By Cooper Inveen
Fall 2013 Kaplan Award Winner
Let’s just say, you’ve never truly lived until you’ve watched a topless doppelganger of a childhood friend’s mother fight another woman to the death underneath a giant geodesic cage. Well okay, it wasn’t exactly a fight to the death; the fight was completely consensual and the only weapons used were foam bats. But the sense of extreme urgency produced by the cheers, shouts, and taunts raining down upon the contestants from the audience above sure made it feel like somebody’s life was on the line.
I held tightly to the metal bars, both terrified of losing my grip and exhilarated by the thought of how Mrs. Ackley 2.0 was going to avoid her friend’s abnormally accurate uppercut. Both women thrashed their bodies and shouted the most heinous of insults at each other, grinning wildly as they were thrown together by the large men in Mad Max style attire who seemed to running the show.
Come on man, this isn’t you. My interior monologue was becoming increasingly conflicted. This is absolutely savage, I thought. You would never condone something like this back home. I glanced away from the battle and over to the cheerleaders: pale faced, gothic supermodels swaying back and forth to the sounds of a Joe Strummer classic. But it was different this time; the crowd was shouting a different refrain:
“I fought the law and…”
“I won!”
“I fought the law and…”
“I WON!”
The fight was ending and the next contestants were already getting prepared.
Oh come on, you can stay for one more. That little guy needs your support.
I couldn’t contain it anymore. I was having the best time of my life. As I looked over the crest of the dome and towards the endless sea of neon lights, it hit me: I was seven hundred miles from Seattle in one of the planet’s most inhospitable environments, and I was home.
***
Deep within an extremely remote corner of the Black Rock Desert, a city is built and destroyed in eight days, with no trace of its existence left upon the open playa after its destruction. Sixty-eight thousand people conglomerate on this small patch of earth to set a new standard – to break away from the constraints of a social reality that has limited all of us in more ways than we can possibly envision. For instance, this isn’t the real world; my parents’ house doesn’t exist in the real world. This is the default world, the world we are thrown into without even the knowledge that alternatives exist. But oh, do they.
***
Like so many other people in my age group, my impression of Burning Man was constructed over a long period of time by various unofficial interpretations, starting with a classic 2005 episode of Malcolm In The Middle. I remember watching it and being completely dumbfounded by this strange place where Malcolm loses his virginity to a thirty-year-old “birther” and Reese is sprayed down by a Super Soaker containing the remains of a dead festival goer. As confused as the afterschool program left me, I ultimately just dismissed it as good television.
It was rare that the festival would come up in contexts other than that, and life went on. But the biggest kick-start to my curiosity came many years later in the form of what I believed to be the most devastating news a teenager could hear from his already just-a-little-too-out-there mother: “Your father and I are going to Burning Man!” Once past the initial embarrassment, it was only my younger sister who remained mortified. It was difficult to stay too annoyed with any decision they made. You have to understand, my mother isn’t exactly the stay-home-and-make-cookies-for-the-soccer-team type of mom. When you have the kind of parents who one day announce that they’re going to turn the living room into a circus big top, complete with two climbing ropes, a trapeze, a pair of climbing fabrics, and two crash mats, you have to be ready for anything. You have to be open to the fact that maybe this weird thing that mom and dad are proposing might not actually be that weird after all. Burning Man was one of those things where I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and with every day of preparation, the spark of curiosity grew more blinding.
For many people, preparing for “the Burn” can take up to an entire year. Ultimately, you have to remember that this isn’t Coachella: you’re going to be spending eight days in the middle of a place so ill fit for sustaining life that even your athlete’s foot won’t survive the journey. Better not forget that extra gallon of water. Over the course of six months I watched the oddest assortment of supplies build up into a large pile on the dining room floor. 14” rebar tent stakes, gas and dust masks, spray bottles, tutus, a Mackelmore-style fur coat, wigs, neon EL wire – if I was to say the list went on forever, it’s only because it very much seemed to. Watching my dad load all of this into the family Prius was almost sad, the little car buckling under the weight of all the obscurities.
When the same little car pulled into our driveway ten days later, it was hardly recognizable. A thick layer of white dust coated the entire car, and as my dad stepped out of the driver’s seat, I noticed that everything else in the car was just as “playafied” – including my parents. Looking like they just escaped a Saudi prison camp, they vaguely told of a city of endless colored lights and buildings of any shape you can imagine, where nothing was impossible and ultimate freedom was just on the verge of obtainable. A place where the music never ended so no one ever slept, and everyone individual there genuinely cared about everyone else.
