Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1997 13:52:37 -0700
From: jennifer holmes (satori@sirius.com)
Subject: The Man, This Time
THE FOLLOWING IS AN OPINION I am not attempting to dissuade anyone from
attending, but I think everyone should be fully informed when in the
desert. *Preparedness is all* I have not been involved in any way, shape or
form with this year's event. I want nothing to do with Burning Man, and
even considered speaking about it publicly too much involvement. But
enough people have asked me what I think, that I've decided to withstand
the slings and arrows of Larry's anger and possible alienation from the
group to send out a few cautionary tales...
1. The festival is on "private land" - This is the area a few miles from
fly hot springs - a delicate eco-system, one of the few areas for wildlife
to go. 10,000 people or more will destroy it. There will be animals & BUGS
(including scorpions), snakes, rabbits, coyotes, etc It's THEIR land.
2. The BLM will not let anyone one the main playa - don't go there. The
Land Speed Record Car will be marking it's track that weekend - no one will
be able to drive , camp or hang out on the playa. Also - some friends got
stuck trying to get from the new site to the playa. Don't get stuck.
3. I have no idea how they are getting insurance. It's not from last year's
insurance company - that's for sure.
4. The only experienced Black Rock Ranger who will be working is Danger
Ranger. The rest of us have quit. Without Rangers it will be a tragedy. If
you plan on going - please consider volunteering to be a Ranger . They NEED
you. The head of security & I said last year "This is the hardest job
I've ever had" - but I'm glad I did it. You will have to be SOBER the
whole weekend. Adrenaline is an amazing high - and in that surreal
environment you don't need the 'shrooms. PLEASE CONSIDER SERVING "THE
COMMUNITY" - they need to be saved from themselves.
5. THE VIBE - this is important. At best - it will be disapointing, at
worst - tragic. It will not be the same Burning Man as in years past - the
geographic location will see to that. The departure of many key players,
and the new attitude of the ones who remain will show. Everyone wants to be
paid for their services this year - I'm sure a few of the core players are
doing it out of love - but the whole attitude of the "community" has
changed. To top it off many experienced participants will not be there -
and 1,000's of first timers will decend on the festival (I read about it in
Wired!). IT IS UP TO THE EXPERIENCED PARTICIPANTS TO REACH OUT TO THE
NEWBIES AND TEACH THEM WHAT IT MEANS TO BE IN THE DESERT. Since many evil
spirits are let loose at Burning Man (believe me - I saw them) everyone
will have to work TWICE as hard this year with the good energy. PLEASE be
aware of sending the bad energy AWAY. THIS IS ESSENTIAL AFTER THE BURN.
Tell it to go into the light. Tell it not to follow you home. When you get
back take epsom salt/borax baths. REALLY. I'm not kidding. Last year
tragedy was averted be the will by a handful of people. We held the line
(it slipped a few times) against some big fucking nasty shit, so that all
of you could have fun. It was not easy. See point 4 above and be all you
can be - join the Black Rock Rangers.
6. Who knows what the law enforcement will do - it in a different county -
different sheriff. They were not happy last year - why should they be this
year.
Here are some other opinions on the subject....
This is from BigRig Industries parody of the BM newsletter (They're
brilliant - www.bigrig.home.ml.org)
BURNING MAN - THE LIVING LIE
"In the words of others, the Burning Man event is described as an upwelling
of positive energy where people forge a bond with the earth, an artistic
potlach where self expression and self interpretation foster a thousand
different experiences, and a community of familiar strangers united with
the same tangent of freedom and creativity. This is a lie.
The community experience so fondly trumpeted as the living skin of Burning
Man is pocked, scarred and so lacerated that it is no longer the durable
integument needed to sustain the Burning Man's viscera. Last year's
community was such a stark and realistic representation of modern
civilization that it reminded us of our own downtown Oakland. Thieves,
vandals, wandering drunkards, drug abusers, belligerent oafs, yuppies,
traffic fatalities, assaults, and lingering mistrust turned an enlightening
experience into an unsettling mission to stay alive through Sunday......
......Now the original meaning of the man has been pulled out from under
you and re-packaged as hipster's summer camp. Spiritual exploration has
been replaced with preordained consecration. Personal experience has been
supplanted with directed growth. Unique visions are under the guidance of
consensus. Spontaneous adventure is now a well-regulated enterprise with a
mandatory fee. Hardy souls dedicated to their journey and aware of their
own mortality are now in the league with drive-by sepectators and ill
prepared dunces who have never faced the reality of dying in the desert.
