Burning Man 2005: What a long, strange trip it's been
A journey to the heart of the Nevada desert for a celebration of life, art, madness and dehydration through the dualistic synthesis of creation and destruction
Chris Dreyer
Issue date: 9/9/05 Section: On the Wall
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Burning Man was the most crazy, beautiful, unreal thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. There is absolutely no way to capture it accurately in print - at the risk of sounding very cliché: Burning Man cannot be described, it must be experienced. It's kind of like trying to describe God or something entirely metaphysical and abstract to someone; you can never really pinpoint it, just talk in the general direction of it. But, bearing that in mind, I shall do my best to piece together and describe the craziness that was Burning Man 2005.
This year's Burning Man festival took place from Monday, Aug. 29, to Sunday, Sept. 4 in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, a few miles from the small town of Gerlach. My Burning Man adventure didn't begin until Wednesday night, when I began driving down with Sarah Sevedge (who played a considerable role in my decision to go). Unfortunately, this year's Burning Man coincided with the first week of the school year here at Gonzaga University. While it would have been nice to be present for the whole week's event, it was also quite important to not be dropped from all the classes we had registered for. So, we showed up to the first day of classes and then headed down to the desert, arriving Thursday at about noon after a very long night's drive.
We knew we were in for quite the experience when we were handed our tickets; rather than the usual pale, spumoni green color of most event tickets, these passes had foil-stamped psychedelic pictures of a fat, green face with a large, manic grin. Passing through the gate to enter, we were greeted by a very tan, very naked man who proceeded to give us maps and pamphlets, and encouraged us to ring the bell in celebration of our first time. He gave us directions to our campsite, at the address 8:00 and Catharsis, explained the basic rules of the town, and bid us a good time. We drove slowly down the dusty road to our campsite and eventually found our spot (two blocks away from Catharsis, at 8:00 and Ego). We spent some time setting up camp and then went exploring to take in the craziness of the place.
One of the first things that occurred to us was how big this place was. Black Rock City, the temporary city created during the week of the Burning Man festival, has nearly 40,000 denizens. Aside from the living space, there is a vast amount of open area where the art installations are, as well as the Man - and the whole thing is just enormous. A brief description of the layout: The living arrangements are arranged in a semi circle, as if from 2:00 to 10:00 on a clock. Streets were arranged on axes of times on the half-hour from 2:00 to 10:00, with eight concentric semicircles named after shades of the human psyche, proceeding in a logically alphabetical order, A-H. Amnesia, Bipolar, Catharsis and Delirium were a few such streets. In the center of the circle is a large, open area of desert known as the Playa, filled with all sorts of really cool art installations, and the Man in the very center. The Playa then extends even farther above the 12:00 point for what I would guess to be about three miles. There was nothing there to gauge distance, so it's very difficult to tell. It was also very difficult to gauge the progression of time in such a place. This was actually kind of refreshing, to live by the progression of the sun.
As Sarah and I went exploring around Black Rock City, we were simply amazed and overwhelmed by the craziness of everything. Everything taking place at Burning Man was so incredible and surreal. The landscape was strange and new to us, with dry, dusty sand everywhere and small, brown mountain ranges in the distance. People were driving around modified golf carts and small cars known as "artcars," which ranged from looking like something out of Mad Max, Star Wars, or some science fiction film that has never been written before. There were thousands of bicycles, looking all the more surreal through a hazy sheen of Playa dust. Huge art installments had been planted in the desert sand. A few examples: a blue, 10-foot high, half-submerged head with sleeping eyes (who allegedly opened them at night), a large, intesine-looking brain made of plaster with a large, wooden crucifix jutting out with the word "obey" written in neon lights across it, a large ship (ironic by sheer juxtaposition of landscape), and a boy named Dicky, who lived in a plastic box for the entire week, talking to people through a small, semicircular hole. People in crazy outfits were everywhere: people in metallic robot suits, people with comically large, inflatable body parts, people with funny hats, and of course, naked people and partially naked people. Nakedness in abundance. Some people had brought large metal machineries, such as a giant, robotic dinosaur-giraffe and a great robotic man attached to a car of some sort. But, let us not forget, the Man in the center of the city. The Man stood about 50 feet high, to my estimate, surrounded by a funhouse maze (which was both fun, scary, confusing and disorienting) until Saturday. We walked the maze and made it to the center, climbing to the feet of the Man, where we looked out at Black Rock City, again amazed at the greatness of it.
Friday was spent much in the same way as Thursday, with much walking around and absorbing the craziness. After even just being there for a few hours, one falls into sort of a trance; this is partially due to the intense heat and dryness of the desert, and the downtempo trance electronica music that is playing quite loudly 18 hours a day from the traveling double-decker party buses, which traveled from camp to camp, recruiting energetic burners (burners being people who attend Burning Man) to hop onto their traveling dance parties.
Nightlife on the Playa was even more incredible than the daytime. First off, a fair amount of the machines that people had brought to play with on the Playa breathed fire after nightfall. The robotic man-car shot fire from his mouth and both his hands, and the robotic giraffe thing had flames coming from his ears. Some of the art cars and party buses had flame-throwers as well. Additionally, there were hundreds of fire dancers around the city, doing everything from breathing fire to jumping rope with flaming whips.
I could seriously go on and on about all the crazy, weird happenings and it still would only be a drop in the bucket - so much craziness!
The main event came on Saturday, with the burning of the Man. The ceremony began at 9 p.m., with every single one of the 40,000 people at Burning Man gathered around the Man in the center. I was sitting up on the frontline with Sarah, thanks to an amazing bout of foresight, so we were actually unable to see the full scope of how many people were gathered, but we had an amazing, front row seat to the night's show. The ceremony started with the fire dancers, all several hundred of them performing in full force in front of the Man. We experienced large groups of synchronized fire dancing, flaming jump ropes, flaming whips, flaming breath - all several feet before our faces.
And then, the Man came down! In a sea of fireworks erupting into a cacophony of beautiful flames, the Man began to burn to a symphony of applause and cheering and yells of "BURN! BURN!" As the structural support began to give and the flaming effigy toppled to the sand, the burners cheered even more enthusiastically and before long the throng of spectators rushed the Man, much to the consternation of the crowd control. Never have I seen such a beautiful display of destructive mayhem.
We drove back on Sunday, arriving home Monday to the brutal harshness of this reality - a bitter pill to swallow after living in such a fantastic dreamworld for four days.
No matter how hard I try to describe this event, I really can't even come close, but if this even sounds remotely interesting to you, I highly suggest you make plans to attend Burning Man the next year or the year after. There is something there for everyone: electonica-lovers have more live DJ action than you can shake a glowstick at, mechanically-inclined burners can build giant, fire breathing beasts out of scrap metal to bring along, artsy people can bring along giant metal or plaster installments to put up on the Playa, and everyone else can do whatever they want - at the risk of sounding cliché again: Burning Man is what you make it.
Oh my God! So much craziness! Postmodernism everywhere!
Information on this and next year's festival can be found at www.burningman.com