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Living the Burn, Creating A Life
The Burn is something that happens each year at Burning Man. Burning Man is a community, an event, a phenomenon that takes place
in Black Rock City. Black Rock City is an invented city (just like every city in the world), that comes into being, however, for
only a few weeks out of each year, in one of the most inhospitable places in this nation - the Black Rock Desert. The Black Rock
Desert is in Nevada.
Larry Harvey, the founder of the phenomenon that is Burning Man, has this to say about it:
"Imagine you are put upon a desert plain, a space
which is so vast and blank that only your initiative can make of it a place.
Imagine it is swept by fearsome winds and scorching temperatures, and only by
your effort can you make of it a home. Imagine you're surrounded by thousands
of other people, that together you form a city, and that within this teeming
city there is nothing that's for sale."
This is Burning Man, an experimental community of almost 30,000 people that gathers each year in extreme conditions to follow two
fundamental rules: No spectators, and no money. They gather on a desert plain, lovingly called The Playa, that is hard-packed,
sun-baked, and so alkaline that not even insects can live there. The Playa is the bed of a prehistoric lake, left to dry over
the millennia, inhospitable to anything and everything. But this place, this community, has become for me - and for thousands
of others - a place where anything and everything seem possible. As such, it has become the opposite of what it seems - the
desert has become a wellspring for the rest of my life.
In "The Pinewoods," Mary Oliver speaks of rapture, of transformation, of awe. When I read this poem the first time, I knew - despite
the fact that its subject is, literally, miles and miles away from my subject today - that her
poem spoke to the same phenomenon:
This conviction - born of the experience of connection, and awe, and discomfort - now suffuses every aspect of my life, from writing, to friendships, to
my participation in the peace movement. And it is, strangely, and fundamentally, because of Burning Man.
So let's start from the beginning - not the beginning of Burning Man, but the beginning of my knowledge of it. I moved to
California from the east coast in the fall of 1997, ready to start a doctoral program, earnestly engaged in problems of social
theory and cultural discourse, concerned with serious things like politics and deprivation and history. I started dating Chris
(now my husband) about 6 months later. Chris and I met at a local bookstore, which hosted a screening that spring of a documentary
about the Burning Man festival. And Chris, who had been to Burning Man several times already, took me along. I had no idea
what to expect.
What I saw were sequined ladies caked in dust, naked bodies painted blue, art installations set aflame, cars that looked like
they
were straight out of Mad Max, furniture roving across a sun-scorched desert plain, and …massive numbers of people cooperating
to raise
ic, electronic image of a Man, a man who they would burn just a few nights later.
I was terrified, exhilarated, and curious - but mostly terrified.
Chris convinced me to go to Burning Man that year, and it didn't seem hard to learn the rules. No spectators, and no money. So
while he and his artsy-techie friends set about designing creatures, costumes, and roving furniture out of electro-luminescent wire,
I decided to start modestly. I decided to be a fish. A fish on a bicycle, to be exact. I designed a costume, made my own
pattern,
chose my own fabric (hologram rainbow sequins) and face paints, and felt like a kid again. It was exhilarating, amazing - to
use my hands and not my head for the first time in what seemed like years and years and years. It was such a small
step - compared to the bicycle retrofitted with 8 electro-luminous, computer-sequenced outlines of a running horse
that Chris was furiously concocting - but I was proud, and I felt ready.
I was not. That first year was hard. Imagine it. It is not an easy thing - in fact it is a frightening thing - to be
surrounded by 20,000 people all doing their best to be and express themselves. I, wrote only half a page in my journal
that year - and it was bitter! People seemed closed in on themselves, and oblivious. "There is this immense pressure to
feel privileged, to feel happy," I wrote. "No criticism is allowed. My head is pounding. People sleaze out, trip out,
laugh, play, create. But why? How many people here have forgotten the big picture?" But I was stuck there, in Black Rock
City, in the dry, scorching heat, and so I stuck it out. And things started to happen. When you are surrounded by 20,000
people laughing, crying, dancing, playing, creating, and connecting, something is bound to happen. Out
of the bitterness emerged the truth - that I was yearning to connect and create. Out of the discomfort emerged an energy -
a night of running full-speed, aimless, naked, across the desert under a full yellow moon. I wrote poetry, but not in my journal. I
wrote poetry on the walls at Poetry Camp in the morning, and then again on a notepad, that was left on a school desk,
in the middle
of the Playa, at 3 in the afternoon. I never saw those poems again. I made music, but not on an ordinary instrument.