Safety in numbers is now vulnerability among the masses."
>From the Bay Guardian pre-Burning Man article August 1996:
Harvey acknowledges the potential problems but argues that the site's
isolation and harsh environment provide a natural buffer against
antisocial behavior. People are too busy trying to survive -- and,
of course,
having a good time -- to pick fights, he says. He remains convinced the
community will stay connected. "You can take 12 people and create a
mob, or you can take 12,000 people and create a community. It doesn't
have anything to do with numbers; it has to do with the quality of the
connection between the individuals."
And if that connection breaks down? ***"I've threatened before to start
systematically downsizing the Man until he disappears. Then I'll
just say,
'Well, Burning Man is gone. I guess you'll have to invent something new
for yourselves.' "*** In the meantime, logistics have been juggled to
accommodate larger numbers: the Man has been elevated to make him
visible at greater distances, and the closing-night burning ceremony has
been shortened to allow less time for aggressive outbursts. Notes Harvey,
"You know you're getting into deep water when people start yelling, 'Burn
the fucker!' "
***That time has come Larry -ed.
This is from an article on allstarmag.com by our own beloved Loose Cannon.
I am including the first part so that everyone knows what happened at the
rave camp accident.
" At dawn, Labor Day, I stood atop the tower in the center of
camp, surveying the surrounding flats. The Black Rock Desert
playa, a 400-square-mile alkali flat left behind by the once-great
Lake Lahontan, stretched before me, covered with every manner of
portable habitation, in every direction, for what seemed like
miles. Wafts of smoke drifted up from still-smoldering piles of
debris, the largest of them directly in line with the rising sun.
Hours earlier it had been a 40-foot tall idol, the Burning Man,
whose consumption by fire was the ostensible reason the now-
sleeping masses of "Black Rock City" were here. Weary from the
climb and multiple 20-hour days in the desert heat, I gathered my
breath, raised a bullhorn to my mouth, and belted out "ALLLAHU-U-
U-U AKBA-A-A-R!!!" to the four points of the compass.
We had made it. Sunday was the big night, the night the Man
burned, the night the haggard crew of volunteer workers known as
the Black Rock Rangers looked forward to with mixed hope and
dread. After the Man burns, everything that isn't nailed down gets
torched, and this year proved no exception. Yet, despite one
fatality before the event had even begun, and four arrests and six
medevac choppers through Saturday, Sunday night had been strangely
peaceful and mostly incident-free.
I descended from the impromptu minaret to the momentary
accolades of fellow rangers. It was one of those impulsively
creative acts which the desert seems to draw from people. And each
of the seven-to-nine thousand people estimated to have been on the
remote dry lake bed that weekend had the potential to come away
with moments like it--moments which smudged the boundaries between
thought, word, and deed; moments which meant as much to them as
this one meant to me.
A minute later, the radio crackled from a distant call two
miles north of center camp: Rave Camp. Bad accident. Head
injuries. Burns. Come quick. And so, in the course of a minute, I
went from the glow of my fondest memory of Burning Man '96 to the
scene of my worst nightmare.
What had occurred was readily apparent at the scene. A late-
model sedan had plowed over one tent, striking two of the three
campers asleep inside. It kept on rolling (no brake marks were
evident), and wiped out two more cars before coming to rest over
another occupied tent. Its ruptured radiator belched superheated
water and antifreeze over a third victim. In what was left of the
first tent, a young woman was moving, dazed but communicative. Her
companion, a young man, was breathing, pumping blood, and not much
else (In the three weeks since the car ran over his head, he has
not regained consciousness). And the third victim sat in front of
the crashed car, screaming like I've never heard anyone scream
before. Burnt skin hung off the bright pink integument of her
shoulder, arm, and back like wet cheesecloth. The car's driver,
Larry Dean Hudson, an alleged heroin dealer, was arrested on six
felony and two misdemeanor drug and drunk driving charges. If he
was hurt in the accident, he wasn't showing it. He is being held
for trial.
If I wanted to be morbid, I could rattle off a litany of
injuries, accidents, overdoses, thefts, assaults, and petty crimes
from this year's event. Suffice it to say that there was a down
side to Burning Man '96 which most of the participants were
fortunate enough not to see. Despite the fact that this year's
event was in many respects the best-planned, best-organized, and
most successful yet thrown, it was also the bloodiest ever. And it
may prove to be the last, having angered local communities and
sown division, resentment, and doubt deep into the Burning Man
organization....