“It’s just impossible to explain. You have to see it.”
I had made up my mind and began my preparations that night. But I wasn’t about to be a poison to this event I had built up so high in my mind. I wasn’t about to just spend my week partying; I could just as easily do that at home. No, if I were going to do this I would have to do it for something else, some greater reason than an aesthetic jolt. I left home a year later with two of my best friends, each one of us in a desperate pursuit of something out there that had to be so much greater than ourselves. I had no idea what that “something” would be, but I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. And I was going to find it.
***
Mornings in Black Rock City always started off the exact same: in the thick swelter of a salt flat under the constant watch of the solar system’s largest and most famous fireball. No matter what time I crawled into my tent the night before, my eyes would fly open at 8:00 every morning, the very moment my body seemed to remind itself that it was seconds away from dehydration. I’d grab my water bottle and rip open the canvas door, only to stumble straight into the Sun’s intense and unwavering gaze. Once out in the open though, any concern for my comfort would be immediately relinquished as my attention became drawn to the surreal and otherworldly environment I found myself in.
You have to understand that this isn’t just a bunch of hippies sitting around in the desert. Burning Man is nothing short of a feat of human engineering and organization, imagined and constructed over the course of a whole year by thousands of participants from Silicon Valley programmers to research scientists to famous artists and pop stars. Black Rock City is laid out in the shape of 4-square-mile clock, with times replacing street names, a grand pyramid temple at the 12:00 mark, and the Man – a 50 foot tall wooden automaton perched upon a 75 foot tall flying saucer – watching over the whole city from its center. The streets are dominated by swarms of people, the most beautiful assortment of people I’ve ever seen, each one clad in a costume more extravagant than the last, speeding through the dust on the seats of glowing, colorful bicycles. Those who desire a more communal form of transportation are far from out of luck though; “art cars” are the kings of the playa. Vehicles designed only in the wildest dreams of their operators, an art car can be anything: a giant, glowing Cheshire cat; a Victorian house traveling around on a steam powered engine; or even a 20 foot tall fire breathing octopus. The possibilities are as endless as one’s imagination.
Entertainment is always in abundance during the day, and everyone is in full gifting mode. Nothing costs any money at Burning Man, nor is there any trading. The entire city functions under a “gifting” philosophy, where everyone provides what they can from the goodness of their hearts. Like the art cars, the types of “gifts” people produce are as endless as those giving them. A gift can be anything from food to a playground, from a shower to a high-end bar. Others gift by less physical means, helping their neighbors set up camp or helping a ranger clean up an area. Regardless, everyone makes sure that they are doing everything in their power to contribute to the amazing place in which they have come together. Every day someone gives the product of a year’s worth of labor away to complete strangers, and it could not be more beautiful. Imagine a place where selflessness is the norm and no one would ever go without what they need, a place where every resident does what they can to construct a metaphysical safety net that will protect the experience of every person around them, regardless of whether they will ever meet. It’s all in the sake of friendship and brotherhood; we’re all in this together.
After the sun disappears, the magic truly begins, and this particular evening was to be the most magical of all: tonight was the night we burned the Man to the ground. I was sitting with my friend Coleman at a dive bar near our camp when the howling began. We welcomed the night the same way every evening: as the sun drew close to the peaks far in the distance, all of Black Rock city began to howl like savage wolves, all eyes fixated on the star’s magnificent descent. It is an incredible feeling, that mixture of excitement and uncertainty that precedes any act of venturing into the unknown.
As the last bit of light hid behind the distant mountains, the howling turned into an applause that engulfed the entire playa. This was the night we had all been waiting for. One by one the lights of Black Rock City began to fill my vision in every direction, and miraculous shapes and figures began to make their nightly debuts. A glowing, six story building shaped like a tyrannosaurus; dozens of ten-foot-tall luminescent teardrops littering a patch of empty desert; a 50-foot-tall metal sculpture of a beautiful ballerina, who’s magnificent body lit up the dust in the air with an incredible pink and purple haze; the lights and figures were as numerous as those observing them. Tonight, however, was the one evening where we could overlook these stoic guardians. Like a great migration, 68,000 people moved inward towards the center of the camp. Tonight the Man and his ship would leave us and ascend back into the stars.
