Burning Man Other

Entries from April 2020

Friday, April 17. 2020

Burning Man At Home



Somebody wrote down a list of how to recreate Burning Man at home, now that it's cancelled.
I had to share some of it, I am not taking credit for this, somebody else wrote it. And it is great!

Burning Man is cancelled this year. Here's how to play the home version.

-Tear down your house. Put it in a truck. Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together. Invite everyone you meet to come over and party. When they leave, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze, and break things.

-Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.

-Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.

-Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away. Drain all the water from the toilet. Only flush it every 3 days. Hide all the toilet paper.

-Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.

-Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don't go to a doctor.

-Don't sleep for 5 days. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

-Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume.

-Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car and trailer are completely packed with stuff. Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace" event. Empty your car into a dumpster.

-Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like it's the invasion of Normandy. Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp. Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it or can't find it.

-Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until someone offers you cocktails and dinner. Or acid.

-Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house. Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours. Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway. When he refuses, accuse him of not loving the "community".

-Search alleys until you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't want it. Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.

-Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life building a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a fun house on the edge of the city. Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "this sucks balls." Blow it up.

-Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year. Never look at it.

-Have a 3 a.m. soul-baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating.

-Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali's more disturbing, but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.

Are you tempted to go yet? Some of the BEST times of my life have been at Black Rock City.
My fave on that list is the Salvador Dali painting reference, after my first Burn that is what I thought, that Burning Man is like stepping into a Dali if I had to describe the event to somebody that had never been. Dali also happens to be one of my favorite artists.
I bet there will be a lot of Burners doing something ceremonial in place of Burning Man this year. I might think of something to do. I wonder if people will gather at Baker Beach in San Francisco where Burning Man first happened in 1986?

Saturday, April 11. 2020

Decision

It got announced today....."After much listening, discussion, and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision not to build Black Rock City in 2020. Given the painful reality of COVID-19, one of the greatest global challenges of our lifetimes, we believe this is the right thing to do. Yes, we are heartbroken. We know you are too. In 2020 we need human connection and Immediacy more than ever. But public health and the well-being of our participants, staff, and neighbors in Nevada are our highest priorities." That was from burningman.org
And I also got an email as a Burning Man volunteer (one of the many volunteers), "In the interest of public safety and after careful consideration, Burning Man Project has made the difficult decision not to build Black Rock City in 2020. As you all know from having contributed so much over the years, a gathering the size and complexity of Black Rock City requires our entire community to put in many months of planning and preparing. Coupled with enormous investments of money and energy, we don’t think it’s practical to continue waiting for the circumstances to change, nor do we think that would be fair to our community members, contracting partners, neighbors in Nevada and cooperating agencies who give so much of themselves to this event. We take great comfort in knowing that we are the people who will find the opportunity, hope, and potential in the face of this change. Let’s show the rest of the world how to burn."

This was a hard pill for me to swallow. I cried a bit. To me Burning Man (well Black Rock City to be exact) is not just some place to go and party. I could go to other parties and dance all night long or at least until 2 AM depending on when the club closes down. Burning Man is something that I can't put into words. I am sitting here looking at my five Burning Man boxes, filled with stuff for the event. Thinking about my bike, the soft Playa dust in between my toes, the wind that feels so good and the dust storms and being there in the middle of it all and just BEING. I will miss it SO much. My fear is that there will be no more Black Rock City....that this is it. But it can't be so. I have no control over this. There has to be a Burning Man 2021. I will be there. I am sad tonight.....