I made music by banging wrenches and hammers on sculpted windpipes and chimes under a vast expanse of purpling bluish
evening sky. I brought our neighbors a melon in exchange for a plate of steaming pancakes. I spent an afternoon
embellishing my plain straw hat with foil and feathers and glitter, laughing and talking with strangers under a
circus tent awning at Arts & Crafts Camp. I danced all night. I watched with joy and pride as Chris tore across
the night on his electric horse bike, eliciting gasps of awe and delight, shouts of utter fascination. I sat and
watched the Man burn, knowing he would be raised up again next year. None of this was for sale. I will never be
the same again. I would not go back, says Mary Oliver, and I - I would not be anywhere else but stalled in the
happiness of these miracles.
Master
Card probably would love to make a commercial out of Burning Man - glow sticks $37, exhilaration not for sale.
The marketplace would love to co-opt it, devour it, like it seems to devour every corner of our lives. But it can not.
What is it about Burning Man that resists commodification, sponsorship, the intercession of money? Each of the 20-30,000
people in Black Rock City has paid to buy a ticket, but what is it that they are actually "buying"? Their money is
paying for land permits, emergency medical services, port-a-potties…. In short, they are paying to ensure the survival
of the community - no more, no less. But the shape of the community itself - its colors, actors, art cars, and the
experiences it makes possible - this shape is defined by what each participant gives of her or himself. No more,
no less. It is this act of giving of oneself that makes the difference.
Burning Man is more than an event, a festival, a destination, or even a lifestyle. Burning Man possesses a spirit that
transcends the material, transcends the fact of "belonging" or "deserving" or "playing by the rules." It cannot be possessed.
There is no inside or outside to Burning Man - it spills over the edges of its container, and inevitably into your life.
There is a passage in Matthew Fox's book Creation Spirituality which, for me, captures significance of Burning Man
(and of creation spirituality, too):
Just being at Burning Man, being surrounded by thousands of people who are choosing to give their own form of radical
self-expression to the community, without expecting anything in return, is a political act. It is a political act
because it defies the marketplace, and the supposed rules of our competitive, atom-like society. At Burning Man you
are confronted with diversity - a diversity unlike any other. And you are confronted with the fact that people on
a multitude of paths - creative, intellectual, spiritual - can come together. Going to Burning Man is a political
act that chooses community and creativity - that celebrates both the interdependent web, and the multitude of jewels
set within it. It is a statement that we can - if we reach deep within ourselves and find our power, if we confront
our discomfort, our barriers, our fears of one another - we can create another kind of world.
And this, for me, is also what the peace movement is all about. At Burning Man there is joy, and there is also anger.
So, too, in the peace movement. In the desert there is beauty, and there is also a need just to survive. So, too,
in the peace movement. In Black Rock City there are moments of breathtaking synchronicity, moments of vision, and
times of disagreement and discord. So, too, in the peace movement. What binds each of these phenomenon together
- despite the anger, the fear, and the discord that inevitably arise - is a sense of ownership, and a commitment
to community, creativity, and ritual.
The way I feel when I arrive at Burning Man each year is astonishingly similar to the way I feel when I get on a BART
train to march in the streets of San Francisco. More importantly, the way I felt the one year that I did NOT go to
Burning Man was astonishingly similar to the way I felt when I could not participate in the global march against
the Iraq War on February 15 of this year. A vacuum, a blank spot in my life, out of time. Ritual provides a
space for affirmation and connection, and ritual time exists outside of ordinary time. Ritual dwells not on a
linear timeline, but is rooted in the body. I believe that once you have experienced authentic ritual, it does
not leave your body. Once - before Burning Man - I believed this intellectually, from reading books on historical
memory and the anthropology of religion. Now I know it, deep within my bones. The ritual - and all its resonances
- are embedded within you as deeply as your own dreams, and you cannot go back.
This is why I believe that peace marches are not unimportant. They are not merely the trivial icing on the cake of real
dedication to nonviolence. It is easy to feel this way, when the President dismisses them as "focus groups" and even
your fellow activists seem defeated when "he" does not listen to the chants and pay attention to your carefully crafted
sign. But the peace marches are not for the President, or anyone else. They are about affirmation and connection, and have
come into being by and for the participants themselves. They are sites of creativity, of discomfort, of difference, and joy.