We caught a ride out to the Man on the back of a double-decker art car. Both floors had been turned into dance parties and high quality drugs were being handed out to anyone who would take them. There wasn’t a single apathetic face in sight. As we laughed, sang, and celebrated, another art car pulled along side us, following us out to the center of the playa. Decorated and shaped to look like a steam-powered covered wagon, the car was filled with smiling prospectors, waving with excitement and enthusiasm for the amazing spectacle we were about to witness. I was elated to see a young boy no older than seven among them, laughing as he jumped up and down on his seat. As he waved at me, I felt a rush of nostalgia for my own childhood and perhaps a bit of envy for his. I looked at the boy – who was busy swinging his waving arm so wide I was sure he’d topple right out of the wagon – and saw myself. I saw early days of primary school rush before me, the days where it would take an army to stop me from wearing my coveted Spider-Man costume to recess. Naturally, as I got older and children became crueler, I stopped wearing my costumes to school. I can’t help but wonder if I would have resisted their taunts had I known how unjustified they were in making them. Who would I be today had I never been told how to dress? Where would I be if I had grown up decrying the judgments of others, ignoring unspoken social patterns that demand the abolition of individuality? Would I be more comfortable with myself, more confident in the choices that I’ve made? I would never know, but I do know that it would be pretty fun to walk into work one day in my old Spider-Man suit. Fitting in be damned; I hope the boy in the covered wagon never takes off that cowboy hat.
We were one of the last groups to arrive at the center of the city. Hundreds of art cars had surrounded the Man in a circle that looked as if it could have been over five hundred yards in diameter. I have never seen such an endless sea of people and lights. The bulk of 68,000 individuals stood within the circle, each dancing their heart out to the soundtrack provided by the nearest art car. I was too overwhelmed to dance. Coleman and I stood dumbfounded near the center of the circle as we watched hundreds of fire dancers surround Man in a whirlwind of orange and yellow flame. As the dust began to pick up and the flames grew more numerous, breathing became more and more of a challenge. I pulled my World War II era Soviet gas mask out of my bag and over my face. This was it.
Without warning, the fire dancers extinguished their torches and began to retreat back into the crowd. The moment we had all been waiting for was coming to fruition, and we all knew it. Looking to the sky I could see the Man towering above us, only now his arms had been raised from his sides to high above his head. Bright lights began to flicker on, illuminating his X shaped silhouette against a pitch-black sky. My heart was racing as I grew mad from anticipation; I dared not avert my gaze. All of a sudden, an arsenal of rockets shot out from the edges of the wooden spacecraft, speeding upward and exploding into a magnificent halo of colored sulfur above the vessel. From every surface, fireworks erupted towards the sky in a presentation worthy of the most vain of ancient emperors. The crowd went wild. At that moment, there was no bigger celebration on Earth.
And then the fireworks stopped. The sky became black once more and the dancers halted as if the rhythm had been swept out from under their feet. Time stood as still as the wooden giant above us. Terrified of the consequences of looking away, Coleman and I stood perfectly still, not a word being exchanged between us. I held my breath, desperately awaiting the fast approaching climax. Seconds felt like hours and just as I released the long-coveted breath of air, a white flash eclipsed my vision, and the Man, in all his glory, erupted outward in a blaze of fiery triumph. We, like our guardian, erupted too, but in an explosion of ecstasy and euphoria. The applause was deafening, so much so that I couldn’t hear the sound of my own voice, which by this point had become a homogonous mixture of uncontrollable laughter and tears. Then, just as the legs gave way and the Man fell upon his wooden vessel, a second explosion rocked my senses and I was nearly knocked back by the sonic wave it produced. With one massive blast, the entire spaceship came crashing down as a mushroom cloud the size of a stadium shot toward the heavens.
I looked around me. Strangers were hugging each other, dancing with one another, crying in each other’s arms. A woman in a bumblebee costume ran up and embraced me. As I held her, my laughter indistinguishable from hers, I felt more connected to the people around me than I had ever felt in my life. Here we were, 68,000 strangers representing hundreds of countries and cultures, laughing and crying together as those superficial boundaries fell apart around us. As the ashes from the fire ascended up towards the night sky, I truly felt the weight of one spectacular fact: there are no differences between us when every part of our physical being is born within the bellies of distant stars. As we moved our bodies to the beat of the battering flame, one thing was for certain: we were alive.
