Loneliest Cabin: October 2006

My friend, Brook Buswell, who took me under his wing for the two years I spent at Burning Man in the Nevada desert, recently sent me a reflection of his time at the free form arts festival that finished last month. It reminded me that I hadn't included the article I had published in The Herald Magazine on this blog. So here it is, in all its fiery glory. The pictures (except the last, which has me in the front row, 3rd from right) are all courtesy of my river-guide colleagues, Jasmine Jackson and Iain Morris, who managed to persuade the owner of our company, Whitewater Voyages, that taking a company van and raft would help sales of trips. Marvellous.

The Herald Magazine: Burn Baby Burn!
by Jamie M Johnston

My friend, wearing Stetson, flip-flops, shorts, goggles and with painted chest, turns to me and says, “Let’s get on the Dragon Bus.” “Where does it go?” I ask naively. “I have no idea,” was the suitably vague reply.

Five minutes later the driver of the Dragon Bus, an eighty foot construct of wheels and trailers fronted with a steam train and seats for one hundred crazies, looks back at me cross-eyed and screams, “Your not in Scotland now!”

We pull away from the dance tents, and streams of bikers, performance artists and scantily clad hippies, moving quickly into the desert. The wind whips dust into my army surplus goggles and I hold my hand tight over a cool Tanqueray and tonic. Spotting what looks like a tank I watch in fascination as it shoots flame high above the dust into the clear starry sky. Is this Madmax, or perhaps Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

Neither, it is Burning Man, the annual free-form arts festival founded by Larry Harvey that began as a beach party in San Francisco back in 1986 with the burning of a small wooden figure and has quickly become the event in America.

It springs up out of the desert floor and, in a bursting ball of flame, just as quickly turns to ash to merge with the clouds of dust that swirl and rage indiscriminately across this lunar landscape.

For one week only Black Rock City becomes the third biggest city in Nevada with figures of around 30,000 in attendance. It is situated some 120 miles northeast of the gambling, strip club, neon lighted Reno where most stock up on supplies for the week.

Enjoyment of the art, the people and the music can only be truly appreciated if one has arrived dutifully prepared with food, water and good accommodation. As my grandmother always said, “Recharging of the batteries is essential for a week long hedonistic festival.”

The best information to be found on the event is at www.burningman.com. The site comes fully loaded with essays, pictures, ideas and documentation of previous Burning Man festivals.

For outsiders who see Burning Man as a hippy fest of long hair, little amount of clothes, and pagan like dancing around huge bonfires, the incorporation of up to date technology in the art and in the running of the festival may come as a shock.

The ethos at work, according to the site, is that “Burning Man is an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance.” This covers the main three areas at work in Burning Man.

The first, temporary community, means that one has to stay and immerse one’s self in the event. Here you can only be a participant. There are no spectators. Signalling this is the fact there are no day passes sold or discounts offered for partial duration.

To feel the true essence you have to become part of the community that is based on giving and sharing where you need and rely on others whom, in turn, need and rely upon you.

Larry Harvey’s comments on the shift in the media’s coverage of the event in an interview with Darryl Van Rhey from 1998 also highlight this idea of inclusion.

“…..they had to come, camp, live and survive among us. They had no choice but to immerse themselves in the story. This is radical inclusion – very Burning Man … as actual citizens of our city, they realized that our talk about community betokens something real.”

Secondly there is radical self-expression. Every year is themed and this year’s was the Vault of Heaven. But Black Rock City is a semicircle of smaller themed camps created by the citizens themselves.

They ranged from a car with tent that offered a chance to throw darts at pictures of the Royal Family (hugely popular) to a giant canopy with living quarters for twenty boasting a Full Contact Croquet League.

The atmosphere changes with your location. If you want madness go and fight your friend in the recreated Thunderdome, or chat amicably with strangers in centre camp, or dance like a madman at Disturbia, or simply stare at the sky peacefully in The Mausoleum with 360-degree alien desert noises.

No money is made from the festival. People are stripped of their creature comforts and normal social boundaries are left back in Reno. People wander freely completely naked, or paint themselves blue. Some come in their RVs. Some have a tent. But everyone becomes equal due to the saturation by the playa dust that gets in your food, in your bed and sooner or later, into every orifice.

