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Thursday, April 27 through Sunday, April 30, 2006.
I just heard of the Xara Project. Sounds wonderful. Here's the basic description from their website:
Come share 4 days and 3 nights with a thousand other brilliant souls living the life of a future paradise, and celebrate again the experience of your own life.Xara Dulzura is an outdoor retreat exploring personal, creative mythology through visual and performing arts, workshops, landscape, hospitality, and one another.
Madre Grande Monastery is located on 264 secluded acres of oaks, stony hills and meadows high above and beyond rural Dulzura, in southeast San Diego County.
Here we pre-enact Xara, a pastoral paradise civilization 400 years in the future, imagine the myths and rites that would inform and sustain that world, and dream them to life for one another through interactive visual and performing arts. The most important vision and spirit is your own in this shared exploration of creative mythology through mutual art, hospitality, and personal experience.
We hope you will join our future Floralia as we celebrate the coming of new summer, the full-throated roar of life in its prime, and the building of the new.
(The above artwork is a vision I had on the distant playa late one night last year. It was one of many Kye Moments that have crystallized my vision into its current state of completeness.)
I have been in deep meditation this last month. I feel deep gratitude for my existence and all that has come before me. I feel joy in this eternal moment, and the future heart that is now manifesting. It is a vision of love, come-unity, and oneness. In this deep love and healing I sent prayers out into the universe with hope that others may be equally blessed. This year I will be gifting (most likely at HeeBeeGeeBee's) Reiki, soft and deep tissue massage, energized tantra meditation and vivation. I hope to see and share with many of you on the playa this year.
Peace and Blessing to all,
Paul
(Kye is a kindred spirit who was there for a dear friend of mine in a time of need.)
The blow glanced across my shoulder bouncing squarely onto the side of my head. I spun around quickly, dancing in the bungied harness, arms out-stretched and bringing my 4-foot duct tape hammer hard into alignment with his gut. Metal stars bent around the periphery of my warm amber tunnel vision barely aware of the hundreds of shouting people all around me and clinging to the 30ft high geodesic dome this Saturday night. Our tussle was broken as attendants clad in dusty black leather chainwear grabbed my harness and drew me back to the edge of the circle. About 25ft away at the opposite pole my opponent raised his padded stick and was released, the tension of the bungies suspending him from the apex of the dome snapping him free and hurtling towards me. I charged, my stomach laid out flat to the ground a mere foot or two below, flying with my weapon held before me straining for the sudden impact of mortality and the bittersweet pain of life. We crashed and clashed before the raging crowds alit with fire and oil, dirty and matted and thin and hungry with the saline lust of Burning Man.
After several hours over several thousand feet of elevation, my wife and I finally pulled off the I80 and began the final leg out past Pyramid Lake and onto the white salt flats of the Black Rock Desert. Amidst the darkness were hundreds of red tail-lights extending past and behind us. Unusual for a Sunday night a full week before the end of the event. After much slow progress through the thick, moonless night, we pulled off the highway and onto the playa at exactly 11:23pm Sunday, August 28th. Our car, crawling along at 5mph was immediately enveloped in a dust storm stealing all visibility into it's white noise. The gate greeters were covered in white alkali. Dust masks and goggles and thick clothing were their line of defense against the biblical sandblasting. We crawled through the raging storm, at times losing all visibility, looking at each other with questioning eyes before hitting the brakes to avoid a sudden port-o-potty looming out of the dust 3 feet away. With much steady persistence, like the winds themselves, we found camp fearlessly defended by two friends who had arrived a few hours earlier.
The mid-day sun beat down mercilessly onto the playa surface. The Black Rock Desert is an enormous Y of white, empty sand covering over 400 square miles, surrounded on most sides by high craggy black ridges. The desert floor is the remains of an ancient lake, now filled with over two miles of white alkali sand and soot, extremely fine and dry. Scattered across the surface are cast off little bits of the great black rocks rising out of the earth and lining the vast dead lake bed. Nothing grows on the desert floor and birds and bugs are a rarity.
The ferocity of the sun seemed barely diminished by the raging dust storms that continued throughout the day. The winds had subsided for a while after our arrival the night before. We reinforced the perimeter of our camp, set up our tent in the winds, and guided in a few other arrivals throughout the night. By dawn I was taking pictures out on the playa, already littered with art and activity. But within a few hours we were getting hammered by dust in 50+ mph winds. I spent the day, sleepless, hiding behind crappy goggles and a painter's mask while running around under the baleful sun trying to keep the tents from blowing away. We lost a friend's - it's center pole bent in half and took down the whole tent. I used rebar and duct tape to reinforce the poles on our own tent and lashed repeatedly to the roof racks on our car. It seemed to work well enough but there's really no rest until the winds fade out. And I really needed rest. It's hard enough getting acclimated to the desert in good weather. It's even more grueling in a day-long blowtorch dust storm. 24 hours after arrival I slept.
Tuesday morning we started to raise the dome. The winds were gone and we had a few hours before things got too hot to move. I led the assault and we got the first half together, then took a long break for Red Bull, Vodka, and Red Bull's (The Steamroller). When it gets so hot you don't want to move, and you've maybe gotten a few if any hours of sleep in the last day or two, it's very easy to lie around drinking all day. Eventually things will cool down and the city will start buzzing.
For us the cooling meant a second go at the dome so I took point again and climbed the ladder. Setting up a 15-foot high geodesic dome that's strong enough to hold multiple bodies takes a lot of patient coordination between several people. But by 9pm the dome was up, covered in aluminet sails, carpeted and furnished with three couches and a coffee table. We gassed up the gennie and on came the purple rope lights and blue LED's. Along our street my wife and friend's had put up 11 flags flying from 9ft PVC poles around a central arbor, framing the camp entryway to the communal dome and beyond, past the tent and shade structure shanties, back to the RV's now blocking the prevailing winds.
By a sheer stroke of great luck our camp location turned out to be perfect. We were only a block away from the Esplanade, which made it easy to get out and into the thick of things. The neighborhood itself was very active and each evening brought actual traffic congestion, glowing and neoned and buzzing, down our street. Since we were just a half block up from the Random Pizza Delivery camp, we received at least one whole, delicious, steaming pizza each day. And after many of the camp women removed their tops and set off to join the Critical Tits bike parade, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the whole line rode right past our porch. A few industrious lads from our camp were thoughtful enough to refresh the ladies with cool mist. At 3 or 4 thousand women it's no easy job but someone has to do it. While occasional lechers stole video frames, one couldn't help but wonder at the restriction society places on women's bodies and how ultimately heretical and revolutionary such a simple act as showing them to the world can be.
