling, biting alkali dust storms (contact lenses suck in this, as do noses and lungs). Rough riding your bike through mud in icy rain at 2 am after partying all day wearing almost every item of clothing you brought. Rough eating trail mix and corn chips for dinner two mornings in a row. Rough for a non partyer edging up on the big 4-0, partying for five days straight pretty much from waking at midday to sleeping at early morning.

But those were just minor inconveniences. When all's said and done, the first day of my first Burning Man was one of my best days ever. Hands down. Top 20 easy. I felt like I haven't felt since I was in high school. (Although it may just have been the drug and alcohol combo.)

We rumbled onto the playa in our rented RV Wednesday as dawn was breaking over the mountains, noting with mounting excitement the Burning Man signs as we approached, going through the checkpoint, driving past funky camps -- the first with a guy sitting on a bucket on top of his RV taking a dump, reading the paper -- hearing distant thumping bass, the leftover trails of music greeting us from the party the night before. Finding our site, hopping on our bikes and riding around looking at all the cool structures and art.

I discovered some amazing things.

Amazing thing #1: Biking around. I think Burning Man is big enough now that a bike is essential for getting around. And I haven't ridden on a bike messed up in a posse of friends since I was 15, right before we got our licenses and started driving our parents' Delta 88s and Gremlins. This in and of itself was totally awesome. We'd ride around and stop and visit friends at their campsites or just talk to random people or cruise around gigantic sculptures out in the playa or goof around, taking photos of each other. It was like being in the opening montage of The Monkees. To say this was fun is an understatement.

Amazing thing #2: The structures that people build to live in, with rebar and PVC and plywood and crazy bedsheets and plastic and flags and whatever else: Networks of tarps with tents set up in semi-circles underneath them. Full living room setups under parachute-covered geodesic dome struts. Jewel-encrusted bars, chandeliers under tenting, pink fur, hammocks. This was another nostalgia trip for me. It was like being a child with my brother and sisters coloring with our Crayolas at the picnic table out back, making pictures of the kinds of houses we wanted to live in, narrating as we colored: "See then on the side, I'll have a little room just for food and then there would be this trap door in the floor for escaping when the enemy comes and behind the shelves you could push a button and it would swing open and there would be a dumb-waiter." Houses like that. Imaginative, crazy, child-like, cool places to live. Loved it.

Amazing thing #3: Everybody's happy. Everybody's friendly (for the most part). Everybody's wasted. Sex is on the communal brain. Lots of people there, looking for a connection. Burning Man definitely has an open, sexual vibe. As the blonde Amazon from Tucson said to me, "Look, honey, if you want to get laid (or whipped or whatever), you can. Easy." I think the ratio was 65 percent men, 35 percent women. (Remember, it is a pyro fest. What's up with testosterone and pyromania? Or am I just making that up?) Everyone appears to have left their work-a-day-selves far, far behind.

Amazing thing #4: The art and art vehicles. OK, not all of it is cool but most of it is. Some for the concept, some for the sheer ambition, some for the craziness, some for the beauty and some for the pure gall. There was a towering, jigsaw-cut wood cathedral that looked like lace (which was torched on Friday night); a huge multi-car dragon with scales made from junked car siding; a blinking eye car; beautiful forests of plywood and fabric strips; abstract fields of rebar and white sails; a Buddha cut from a mirror bisected by another identical mirror Buddha with candles in the corners; giant penises and vaginas everywhere. Again, the imagination evident in all these pieces brought me back to being a child. If a Dr. Seuss story could come to life, it probably would look like this.

Amazing thing #5: It's so California, and maybe it IS the cheese. Burning Man is California's Mardi Gras or Carnival or Fasching. It's a California Fellini movie. It has crazy make-it-yourself-from-anything-that-you-find art (isn't this a California art movement from the '60s?), art cars (California's all about cars), hippies of all ages, music everywhere all the time (drumming, raving, Rasta), nakedness, nakedness, nakedness, drugs, drugs, drugs. It's just our California lifestyle, as my ex used to say.

Honestly, though, the one thing I don't really get in my heart of hearts, soulfully rather than intellectually, is the burning thing. What is up with burning crap? I get fire -- mesmerizing flames, glowing embers, sparks. I love a campfire, a fireplace, the ash on a cigarette. I get purification, transformation. But what is this fervor some people have for torching stuff? I saw guys maniacally screaming, "Burn the motherfucker!" and jumping up and down with crazy gleams in their eyes. Genuinely turned on. Seriously thrilled and gratified. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against it, I just don't get it. Deep down inside.

So what's my honest assessment? I'm glad I did it. Everything they say is true. It is an alternate universe. It's partly the setting. But it's also the mass conglomeration of all that creative energy in one place. I understand now why people are true believers. I might even do it again.

So to all my friends who aren't that way: You have to like being dirty and dealing with dirt. You have to be able to deal with intense weather. You have to be able to deal with constant stimulation of all of your senses.

I would say that most people should go, just once, with friends. Preferably good friends. Bring a bike. And an open mind and a warm heart.