Socialist Worker Party youth, in black bandanas and filled with rage, march alongside teachers' unions and eco-vegetarians.
A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty on stilts, with bandages over he mouth and wrists, gazes mournfully at the crowd.
A pirate radiobroadcaster scouts the marchers for interview subjects. And the signs - the multitude of banners and signs!
Some about war, some about peace, some about energy, some about love. When people express reservations about going to a
peace march with me, they often say things like "Well, I don't know if I agree with all those people. I don't like some
of their signs." Once I felt like that, before I went to Burning Man. Now, I say: "Carry your own sign. Speak your own
truth. Take responsibility for your own body and your own creative power."
Both at Burning Man and in political movements, it is crucial for each person to "find their niche," quite literally, within
the community. Are you a night-owl, a desert hiker, a volunteer, or an exhibitionist? Do you like arts & crafts, wicca,
or techno? Will you wear sequins and chiffon, shorts and a tee shirt, or latex body paint? What combination of the above?
At a peace march, will you shout loud and clear against empire, hand out pamphlets, or put your body in front of the police
lines? Will you dress up in a costume, make a huge peace dove, or carry yourself in silent mourning down the cavernous city
street? What combination of the above?
None of these are the wrong answer, just as in the larger frame, no one choice of a path towards right living or awakening
can be wrong, as long as you are on a path. As Unitarian Universalists, this is what we affirm, right? But this larger frame
is important here, and ever-present. And this is what I did not understand when I first set foot on the Playa. Because a
true commitment to radical self-expression means an acceptance that many will not choose your same path. Many people will
not ever go to Burning Man, and many will choose not to march for peace. This does not mean they are not on their own paths,
being true to their own understandings, letting their own lights shine. Ironically, my choosing of Burning Man has taught
me this lesson.
The third time I went to Black Rock City I made an over-sized "Book of Common Prayer." At the time, though, I was still fairly
allergic to the notion of prayer. Making the book, I think, was a way of honestly confronting that fear. And I was definitely
allergic to the notion of God, and Christianity in general! But I was in for a surprise. Along came some people to write in
the book, and they thanked me for it, and then proceeded to write a real low-down, hard-core, serious Christian prayer to God!
I was shocked! You mean there are actually - gasp! - Christians at Burning Man! It exploded all my expectations. I wasn't
sure what to do. Should I take the book away? People were going to use it in ways I had not expected or planned for. Did
people maybe think - gasp! - that I was a Christian, too?! But I let the book sit, and I let myself sit, and also to keep
moving, and little by little, I found I was okay with it all. I was learning precisely why Burning Man is a microcosm,
why it confounds all your expectations, again and again and again, and why that is such an important experience for me
to have.
To live the Burn means to believe that the shape of our society depends on what we give of ourselves, and on what we hold back.
It depends on our willingness to take creative risks, to open ourselves to experiences of connection, discomfort, and rapture.
The health of our communities depends on each of us taking responsibility for our own creative power.
In a chapter on Gandhi's philosophy of satyagraha in his book, The Unconquerable World,
Jonathan Schell writes:
Burning Man helped me to recognize the creator in myself, and in others, and awakened me to the value of creativity in a free
community. Burning Man has become a ritual of rejuvenation, one that is perhaps best explained by the simple fact that every
year, it makes be want to be a better person. Burning Man is one of the sources in my life for a commitment to freedom, beauty,
and nonviolence. Because of it, I feel I more deeply understand what it means to be part of a mass of dazzling, breathing, daring
individuals, marching up a city street, putting their bodies on the line for peace. Both at Black Rock City, and on the streets
of San Francisco, I have lived a process of creative fermentation, celebration, and community that cannot be bought or sold.
What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Amy Elizabeth Robinson
Amy Elizabeth Robinson
August 3, 2003
Palo Alto, CA "I am separated from my old, comfortable self,"
"I believe in everything, I believe in anything." "Creation spirituality," (though he could just as easily have written
Burning Man), "elicits the artist in every person.
This is a dangerous thing, but a necessary and joyful part of all
liberation. To experience our own creativity, which invariably involves a return to our origins, constitutes a rebirth
of self that holds the key to the rebirth of all society's ailing and tired structures." "The nonviolent actor exhibits the highest degree of freedom because his action originates within himself, according
to his own judgment, inclination, and conscience, not in helpless, automatic response to another. [S]he is thus a creator,
not a mere responder."
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