After dark I rode with a small pack of friends down the bustling Esplanade and it's side streets. Amidst the kaleidoscope of light and sound and sensation one shining piece of light drew us near. Colors and pattern completely broke down, abstracted across esoteric algorithms decomposed and iterated, alien yet seemingly familiar, slowly accreted together to show just enough of the reality it was modulating to understand what was happening. The digital technocolor chaos washing across the 5x7 screen before us shimmered and coalesced into the obvious image of the three of us sitting on our bikes, slack-jawed and gaping. There was a camera just above the screen pointed at the the area before it where we had biked up to inspect the display. As we moved in front of the camera the video feed was modulated by a software layer and then displayed on the screen. As we moved and capered and shone lights at it, the scene would continue to morph through different routines feeding our actions back to us in psychedelic light pools.
Suddenly the entire scene was replaced by large purple cartoon brains buzzing and multiplying rapidly. We were shocked, sputtering exclamations and paranoid accusations. It was too much, the fear was mounting and it was time to flee. The acid was clearly working, and it worked through sunrise the next morning.
From this point the tale grows fractured and non-linear. Camp had been constructed and obligation thinned. Hot days came and went. Warm nights were alive and raging with a seemingly unmatched tenacity and jubilance. The crowds were thick and wonderful and friendly and freakish. Tuesday night seemed like a Thursday night, it was so huge and ecstatic. A few times we rode around on a friend's art car that was a golf cart built up to look like a large thatched raft lashed together floating across the playa. It could carry 7 or 8 people. We bopped around BRC bumping mad sound out of the raft's speakers, beer cooler in tow. In a city that's over three miles across it's essential to have some good transportation.
On Wednesday, my wife and I celebrated our anniversary with all our friends over champagne. After a fun vanity photo shoot, the two of us walked out to the temple together, hand in hand, binding again for love and life in tears and smiles. Our's is the Law. Under human will cast out with joyous playfulness onto the blank slate of this ancient lake bed, minds and souls spilled out and twisted into celebrant forms of imagination, given of love for free to all in this ephemeral moment of eternity that each year we call Burning Man. When I'm there I've never left. It's my alter-land, 6 or 7 days at a time stitched together across years like a very dusty and psychedelic family afghan blanket.
The black faux fur jacket I had recently secured grew more and more nappy but continued to shine in it's ability to keep me warm at night. There are unique Burning Man fashion trends developing across this growing community. The desert cowboy look is common pairing piercings and tattoos with dark cowboy hats, weathered vests, black pants, and leather boots. The dread-locked firespinners wear earth tones and black mixed with chains and ear plugs. Playa bunnies run around in hot pants, thigh-highs, and small mesh tops, hair neoned, wig or dyed. An afternoon at The Deep End had hundreds of them all, mostly half-naked baking beneath the late sun kicking up impossible amounts of dust under their dancing feet. The sound system was perfect and the deep, progressive house beats called me off my bike and into the throng. It was the best sound system on the playa, wonderfully buried a few blocks in from the Esplanade, but absolutely rocking with hours yet to go towards darkness.
I randomly made my way to the MAPS dome just in time to catch the end of Daniel Pinchbeck's talk, then ran into Paul Hughes outside. Paul and I hung out and chatted for a while then pressed in when some of the crowds cleared out after Daniel's talk ended. We listened under the massive dome, covered in an olive military parachute and hung with vaguely tibetan batiks, to Erik Davis speak about Burning Man and imagination and the myth of Psyche & Eros (this year's event theme was Psyche). Paul officially introduced me to Daniel and it was nice for each of us to have a face to go with the name and email. He was very friendly and we spoke earnestly of shamanism and the necessity of business, and the act of manifesting one's will in the material world. When it all boils down, magick is about making thing's happen. Daniel was thronged by people wanting his time so we broke off and Paul & I careened across the playa through another thick dust storm chatting and laughing.
I think it was Friday night. Amidst no watches and infrequent sleep, time really starts to bend out there, especially when you're dancing under toadstools all week. Many clusters of our camp were breaking away to head across the playa to 10:00. This was the far strip where many of the largest sound systems were set up. Burning Man is about a lot of things and one of them is dancing to the best music you can find. The sound camps are the biggest parties on the playa. My pod left our camp a bit later but we managed to make our way over and find the best music. It was at Green Gorilla, my dancing wife and all of my friends were there, and Jeno was spinning in a half hour. With Dax and Little John on the scene, it was like being back in SF. The bar was flowing, everyone was smiling inside the domed dance floor, and the energy just grew and grew. Jeno's set was hypermodern and visionary. By 4am I was beat and a few of us straggled back to camp leaving the others behind to face another sunrise.
The night of the burn was spectacular. I think the crowd was the biggest yet, ringed by a bewildering array of art vehicles and mobile works. Many held raging sound systems, others released great fire cannons into the sky. The Man lit up suddenly and within moments was engulfed in flames under a canopy of explosions and stars, lit up by a thousand flashing rockets. He burned, raged fiercely at the ceaseless dance of Life and Death, then acquiesced, collapsing into the inferno of his phoenixed futurehistory, engulfed and transformed to be free. His demise was joyous and cathartic resounding in the wall of cheers rising from the arrayed masses who, unable to further restrain their own desire for fiery re-union, push in towards the flaming pile. On the inner edge of the fury my face burns like my skin's melting, like my head's in a furnace. Keep moving. Dive back into the crowd then push inward for another run around the caldera. 5 laps later and I spin off into the night, the bottle of red wine in my hand almost empty, now mixing with the fungus and guiding me onward with the inertia of a deep seeking. There is no room for intellectualization here. It's all experience. Soak up as much as you can and watch it bubble to the surface of your life over the next year. It's a week-long trance of metaprogramming, yourselves and each other. It's timeless proof that humans, given the ability, will play as hard as they can with every tool at their disposal just to turn each other on, just to grasp that reckless inertia of Creation and mould it into something new and cool for however brief a moment.
That crazy inertia spun me out across the playa under the eyes of the Mother and Child, so much Soul impossibly embodied in so much steel, massive flaming footsteps behind them both each glowing phosphorescent and slick; sent me to the Phoenix to watch it burn one last time, it's massive driftwood chest ablaze when only hours before it was covered with grooving human apes piled on it's breast among the steel feathers grasping at the sky like talons, alit with propane fires blazing and bursting; landed me in Thunderdome a couple of hours later battling my oldest friend's fourteen-year-old son who's already taller than me and wants to join Death Guild asap; then found me up on a platform swaying and gyrating with my wife among a few hundred late night ravers grooving to tribal progressive beats under the fires at Opulent Temple, before finally returning to our dusty playa bed once again in this eternal carnival of night and love and struggle and community across this ancient dead lake bed and beneath the spinal Milky Way carving through the black sky above, perhaps the home to other beings equally alive and aware and longing to spill their hearts and heads out onto the great canvas of Time.