And now, there was only the temple left to burn.
***
The morning after the Man came down, I felt compelled to get to the temple early. I had been spending the bulk of my daylight hours there, feeling the calm to be a necessary contrast to the events of the evenings. Sitting towards the center of the room, I buried my hands in the playa dust that surrounded every moment of Black Rock City’s existence. I felt a strong sense of security as I felt the clay melt between my fingers, my vision becoming increasingly impaired by a passing dust storm, giving me a feeling of welcome isolation despite being surrounded by other people.
Burning Man had reached its final day and there was scarcely a spot on the wall that wasn’t already covered with writing. Every inch of the wooden pyramid bore a part of someone: a letter to a loved one, a proclamation, a confession, a lesson, and far too many eulogies. Trinkets from past lives, photos of the departed, and “last” packs of cigarettes lined the shelves, their bearers kneeling in the dust shedding final tears for what was soon to be gone. In eight hours the temple would be a smoldering pile of glowing ember, and all it had relieved from its pilgrims would disappear in a plume of thick, black smoke.
And as I sat there with my hands in the dirt and the dust battering my face, I could feel an energy like nothing I’d ever known. I’m about as far from religious as a man can be, mind you, but that wave of feeling I felt underneath those wooden beams was undeniable. An overwhelming empathy for the pain of those around me coupled with a newfound humility obtained from watching them at their most vulnerable shook something deep within me. What part of myself did I want to leave in that place? Because we were all there in that room, every part of us. The masks were off and nothing was contained. We were a room of believers seeking answers from nowhere but ourselves, relief from the things that we bear simply because we don’t know how to let go of them. I laid back into the dirt and closed my eyes, trying to bring everything I disliked about myself to the forefront of my mind. I thought as hard as I could to think of every memory in which I was ashamed of myself, every instance where I hurt someone, and every time I gave myself a pep talk only to forget it the next morning. What had ever stopped me from making the changes I knew would be best for me? Why had I ever given up on greatness only to settle for the mildly interesting? The needed changes seemed so obvious, which only made me more disgusted with myself. The answers had been there all along; my family had been telling me them my whole life. Why had I never listened? Was I doomed to a lazy existence, or was there something better just out of my grasp? If there was, was it still attainable or had I gone too far?
I sat up when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Above me stood a young woman with long, red hair wearing a ream of flowers around her head. Without saying a word she extended her hands to me, holding a spread out deck of cards upside down as to not reveal their faces. She nodded and then moved closer to me, suggesting I take one out of her hands. The card I drew read, “Inner Wisdom: You know what you must do. Go forth and do so without haste.” When I looked up she had retreated, and with a smile as soft as summer, she disappeared back into the crowd.
I stood up and walked toward the back of the room. High above the shelves, someone had hung a large, vintage-looking Led Zeppelin tapestry. Spray painted across the fabric were the words, “RIP Chris, we can’t hold on any more.” And nor could I. As I envisioned the tapestry engulfed in bright yellow flame like the zeppelin printed upon it, I let go.
May my sins burn with this place.
I collapsed onto my knees and watched as two salty tears made their marks on the dirt below me. I saw before my eyes each and every experience I had lived in the last week and became instantly aware of the endless stretch of human capability I’d witnessed. The confines of the default reality back home, the sit-down-shut-up-buy-sell-eat-sleep-shit-work-die normalcy that engulfs our daily lives, had been violently shattered. And I knew, truly knew, the factual nature behind an early childhood lesson: we can do, and be, anything and everything. I had seen it with my own eyes; I had watched men give away art of great value; I had watched beautiful women ride bikes with their clothes off; I had stood in a forest of 15-foot-tall burning mushrooms and climbed to the top of a two story iron wolf; I had said “I love you” to strangers met every new person with a joyful embrace. There was no point in holding on to old haunts and nearly forgotten ghosts any more. The world had become limitless.
I rose to my feet and walked towards the temple’s exit. Looking out towards the center of the city where the Man once stood, I took a deep breath. Like the Man and his ship, I felt my fears and limitations blow away like ashes in the wind. I embraced my mortality. In the blink of an eye we will be gone, but that’s okay. We will carry on in the hearts of stars.
As I got on my bike and rode back to my camp for the last time, the future was as bright and clear as the neon letters that illuminated the city gates:
“Welcome Home”