I have long contemplated on how to describe what Burning Man is to someone who isn’t familiar with the event. The difficulty in giving an explanation stems from the fact that the gathering, which takes place annually in the Black Rock Desert, is absurdly surreal. A lot of people may find Burning Man grotesque. Let this introduction be a warning for reader discretion.
To make sense of Burning Man, one should start with its origins. In 1986, Larry Harvey alongside some friends decided to build a wooden structure of a man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach and set it on fire. A small crowd gathered around the fire and encouraged the men to create an unofficial annual ritual. Surprisingly, every year this ceremony gained popularity with more and more participants until the local police department decided to forbid the tradition from taking place on Bakers Beach. This led the organizers to move the festivities to the current location of Burning Man, Black Rock City.
I am perplexed by how this tradition was able to survive such a transition. The Black Rock Desert is an unforgiving environment, where venturers must be well-equipped if they are to endure. Thus, if you plan on ever attending Burning Man, make sure to bring enough water, food and versatile clothing for desert conditions. One of the main principles of Burning Man is «radical self-reliance», which directly translates to: If you die, it’s your own fault and the organizers won’t claim responsibility. Seriously, people have died in Burning Man and here are a few examples of how: motorized vehicle accident, drug overdose, running into a fire and more. People who attend Burning Man refer to themselves as «burners» and they take pride in this festivity, hence the motto: «Keep Burning Man potentially lethal» – because safety becomes lame when it is enforced by an organization.
Now that I have scared most of you away from ever attending, I shall reward the readers who are still curious with some insight on the nice things Burning Man has to offer. Two additional Burning Man principles are «radical self-expression» and «Participation». These principles have shaped what Burning man is all about and why burners fall in love with the event. Essentially, people who attend Burning Man are encouraged to participate by offering something to the community. An offering can take any shape or form.
This may sound odd or even incomprehensible to non-burners but allow me to elaborate. Most burners contribute to Burning Man by either creating an artwork and displaying it on the «playa» or building and driving «mutant vehicles» around. The playa is the main place where burning man participants gather to socialize, par ty, and appreciate the art members have contributed. As for mutant vehicles, it is easier to understand what such a thing is if you google it. Contributions don’t necessarily have to be elaborate expensive art installations. People also contribute by preparing pancakes in the morning and offering them to fellow burners or even holding a ted talk in a shaded tent when it is 39 degrees Celsius outside. Hopefully you now understand that participating in Burning Man can mean anything. It is these small contributions from the community, which make Burning Man so diverse. Right when you enter Burning Man, everyone receives a small booklet. In this booklet you can find all the activities and things people have prepared to make the week-long event special.
A final question that the reader may have is: What is the point of all of this? Why would someone willingly put themselves in a harsh environment to eat some pancakes from a stranger and dance around a burning man statue? Well, let me tell you. There is no place else on earth where you will get as close to escaping societal norms and this is something I like to refer to as «escaping the matrix». An average day at burning man can look like this:
You wake up in either a tent or camper van. Is it 2 pm or 5 am? You don’t know, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because you only slept 4 hours in your sandy 29-degree hot bed. As you leave your shelter, you open your booklet to see what Burning Man has in store today. Activities for Tuesday afternoon include: A ted talk by a fortune 500 CEO on cybersecurity, an orgy at the «orgy dome», a DIY jewelry workshop or visiting a face or body painting studio. A difficult choice to make, so you opt to reside underneath a community tent until the heat settles and crack open a can of diet coke with your friends and family. As dusk approaches you figure out some of the best DJ’s tonight will be performing on a mutant vehicle known as Robot Heart. Hence, you get on your bike and turn on the LED’s attached to it to begin your voyage. As you leave the comfort and safety of your community camp, you enter a vast and barren land full of other burners riding their illuminated bikes in the dark. You scan your surroundings to suddenly find a gigantic slowly moving rainbow frog like structure blasting a techno remix of «Staying Alive». As this unique looking vehicle passes you by, the passengers aboard yell at you to come join them.
It can’t hurt to get distracted for a few minutes, right? So, you park your bike and climb on top of this moving rainbow frog and dance alongside your new friends. One offers you a bump of ketamine and the other coke. You politely decline, but do not refuse the free can of beer. As you gaze into the distance, you see a sea of neon lights illuminating the pitch-black middle of nowhere.
Time all of the sudden gets completely forgotten and you slowly come to the realization you will never make it to Robot Heart. But that’s ok because wherever this rainbow frog takes you will probably be just as good.
The mutant vehicle finally comes to a halt right in front of a metallic domelike structure. On top of the dome is a sign with the letters THUNDERDOME written. You see two humans standing on swings inside this dome with Styrofoam weapons. All of a sudden, both get pushed by another person so that the swings approach each other from opposite directions. In the middle of the dome a battle between the two commences and people surrounding the dome are cheering and yelling, throwing their fists into the air. You start to question whether you are dreaming, only to realize that Burning Man is an experience far from most people’s expectations of reality. Whatever you are experiencing currently is profoundly unique and you try to internalize whatever you have done or seen.