If I returned last year somewhat calloused and underwhelmed, this year reset the balance and delivered an absolutely wonderful Burning Man. The art, the people, the friends, the parties, the communities and collaborations - everything was just about absolutely perfect. Like a dream it's come and gone in the blink of an eye. But in that moment it's eternal and realer than real and in some deep unnamable way, possibly far more important and vital and meaningful than the waking world.
I'm getting all emotional over going to Burning Man - good emotions - longing, love, community spirit, the cool people and places just around the corner and just out of sight, awaiting my discovery and delight.
Playa here I come!
OH
MY
GOD!!!
From networked performance.
The VIRTUAL PLAYA PROJECT is a navigable 3d digital Burningman environment using Microsoft Flight Simulator as a platform. It is intended to be an open-ended project that invites participation at various levels. It can be downloaded for home use; played on a giant screen at a Burningman event, or even be used as a design tool for a theme camp or artist wishing to plan an installation before it ever gets to Black Rock City.
The ultimate wish for the project however, is for the Virtual Playa to be the Burningman Cyber Regional. Using multi player technology, it can become a portal through which we can meet on line, and share experience with other cyber burners from anywhere in the world in real time. This takes the project from just being a cool piece of collaborative digital art, to a true meeting place for the cyber-tribe. Download it for free, copy it, send it to pals, leave it on buses, give it away as a gift.....spread the word.
For those attending Burning Man this year, here is a link to the lecture line up:
Lorenzo Hagerty is the organizer of this event. He has tons of stuff on his website, including many recordings (i.e podcasts) from such 'psychedelic celebrities' as Alex Grey and Terrence at the Psychedelic Salon.
Lorenzo also has his own blog.
Just wanted to let you all know, that I've created a Burning Man section with photos for several years. If you want to add your photos here, please let me know.
From the same people who brought us the mini Jawa Crawler, NAO Design has lots of other goodies, many of which have been inspired and created for the Playa. Below are some of my favorites. They remind me of something I might see in Barbarella or in Spock's quarters. Most of these are reproductions can purchased from NAO's online store.
Vertebrate Lamp
A columnar lamp comprised of a white lycra sleeve stretched over circular fiberglass ribs. The Vertebrate is adaptable to be stretched and anchored floor-to-ceiling, or made to be free-standing with an internal frame of up to 8 feet in height. The lamp is illuminated internally with either standard halogen or fluorescent blacklight, or a combination of the two. Dimmer switch included.
Eliptolux Lamp
A steep cut across a tube of high impact plastic exposes the elliptical cross-section of the Eliptolux table lamp. A halogen bulb sits in the base, weighted for stability, and the white interior projects light up and out, providing a warm glow without direct glare.
Tower Lamp
Three stainless steel slides, each perforated with hundreds of holes and lined on the interior with hanji paper, come together to form the triangular hanging Tower Lamp. Can also be converted to a standing desk lamp. Uses a standard halogen bulb and measures 24 inches high.
Holey Glow
Three thousand, six hundred holes perforate the plastic cylinder of each Holey Glow lamp. The interior is illuminated with a halogen bulb and lined with dyed hanji paper of a variety of colors. Measures forty inches by six inches wide.
Nellophone
Musical organs operate on the principle that reverberating the air within a pipe of given length will produce a note an octave above a tube that is twice its length, and it is this effect that the Nellophone utilizes to sound its thirty different note from A an octave below middle C to D and octave above middle C. With the musician standing at the instrument's axis, a slap of the special paddles across the padded mouth of each tube produces a hauntingly electronic sound. The tubes range in length from 6 to 30 feet, and the entire device spans 12 feet wide by 15 feet high.
Cauldone
9 triangular plates of welded steel comprise the hexagonal basin and feet of the Cauldrone fire pit. Measuring 35 inches across and standing 16 inches tall, the conically-shaped basin accommodates a large volume of ashes to minimize the need for emptying, while the pointed feet minimize heat transfer to the surface below. The mood, however, is maximized when the dark, angled form of the pit frames bright curls of flame.
Antler Fire
In the cold of winter of the dark night, this odd headpiece actually does serve to provide both heat and light, though it is usually worn just for looks. The helmet itself is made of leather and steel to protect the wearer's head. A portable 1-lb. propane cylinder is worn on the belt and connects via a small hose to the back of the helmet. Six shape-able copper tubes protrude from the helmet and are specially tipped to prevent blowout of the flames. Runs for 1 hour on a single tank, and includes a manual valve on the helmet.
KinetAural Suit
Pressure, light, and flex sensors embedded in the neck, elbows, wrists, knees, and feet sense and transmit bodily movements to a PC where they are synthesized into sounds that move with the user. Various sound templates allow modulation of seven variables including pitch, volume, phase and waveform.
Floating Speakers
Acoustic speakers are comprised, in essence of a thin diaphragm to couple sound to the air, and a driver to resonate the diaphragm. In these speakers, the driver is optimized for lightweight, and the diaphragm is a special Mylar balloon which enables sound of surprisingly high fidelity to emanate from the silvery orb floating overhead. It is anchored by a stylized base which contains a miniature amplifier, 9-volt battery, and plug for connecting to standard headphone jacks.
TeleFloatation
The core of this craft, which houses a color video camera, 2.4 Ghz video transmitter, and radio control receiver, mounts onto an 8-foot balloon and propeller assembly for flight, or onto a 7-inch car chassis for terrestrial use.
The camera's video signal is received by a wearable module that displays the onboard view to the remote pilot via a custom heads-up display helmet, which itself senses lateral and vertical head movement and translates that motion into equivalent panning of the camera. The result is a surreal experience that immerses the user in a disembodied form and allows a dream-like exploration and interaction.
I've always wanted to live in a Star Wars universe.
Ewok Habitat
Suspended spherical housing module.
It's 2.9 meters in diameter and is made to be suspended from a tree. "There is a double bed, counter, table and bench seats as well as ample storage lockers. The spheres are wired for 110 volt AC and equipped with lights and outlets." Four attachment points on the top and four on the bottom securely carry the weight of the sphere and its contents. The spheres are made of laminated wood strips over laminated wood frames with the outside surface covered with clear fiberglass. Not unlike a fine yacht.
Designer: Tom Chud
+ freespiritspheres.com
Ever wanted to ride around in a Jawa Crawler?
via Boing Boing):
The JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank is an open-ended custom-made, Star-Wars-oid personal tank that carries up to five people at 40mph over sand. It comes with a giant 400w stereo and a camera for recording the reactions of the people you drive past. Only 20 grand! (Usually ships in 1-2 months
) You can buy these puppies on Amazon. As one of the reviews said, "The $14.99-$19.99 shipping on this item is a fantastic deal! I wish all 1100lb items were so economical to ship. The extra 200lbs in packing really keep the item mint."