.....Unfortunately, as with all utopias and anarchies, forces from
within and without the Burning Man organization are combining to
kill or denature the festival. Pershing County, for one, has
pulled up the "Welcome" mat for the event, recommending that the
Bureau of Land Management deny it permits in the future. And while
the BLM has yet to issue its final report for 1996's event,
Winnemucca District Recreation Coordinator Lynn Clemons has
indicated that an expensive, time-intensive environmental impact
report, essentially a bureaucratic tar pit, awaits as "a very good
possibility" should organizers petition to use the desert again.
Harvey and other faithful are pinning their hopes for Burning Man
'97 on the availability of private land for the event. But even if
such land does become available, the claims generated by this
year's injuries and accidents will render insurance either
impossible to procure or prohibitively expensive.
But though Harvey, Michael and some other core organizers
believe that the event can continue onward on private land with
some "reprogramming" and tweaking to the machinery, numerous
people within the organization are frankly skeptical as to Burning
Man's ability to continue as a meaningful event. Experienced key
workers in fire safety, infrastructure, emergency response,
communication, and volunteer coordination have parted ways with
the project, and for many others, the jury remains out. "The
general response to the event has been extremely positive," says
Technical Director John Law, "but they don't know how close to a
complete massacre we had out there." One of the long-time leaders
of the project, Law is bowing out after eight years.
Despite these daunting challenges, Harvey maintains that the
organization is stronger than ever, and believes that the Burning
Man will soldier on in '97. The overwhelmingly positive response
from first-time attendees means a fresh volunteer talent pool
will come to the organization, he feels. "The story continues,"
Harvey says. "Reports of Burning Man's death are exaggerated. But
we've got a lot to do. And I think what [Pershing County] did was,
it nudged us into a new epoch, into a new mode.
"The Mormons moved three times, didn't they?" Harvey jokes.
"I think three may be a charm. We know much better who and what we
are now. And, given that, given a responsible business plan, and
given a lot of institutional reforms in our organization, I'm
quite confident that Burning Man is an idea that simply won't go
away. We've tapped into a kind of enthusiasm that's a lot more
powerful than events whose object is the consumption of
entertainment."
Michael Michael remains guardedly optimistic and
philosophical "We need to alter the program, alter the mechanism,"
he says. "We do this every year. We put together a new program to
build a new community. We have new data to process this time. That
includes the Sheriff, the insurance, the medical. These all have
to be put into the new equation. But something is going to happen
in '97."
Only who, what, where, when, and how remain to be ironed out."
And finally - here is the letter I wrote for the Burning Man post mortem
meeting last year:
>>To everyone involved,
>>
>>As most of you realize now, there will not be a Burning Man Festival next
>>year.
>>
>>It has been made impossible by circumstance, and no matter how much we may
>>want to continue, we should accept the hand of fate with grace.
>>
>>It is very difficult to let go of something so vibrant and exciting, but it
>>deserves to end with dignity. It should not be torn apart by petty
>>squabbles about who's to blame and where the money went.
>>
>>"But we want JUSTICE!!!" the crowd roars....
>>
>>Justice is ever present even though we cannot divine it's presence in the
>>heat of anger. If money went missing or was mis-handled ... Who cares???
>>IT'S GONE NOW!!! And whatever money is left over needs to be saved for the
>>lawsuit.
>>WE weren't in this for the money anyhow. RIGHT?
>>
>>Larry - you once told me that you would be very upset if the "Temple of the
>>Three Guys" was torn apart by a fight over money. You need to let this
>>go. It's over.
>>
>>The fact that Burning Man has ended is a wonderful evolution for all of us.
>>We should mourn it's loss and move on to other things.
>>
>>This festival will become legend. Next labor day we can only hope that
>>some of the thousands of people whose lives we changed will go out AND
>>BUILD THEIR OWN MAN. Pray that the people have understood and that they
>>take it to the beach, forest and desert and create an autonomous free zone
>>of their own.
>>
>>Isn't that what it's all about? Is that not the reason we were doing all
>>this? We have planted the seeds, it is up to everyone else to harvest the
>>crop. Let Burning Man as we know it end - so all the people who benefited
>>from our hard labor in the sun can see that they can do it too.
>>
>>
>>And then we can go to THEIR festivals.
>>
>>
>>I LOVE YOU ALL and love means letting go.
>>ANGEL
>>
Jennifer November
satori@sirius.com