Lastly there is “radical self-reliance”, or more aptly, survival. The only items one can buy are coffee and ice. Anything else you require must be bartered for from the other citizens. There is no legal tender or corporate sponsorships. If you want a drink, drugs, food or a hat then you must offer something in return.

To come unprepared is suicide. Sure you can swap a few things for some food and water. But who do you call on when it is 107 degrees and you have no shade, when the wind picks up to 70mph and your tarp whisks off into the sky, or when during the night the temperature plummets and your shorts and t-shirt are no longer adequate.

There is a reason for Burning Man being situated where it is. Here the elements are harsh and unforgiving. One has to look after one’s self and then look to the fellow man. There is no vending. The community shares and thrives.

To get around this vast 400 square mile dried up riverbed one should really bring a bike, moped, or trumped up lawn mower. My only brush with authority came when riding my moped. Unbeknown to me vehicles can only be used if they are licensed art vehicles. So after a facelift for my moped I went to the local DMV – the Department of Mutant Vehicles – to register my new vehicle.

To be honest this is the only kind of pressure to be found at Burning Man. The need to conform to nonconformity. You are not normal, or part of the crowd, unless abnormal. Funny then that Harvey, the founder, struts around with shades, trademark Stetson, shirt and jeans. He comments on his attire, “I’ve hated going along with the crowd all my life.”

As with any major contemporary festival drugs are rife and easy to get hold of. However, with so much man made visual stimuli on offer suffused with the natural dramatic backdrop of open desert and clear sky a natural high pervades the mood.

This is not a gathering dictated by the drugs on offer. This is Burning Man. Where a mist of mellowness, slow watchfulness and fascination sweeps over all. Life is brash, bright and loud, but equally slow and cautious. Burning Man is an altered reality that is literally burned to the ground after a week. Looking back it feels like you were hallucinating. But for me drugs had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Multitudes of workers and helpers arrive and leave sometimes months before and after the thousands of Black Rock citizens. Although the festival proper begins on a Monday and climaxes on the Saturday night with the burning of The Man, a forty-foot wooden construct atop an altar that towers above it all.

The climax approaches. Out in the playa the citizens gather around The Man. We are treated to a spectacular fire show with various Mad Max-like vehicles shooting balls of multicoloured flame at The Man and leather-clad fire-dancers spinning poi to a hypnotic drum beat.

With a full moon competing for attention the crowd chants “Run Burning Man Run”, until the whole neon effigy becomes a giant bonfire. As The Man collapses to the ground, the crowd rushes in screaming to dance madly around the white-hot embers, throwing in material possessions and things of sentimental value.

For the rest of the evening the citizens waltz from one fire-show to the next. The art projects dotted around the playa, carefully laboured on for the best part of a year, are quickly burned to the ground. When I saw a hundred foot matchstick-made cathedral go up, it burned so white it felt like my eyeballs would melt.

Fresh ideas and new beginnings are the name of the game.

This year’s theme asked a few questions: Where does everything come from? Where does everything go? And where and how, in this vast scheme of things, do we fit in? While sitting in a field of flapping flags with nothing else in sight I plucked up the courage for one brief moment – I’m British – to strip off and sit and contemplate my existence like Hugh MacDiarmid on his raised beach, or more aptly, Rilke in the Arabian desert.

Although Black Rock City disappears physically every year, people never leave quite the same. Everyone is talking a little piece of Burning Man back to his or her prospective realities. The Burning Man website acts as a gateway into the ever growing matrix of sites created by participants over the years who wish to prolong the reality at work in Black Rock City.

Along with this we now have Danger Ranger’s journey through America that is being documented on the website. This “Mystic Shaman Cowboy” has a mission to cut short the anxiety felt by the citizens of Black Rock after the Burning Man event when they realise that they have another 358 days to wait until the community is reunited once again.

“Danger’s message to you is that you need no longer wait. Take what you have learned from your experience, organize with friends and fellow burners, and be ready to greet him.”

The temporary community is slowly finding ways to elongate itself and prolong the reality at work in Burning Man. The message is clear, “Burning Man is not an event, but a new way of doing and being wherever you are. It is a movement, a force, a river: a culture with a thousand tributary streams.” This festival in the desert acts as a reminder. That life is only what you make it. With the global terrorism crisis our generation seems set to endure over the coming years, who says that the Burning Man mantra does not have a place in our world?