(via Jalopnik)
The JL421 Badonkadonk, aka “The Donk” is a “land vehicle and battle tank” created by outer-limits design firm, NAO Design for purposes unknown to Burning Man non-attendees. Donks are made to order, at $20,000 a pop. Buyers also get a Donk T-shirt and a training session. Tickets to see naked, orange people eat Top Ramen and talk chakras in the desert are sold separately.
Now, if I can just get myself some construction plans for that underground house on Tatooine, I'll be all set to set-up shop out in the desert near Black Rock. I could then drive either my land speeder or Jawa Crawler to and from Burning Man each year.
Ok, I might be pissing in the wind here, but over the last couple of years I've become more eager and passionate about community building - both online and off. I started Future Hi with the hidden purpose of bringing like-minded, progressive thinkers together under the banner of 'visionary futurism'. What exactly is visionary futurism?
If my experiences at Burning Man have taught me anything is that utopia is not only desirable, it is achievable. All that I have believed about the desirability of sustainable communities, alternative economics/currencies, the leisure society, accelerating technology, creativity, genuine freedom, authentic happiness and spirituality, I see embodied in some form at Burning Man.
What impressed me the most is that all these people come together with such passion and hard work to make this event possible. Although credit is due to its founders and organizers, the real magic happens on the playa itself... the unpredictable, the unexpected, the sublime. The real burning man is all the individual people and communities coming together the way it does… the Dionysian, spontaneous, orgiastic explosion of spirit becoming manifest on the blank canvas of the playa.
Why then can't this be re-created and sustained every day? Some would say politics, economics, the rigidity of the legal code, conservatism in our communities, lack of coordination, all of the above.
Despite these obstacles, I have come to believe that personal utopia is possible. For most people Burning Man is utopia for the short time they are there.
Here are my questions for you the readers:
1) What can Future Hi do specifically to get this idea going? Is the email list I just created a good start? I felt the blog format is too limited for this purpose. I created the email list so that anyone could start a topic. Would creating a wiki or forum be better? Does anyone know how to start a wiki? I think a Future Hi wiki would be a good idea anyway.
2) What specifically is needed to create sustainable communities that are not dependent on any kind of centralized commodity (i.e. petroleum, government issued currencies, Wal-Mart and other corporate goods, centralized agriculture, etc.)? I don't think this has to be a black and white issue, rather the more a community can depend on itself the more sustainable and stable it is. Is this correct or faulty thinking on my part?
3) What are the major obstacles from this happening?
4) is this whole idea flawed from its lack of global thinking? What I mean by this, is it too selfish to focus on community building that only assists those in this community who share similar goals, or is genuine transformation only possible by embracing and building global systems that support the same thing (i.e the internet, social software, the semantic web, alternative digital currency technologies, etc.)? In other words is our own personal utopia better built by staying within the mainstream culture and changing from within? Is working towards more personal goals in this regard doomed?
Future Hi pal Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the seminal book Breaking Open the Head asked me to share this with you. This article appears in the latest issue of Arthur Magazine.
__
A few months ago, I attended the Burning Man festival, in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, for the fifth time in a row. Burning Man has been called the world’s biggest party, but I don’t even know if I have "fun" at Burning Man in any ordinary sense – being there is incredibly intense, a kind of psychophysical endurance test. Despite the difficulties, I will continue to return as long as it is possible to do so. The gathering acts as an enormous shamanic transformer, constellating new insights and clearing away old junk.
I chose to go to Burning Man instead of staying in New York for the protests surrounding the Republican Convention. My increasing suspicion is that traditional forms of protest, at this point, are only playing into the hands of the security apparatus. The police and military get the opportunity to test out their latest tactics and shiniest gadgets, while the corporate media finds the most incendiary images to broadcast across the US, amping up the anxiety. The catharsis that protestors get from yelling slogans across barbed wire barriers and out of "free speech pens" might be energy that could be more creatively invested in other ways.
As the corporate and governmental superstructure continue a lockstep march towards their own self-destruction, their attempts to pulverize the collective psyche into submission becomes more transparent and overt. Electrical currents of spite and anxiety ripple across our public discourse and private lives. The individual’s refusal to fall into these traps or accept this negative conditioning can be a great liberation. At Burning Man, I kept thinking that the most meaningful political act, right now, is to continue cultivating fearlessness in pursuit of joy. To be fearless, calm, and joyful is to jam a wrench into the "Brave New 1984" technodystopic machinery that is seeking to impose itself on our world.
I consider the current sociopolitical abyss to be a kind of evolutionary tool. The control apparatus of modern society may be functioning as a training ground for a new level of consciousness. Many different thinkers of the Twentieth Century, as well as the prophecies of archaic and indigenous spiritual traditions, have proposed that a major change in human consciousness is imminent. This has been articulated in various ways. Before his death in 1961, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw that the "reality of the psyche," repressed by the modern mentality, would soon become unavoidable. Mankind was being forced to climb "to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness," to handle "the superhuman powers which the fallen angels" had dropped into our hands.
The Austrian visionary Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy and Waldorf education) claimed that the mission of his life on Earth was to return the knowledge of reincarnation to the West. According to Steiner, individual human beings reincarnate again and again, and the Earth itself passes through successive incarnations. He considered this phase to be the fourth incarnation of the Earth. Steiner thought we are approaching a fifth incarnation, the "Jupiter state," where humanity would evolve new capacities and reach a new level of wisdom – actually, not just humans. According to Steiner, the plant and mineral kingdom would reach a higher level of consciousness during this next incarnation, while humanity would split into several different "human kingdoms," undergoing different forms of evolution.
The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo also felt that we were moving towards a new level or intensity of consciousness. In one of his last essays, The Mind of Light, he defined this as the "supramental" state. Just as life had self-organized out of matter, and mind had self-organized out of life, consciousness would evolve beyond the obscurations and ignorance of our current condition – to attain a level of truth-consciousness, and spiritual awareness, that could not be manipulated or fooled. Aurobindo speculated that our evolution would accelerate exponentially from that point. Once we had reached this supramental state, this truth-consciousness, we would be able to transform our physical reality and our bodies. "Man," Aurobindo wrote, "is a transitional being." The powers unleashed by technology might be reintegrated into the psyche, at a higher level of development.
As counterintuitive as it may seem at first, I propose that our current environment, saturated with noise and chaos and fear-mongering, is the necessary background for attaining this supramental condition, for accepting and mastering the reality of the psyche. The new mindset stems from a fearless curiosity and hunger for truth, and a rejection of the cynicism and negative programming foisted upon it by the corporate-controlled media and current power structure. The new intensity of consciousness accepts the reality of psychic and occult levels of reality, denied by modern materialism, but integrates this understanding with a scientific, pragmatic, and empirical approach to existence. As a speaker at Burning Man pointed out, it is not "New Age," but "New Edge."
My hypothesis is that at least a portion of humanity attains this level of "supramental" consciousness – including, as Aurobindo proposes, an accelerated evolution – as we approach the year 2012, prophesied by the Mayans as the end of the 5,125-year "Great Cycle" of human history. Despite current appearances, we are on the verge of a transition into a new intensity of human consciousness that will institute an harmonic and utopian situation on the Earth. This thesis is not mine alone – it is carefully elaborated by Carl Johann Calleman, among others, in his new book, The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness (Bear & Co.). This book supports the basic ideas of the writers Jose Arguelles and John Major Jenkins – a new outsider paradigm is crystallizing.
Calleman, a biologist who has worked with the World Health Organization, considers the development of human consciousness to be an organic process akin to fetal development. Chemical signals are transmitted to the fetus in an incredibly complex and perfectly orchestrated sequence. The proposal made by Arguelles, Calleman, and others, is that the evolution of human consciousness on Earth follows a similar process on a planetary scale, and we are currently approaching the birth of the higher mind, or noosphere, of the Earth. After many years of research, Calleman as well as Arguelles understand the Mayan Calendar to be a synchronically-attuned device that indicates the year-by-year changes, in this final period, leading to the inevitable phase-transition of human consciousness.
The run-up to the 2012 transition appears, necessarily, as universal capitulation and collapse – just as birth is a messy process that would appear horrific to the uninformed observer. According to Calleman’s study of the Mayan Calendar, the global economy – and with it, the materialist paradigm currently holding the collective psyche at a certain level of development – will collapse around 2007 - 2008. Right now, we are being forced to witness the shadow of the psyche projected into material form through systemic misuse of technology, biospheric destruction, as well as our current political farce. During the transition, things seem to be getting simultaneously – paradoxically – much better and much worse. Time itself seems to be changing form, accelerating, as events follow each other at breakneck pace.
Obviously, it is a difficult leap for most people to accept the possibility that the Maya had a deeper understanding of time – as a synchronic order, rather than a simple linear extension – than we currently possess. However, it seems to me that any impartial study of the current world situation makes it obvious that the current social and political paradigm is unsustainable, even in the short term. We are depleting and burning out our global resources at an ever-accelerating rate. A cynical or nihilistic perspective on the imminent fate of our species is, of course, plausible, but unproductive. An alternate perspective sees the destruction of the biosphere – and the development of technology – as byproducts of the psychospiritual evolution of humanity, bringing us to a new form or phase-state of consciousness.
One of the most beautiful aspects of Burning Man is the wide-open expanse of the desert itself, which seems to represent the infinite potential available to the liberated human imagination. While I was bicycling across the playa one night, enjoying the laser lights and carnival displays of the festival from a distance, I thought that the shift to a new planetary culture, and a new form of nonhierarchical social organization matching our new level of mind, does not have to be a cataclysmic or destructive one. The transition could occur in a manner similar to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire – a sudden piffle, and a shocking surrender. However, for this to happen, the new paradigm must already be in place, at least as an undercurrent. Lacking a model or an imprint, the collapse of the current system will result in a world resembling that of the Road Warrior films, without the occasional flickers of irony.
If we can make the transition to a truly rational planetary culture based on compassion, generosity, and dharmic principles, this will inspire a change in our basic conception of science. Rather than seeking to resolve dualisms and institute some final "Theory of Everything," the science of post-history will embrace and explore paradox, going deeper into conundrums, relinquishing delusory attempts to achieve closure. Superstring physics describes a universe of nine, ten, or eleven dimensions. If reality is, as Buddhism proposes, actually maya, a projection of subtler levels of the psyche, then we may come to accept that the extradimensional object or hypercube described by physics is the psyche itself, in its full multidimensions.
I suggest that the planes or surfaces of this object can be incorporated into awareness as the various vectors or intervals or vibrational field-effects experienced in non-ordinary states – induced by psychoactive substances, meditations, dreams, shamanic trances, and so on. Different psychedelics open "lines of flight" or ingressions across the extra-dimensional object that is the psyche itself. When we have matured to the point that we can accept the "reality of the psyche," investigating these areas will be recognized as natural and even essential to expanding the parameters of human understanding. The science and art of post-history will be dedicated to exploring the numinous paradoxes of psychic reality. Instead of seeking closure, we will open new possibilities and explore infinite new realms.
Ever since I was a small child I’ve had the most amazing dream life. Although I’ve also had my share of nightmares and even off periods, most of the time my dreams are always deeply satisfying and beautiful. Like most children I lacked the capacity to clearly distinguish between the dream world and reality. However, if you ask the Aborigini’s, such a distinction is meaningless anyway, with the dreamworld being the more "real" of the two. For me this is a belief I share with them and have carried into adulthood. My dreams have offered so many profound insights, and the lucidity of them has been so intense and real to the depths of my being, that to deny the veracity of these experiences would be to deny my very soul – the deepest meanings that guide my life. And it is here that people start to make value judgments that although the inner life of dreams might be significant, the external world is more important, because without it we die. In the West particularly this emphasis has been valued almost exclusively to the detriment to our inner lives. As Ghandi once said when asked what he thought of Western Civilization, he said, "I think it’s a good idea."
So what am I getting at? Quite simply, I have come to believe that dreams are actually quite real, more real the so-called “waking life” and that this waking life is simply part of what we must make authentic via this dream world. I can’t speak for others, but I am now quite certain (as certain as I can be about anything) that my dream life is trying desperately to become manifest here in the real world. This might sound too new agey for some people, but it all makes perfect sense to me. When things go right in my life, they have this unmistakable resonance with my dream life – the feelings, sensations, gestalts and so on. In my dream life all the answers are there, the solutions to our problems, to world peace, to sustainable society, to genuine happiness for everyone. It seems so obvious, so simple in my dream life, and yet so complicated here. I have speculated often about how I think there are “dark forces” that are conspiring in one way or another, perhaps merely out of greedy and banal self-interest to further their own ends, at the expense of everyone else. So as a result over the centuries we now have this overly complex, rigged system that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of not only everyone else, but now the planet itself.
Bucky Fuller said way back in 1965 that right now we have the capability to feed, house and clothe everyone on the planet sufficiently that everyone would live like billionaires. So why hasn’t this happened? Because those at the top want remain the exlusive shareholders of such graces. To sacrifice their exclusivity would be to sacrifice power and control. Since fear ultimately rules these people, that fear will keep them stuck in this struggle for power. Unfortunately for them, their days of power and control are coming to an end. Despite the signs all around of us of increasing repression, surveillance and control, there is no way the system can sustain itself much longer. I have written about this lack of sustainability here and here.
I started thinking deeply again about all of this since I came back from Burning Man a few weeks ago. The evidence of a build-up towards some kind of cambrian explosion as Ming points out here is all around us. What amazes me these last few years is how much everything has changed from a 'potential' standpoint in terms of connectivity, collective intelligence, communications, smart mobs, internet, global network point of view, yet how much everything has remained the same.
How much longer can the old hierarchies, this old civilization keep hanging on amidst so much grass-roots intelligence burgeoning all around us? Burning Man is a good example of just how much energy and connectivity is there - so much that it was overwhelming... and until I went I had no idea! I could feel it everywhere, the social networks, the people all talking with each other, most of them all on this high vibratory wavelength. It's not a fluke, and it's not just because of Burning Man. It's already there. I compare it to the functioning of mushrooms, which are merely the sex organs of this vast underground mycellia network. This network grows, and grows, and it then reaches a critical point, where it then flowers. I see the same thing now in what I recently called Counter Culture 2.0. The connections are so thick and complex, that no manner of oppression can wipe it out now, except the end of life itself.
And since each day the technologies of connectivity continue to minuturize and grow smarter each day, there will come a point, soon I think, where this huge breakout will occur.
Those at the top are not stupid, they know this, sense this is coming, which is why I think they are so scared, and the global politic is getting so nasty and repressive, especially here in the states, where this connective freedom is greatest. That is no coincidence.
So rather than some smooth "controlled" evolutionary move upwards, its going to be a sudden out of control breakout. I suppose I was hoping for the former, but I'll settle for the latter over stagnation and death.
I'm more hopeful than ever.
I just arrived back from Burning Man fully transformed. I suspect it will take me several months to fully digest this most awesome experience... maybe just in time for next year. It was wonderful to finally give warm embraces to people I've known only online.
As the Official Burning Man Website says, this event is notoriously indescribable. When I was there it becomes quickly obvious that no amount of eloquent speech or series of pictures could ever do it justice. Quite simply, Burning Man has to be experienced. It is Utopia. One of the things that struck me about every 30 minutes or so as I wandered the playa is, "I can't believe this exists, it is beyond description". I would look out to the horizon in nearly every direction to find this immense amount of novelty. During the day, art installations of various kinds were scattered about - some within a few hundred yards, others some one or two miles away, as if a mirage. Certain structures like the Temple were over 100 feet tall and were noticeable from almost any distance. Nighttime was equally amazing, when many more art pieces come alive to join the spectacle. Nearly everywhere I went, looking in front of me and in every direction, there was some kind of dynamic activity. It's not the dense activity of an urban city with its rules and boundaries, but a vast unbounded playa stretching for miles in every direction, filled with light, fire plumes, neon floating caravans with distant yet pleasant volumes of lounge-techno music, and thousands of glow sticks representing and protecting people as they walked and rode their bikes across the playa. So imagine seeing thousands of these various colors randomly crisscrossing the desert, stretching for several square miles in every direction. The sense of freedom, joy, excitement and possibility filled my every cell. I danced and moved and rode my bike hither and thither for hours on end, stopping at different installations, spending time in distant planetarium, and then traveling further out into the playa, which this year represented the heavens. As I traveled further from the Esplanade (the main arced avenue), the further out into "outerspace" I was going. At about a mile and half beyond the Esplanade, I encountered an illuminated and pulsating star with alien creature blowing in the night winds. I took several photos of it, but my camera is very old and doesn't work well at night, so here is a day shot.
On a typical day I would spend some 14-15 hours wandering the interacting with the art and enjoying immensely the company of fellow burners, hanging out at center camp for some hot chai, dance for awhile at Solarhenge, and back to camp to hang out with friends at Prometheatrics. I was introduced to this wonderful bunch through Mark Pesce, who unfortunately was unable to attend this year.
I spent a couple of lazy afternoons hanging out at The Brane, home of the 2nd Annual Palenque Norte lectures. When I first came into the tent I met Carey Thompson whose Galactivation Art is so beautiful. About an hour later I ran into Dlight of Tribal Oasis, who spoke eloquently of creating this type of post-modern tribal community full time. His ideas are very compelling and he now has me convinced of their attainability. He went on to tell me that regardless of what we've been told, hierarchy has ended and we now need to get used to living without those rules. The technologies of liberation are expanding so fast, that hierarchy simply cannot survive, and so we as a species need to finish the job of deprogramming ourselves out of this primitive hangover. He also mentioned that the singularity is really just another form of misguided monotheism, another type of hierarchy. The future is not a singularity, but a Cambrian explosion of diversity and creativity heading out in every direction. Perhaps it was my own state of mind at the time (he he), but his words struck a deep chord, ringing true like few things do for me these days. His message was hopeful, positive and inspiring. LVX23's words ring true too when he says that out on the playa we are expanding the mythos or morphogenetic field of modern humanity. Burning Man is pioneering the cutting edge of possibility - not a counter to culture, but front-runners scouting out the frontier of what is possible. This might sound overly grandiose, but the feeling on the playa of genuine fast-forward evolution is palpable.
I feel like I could write a book on my experiences, like it's been every other year I've been. Burning Man is a super-condensified experience - a day can seem like weeks have passed. I never escaped the feeling that I had landed on some beuatiful alien planet filled with novel delights at every turn. This alien feeling was immediate and viceral and I didn't want it to end. No manner of sci-fi movie watching can prepare you for it. A cross between Barbarella, Mad Max and Tatooine might give you a hint, but that's all. I missed the last few years, and feel very sad now that the event has come to an end. I'm so looking forward to next year, and I'm just bursting at the seams with new creative ideas to make happen for next year’s event. With all the walking and riding bikes I did this year, and coming across so many wandering, tired people, we are planning on creating a playa taxi service for next year, which we're thinking of calling Trip N' Taxi. Great way to meet new people, and a lot easier to get around. It’s merely a single idea of many. Several members of Prometheatrics and I schemed a few more ideas, which will have to remain hush-hush for now. If you're interested in creating and collaborating on some art installation for next year, please get in touch with me at psiphius at yahoo.com
One last thing, LVX23 mentioned this year there was not enough deeply sublime art as last year. I found out today that a lot of regular artists skipped this year’s event because they're too involved politically with the coming election. From what I've heard the numbers are large enough that an impact on the playa art would be felt, and so it was. Having missed the last three years I didn't notice it and was instead just so grateful to be here again, and in turn was even more enthusiastically participatory and social this year, and even more inspired to make more art for next year.
Hope to see more of ya on the playa next year!
Stay tuned for more pics - I'm working on an entire section of photos.
This guy was towering over me and must have been 6'6.
This year's Burning Man had the highest attendance ever, hosting over 35,000 people. The weather was moderate with some winds and a few balmy nights (as well as a few very cold ones). Our camp setup went pretty well but had to be re-evaluated when the winds picked up on Weds, blowing in from the northwest, and further adjusted on Thurs when they shifted from the southeast. Before anything else, you're camping in the high desert. Everything is bound to the weather.
This year we camped in walk-in way out on the southeastern perimeter of the city. At first it was nice to be a bit removed from everything. The increasing din of the playa nights was subdued and distant offering solace when bedtime finally arrived. But this distance made it more difficult to travel, putting us about 2 miles away from the epicenter, a good distance from the port-a-potties, and generally sheltering us from the community. In the end we were too far removed and missed the steady flow of people. The upshot was that we were pretty close to Lush, the biggest party on the playa.
Lush camp is one of the two main soundsystems out there (the other was Sol Henge). There are hundreds, but most pale in comparison to the scale and magnitude of the two corner camps. Lush had dancers, fire spinners, trapeze artists - all wearing next to nothing. Revellers danced amongst transported (and dessicated) palm trees and fire pits, beneath the billowing parachutes suspended on old tree limbs 30 feet above. I spent a fair amount of time at Lush, but in the end I was left a bit hollow. There seems to be a trend towards spending a lot of time and money on large clubs with free bars (there is no vending at Burning Man), and less on actual art. I'll return to this point later.
However, nothing adds to a party like a home-made propane flamethrower. 
Sadly, Burning Man doesn't burn so much as it used to. Environmental pressure to minimize burn scars on the playa has forced open fires into designated steel bins. It used to be that by Saturday night everything was burning. All across the city. But I digress. My buddy and I brought the flamethrower out to lush one night for a couple of hours of devilry, harrassing the ravers with sudden bursts of very close flame. There's a sort of jaded regard for fire that one develops out there. Groups of ravers would pass, we'd spark the torch and watch as they casually disregarded the fire light cast by our torch. Fire is still commoon out there so a sudden orange glowing isn't too surprising. But then they'd realize the flame was about 3 feet above them and quite hot. The usual response was a reflexive cower accompanied by a baleful, horrific stare, followed quickly by our evil, mocking laughter. After the liberating moment of mortal fear had passed, it was "do it again!", the terror replaced by smiles and wild cheers. By the end of the evening we had pretty much re-engineered the flamethrower in our heads to make it bigger, louder, and more portable. Such joy!
Burning Man is always a great party, but what I really look for out there is a sense of transformation and spirit. Usually I find this in the awe-inspiring sublime works of art that have been the staple of the event. In years past I've been brought to tears by such creations, scattered across the playa like a canvass for the heart and soul of humanity. Sadly, as I noted, this year there just wasn't very much art. And herein lies my emerging criticism of Burning Man. It's turning into too much of a party and losing its soul in the process. The growing attendance has necessitated a larger bureaucracy to manage the event. This has created a widening gap between the ideals of the founders and the practicalities and concerns held by the organizers. Burning Man is a hierarchical corporate enterprise, albeit a highly progressive one. But in their attempts to keep the event going by appeasing any opposition, they've marginalized a lot of the freedom and expression that is the real heart of the event. Art is being regulated more and more, and larger attendance by families has brought about increasing censorship and parental uptightness. Similarly the growing popularity is altering the landscape, moving more towards club-style camps with open bars. Alcohol seems to be edging out the entheogens. It also seems that the nudity that was once simply a form of freedom is becoming more and more sexualized in this party atmosphere. As with all good underground movements, they become diluted and changed as their popularity grows and they become more mainstream.
But the experience of Burning Man is still a phenomenal one. The spirit of community and giving continues to flourish. The BMorg continues to resist any attempts at commercialization and keeps the media wolves at bey. I think they need to put a cap on attendance at somewhere around 15k. This would cut down the overhead significantly and narrow the crowd to those more committed. BMorg should also open up the restricttions they've imposed on art and themes and channel more funds into art works, discouraging the rave clubs a bit. (And I'm an old raver but the whole Esplanade seems to be turning into rave soundsystems.)
The burn on Saturday was fantastic. Not much of a prelude beyond the standard parade of fire spinners (though the flaming wings were pretty cool), but the burn itself went like clockwork. Fireworks exploded into the sky as the fires began to climb the observatory. The whole affair was very well choreographed, free of the common errors that have often plagued past years. More fireworks as the flames grew higher. The wood geodesic dome under the man began to glow with flames forming a spectacular geometric pattern of fire, spinning off vortices of flame & smoke. The man began to burn fiercly, launching caches of rockets from his thorax and neck until, finally, he was fully engulfed. A tug or two on the lines and the man fell into the raging inferno, to great cheers of the 30,000+ crowd.
Once he fell the fire safety lines were broken and much of the crowd moved in towards the flame. I followed, as I always do, pressing through the thick mosh hotter and hotter until I finally reched the inner edge, open-faced to the blazing ruins of our burning man. 
I've noted before that the inner mosh always rotates counter-clockwise around the fire, though I never really knew why. This year tehre were a lot of folks who didn't understand the rotation at all and were just standing. As we pushed against them trying trying to keep the flow, a fellow pagan reveller shouted out "Counter-clockwise! Counter-clockwise! Banish!", and my intuitions rose to conscious awareness: we were indeed banishing the old, clearing the ritual of our phoenixed effigy, formerly swollen with all of our hopes and desires packed in over the last week, now released and free. All things renewed by fire.
I made about two revolutions around the inferno, ducking out into the open, running until I had to pull my cloak over my face to shield the burn, then diving back in behind the outer row of people. At this proximity it feels like every inch adds 15 degrees. Suddenly I was aware of a harmonic field at the edge of the circle. About 15 people were gathered, mashed in, auming steadily, while a wildman riffed arabesque on a tenor saxaphone. I was immediately captivated and joined the group, intoning deeply to find my register. Within moments I was tuned in and, like crickets at dusk, our aums gently synched together, all inhaling at once, then auming out together, again and again, the wildman spinning out scalar runs on his sax. This was the moment I was looking for. This was the singular point of devotion and spirit I come to Burning Man for, sudden and emergent, strangers brought together in the purity of transformation. There were no words exchanged between us, just occassional sideways glances of knowing, communion, an awareness of hope that we might help add a little more intent to this bacchannal.
Burning Man is, in whatever form it takes. I always leave transformed in some way, ever prone to re-evaluating my life in its wake. For me the veils of illusion have dropped a bit this year, and I hope it's only a temporary lull. I didn't have the transformative shamanic experience that I've come to take for granted as part of my yearly trek to the Black Rock Desert. 
This is certainly due in part to my own expectations and headspace, though I feel I can fairly level some criticisms as well. One realization is that it's really up to me to contribute my own spirituality and creation to the event. If it decays into some ribald pagan frat party and I've done nothing to counter it, then it's only me who's left to blame. Another thought is that I shouldn't rely so heavily on this yearly event to provide me with the psychic housecleaning I seek. I need to make it happen elsewhere, find the time in my daily life to engage in the same spirit and communion that seemed to flow so freely.
In the end change is constant and Burning Man will inevitably fade, hopefully to be replaced by another similar current, appropriately occulted from dilution and evolved to bring newer generations closer to the utopic ideals of it's founders - ideals that are really the same ideals shared by all of us since the infancy of humanity: warm companionship and community, expression and creativity, freedom from meaningless routine, and a communion with the ineffable and un-namable mysteries of creation. Burning Man is simply one point in time carrying the current onward, sustaining and nurturing the human spirit as it blossoms into hyperspace.
Rolling along the cracked white playa at night is a phenomenal experience. There's the crackle of alkali crust as the hardened surface breaks under the weight of my tires, kicking up little powdery puffs of dust in my wake. Then there are the random little bits of artworks that suddenly appear, like a field of green LED's sticking through the playa mirroring the myriad of stars above. And the moonlight dancing through the Black Rock desert, setting it aglow beneath its reddened ochre cat eye.
But the most stunning moment is upon turning back to take in the sudden ephemeral majesty of the pulsing, throbbing, shining, flashing, thumping, burning wonder of creative freedom that is the psychedelic Vegas of Black Rock City.
I marvel every time I see it.
My first trip to Burning Man we arrived at night. You have to crawl through 70 miles or so of thick inky darkness to to get to Gerlach. Aside from this small outpost there is nothing but black mountains and salt flats extending off into infinity. But out past Gerlach the night was broken by an unbelievable city of lights strobing against the interminable emptiness of the desert. I was thunderstruck at just how large the festival was... and how electric. In spite of the intense hostility of the land to life and limb, these technopagan freaks had wired the playa and flipped the switch.
A few hours later I was in a strobe-lit booth coming on to a tab, watching a friend in a reclined dentist chair get playfully beat with styrofoam pool toys by three random burners. I never looked back.
The most overt element of Burning Man is the sheer degree of pure, unfettered human creativity that transpires. The 2.5 miles of silt filling the ancient lack bed of Black Rock becomes a blank canvas, a tabula rasa upon which to paint the kaleidoscope of imagination convening between its rocky hills. My impression to this day is total awe at the ludicrously psychedelic playground that manifests in that shining eternal moment. Works of art stand by themselves, unattended, as offerings to the spirit of the event. They are there simply to be, and be enjoyed. In most cases here is no ownership, no one charging admission or even standing by looking for adoration or gratification.
Ranging from minute to monumental, covering every sense, the art of Black Rock stands as a testament to the devotion of its acolytes. Some spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create something spectacular that will last 5 or 6 days, then be destroyed. Witness the temples of David Best: vastly detailed and intricate buildings ornately buttressed and festooned with spires and symbols all uniquely reminiscent of some sci-fi Indian or Thai holy shrine. His temples are places of worship, explicitly constructed to honor those lost to death's bittersweet embrace. By Saturday it is covered in scrawled and shaky messages to the departed. I love you dad. Mom, I miss you. On Sunday night, the last night of Burning Man, the temple is set ablaze, and through the flaming vortices tearing out of its incinerating husk, you can just make out the faint wisps of Spirit...
This year the temple will span over 3/4 of a mile. It's conflagration will no doubt set the blackness of the Black Rock mountains on fire themselves under the stellar firmament above.
Each year there is a theme that sets the tone for the whole event. One year was Hell. Another, The Body. The Floating World was the year my wife and I were married at the Temple of Joy. This year the theme is The Vault of Heaven. Accordingly, costumes and art will will tend to highlight this theme. One piece is a playa-wide night kite flying. The organizers are hoping to get at least ten thousand lighted kites flying Thursday night, bringing the body of Nuit a bit closer to earth.
Less tangible than the art and general costumery and freakishness is the community of Burning Man. There's a general feeling in the air of coming together - of communing. Everyone comes for their own reason but everyone's there to participate in something powerfully unique and meaningful, something that humanity desperately needs: a grand party with a big heart and an incredible wardrobe.
But beyond the conviviality and celebration lies a deeper tone of release and transformation. Burning man is, at its core, about the cycle of creation - birth, life, death, and rebirth. This theme is enacted on the desert floor as life rises from its empty wasteland and gathers tens of thousands of digital apes with all of the tools and technologies, dreams and visions, tears and laughter they bring with them. The vast chaotic jubilee accretes around the central figure - the Burning Man - swirling out to the event horizon at the edge of Black Rock City. At the apex of the festival the masses gather around The Man and set him to flame. This is the central moment of Burning Man. This is the ultimate reason people come to the playa. To Burn The Man. It is the mythic transformation ritualized in a great pagan celebration of fire.
Properly phoenixed the burners march inward towards the flaming, smoldering pile of debris, drums pounding, chants and calls resonating through the thick, churning crowd. For whatever reason, whatever innate impulse or orchestrated symbol, we always move counter-clockwise around the fire, perhaps hoping to turn back the hands of time and relive this wondrous week under the desert sun...
Afterwards the night becomes a thunderous din of sound and fury, wailing against the emptiness of mechanized life, commodified nature, and co-opted meaning, branded, packaged, and sold back to us. At Burning Man there is no vending allowed. Large corporate logos - like the ones on the sides of rental trucks - are requested to be covered up. Video cameras must be registered and visiting press is highly regulated. Ice and coffee at Center Camp are the only products available for purchase. Everything else is based upon a gift economy. Give what you can. everything comes back around. One year there was a bar around the corner from our camp. 3 guys spent $1500 on liquor, built a bar, and poured drinks for anyoone. They ran out by Thursday, but the patrons kept bringing over more alcohol from their camps to keep the bar stocked. Gift economy.
It is this freedom from commercialization, this brief moment of living the ideal and casting off the shackles of capitalism that make Burning Man such an oasis. Indeed, much of Silicon Valley leaves their cubes and offices for the playa, finding release, escape, and inspiration to bring back home. For now, the ideal can only exist if we work the rest of the year. But for one week we can drop our guard a little, fly our freak flag higher, talk to strangers and invite them into our temporary homes, embrace the land and the beautiful fury of nature, and walk amongst the human imagination as it manifests its vast mysteries into the arms of creation, unfettered and ever on the wing.
