11Oct04 part 1 - matter out of place.

Is this Earth?

I think I’ve gone too far. Where am I?

Jupiter? How the hell did I end up on Jupiter? Crap, have gone too far. Ok, Jupiter and seven, I’m looking for Earth at eight thirty, so that’s two manwise and three clockwise. Is that widdershins or deosil? I can never remember.

No one would know what I was talking about anyway.

I knew I would need a bike for Burningman, but a half decent cheap one was proving hard to track down. The one I had already was lent by a friend and the desert has a habit of destroying these things. So Saturday morning, the morning I’m due to leave, I’m tearing round all the garage sales in the neighbourhood looking for what they call here ‘a beater’; a bike you plan to destroy.

I’d given up and was on the way home, somewhat dejected, when of course I see one last sign, and of course they have a bike with gears that mostly work, big fat tyres and already rusted as hell, and the guy couldn’t but let me have it at half the thirty he wanted, and so soon I’m elatedly trying to ride two bikes at once down the hill to home so I can rush off to the other side of town to catch my ride several hours late.

So begins the trip. The next two point five weeks saw me into America, dust storms in the desert, casino knife theft, tearing through the hills of San Francisco with the top down in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac, talking murder with two rednecks and a hillbilly, hitchhiking through the u.s. of a.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

The ride down was smooth enough. I’d hooked up with a guy also named Daniel who had a van, he’d lined up two other guys from Toronto. He did all the driving, we got excellent mileage.

The first night we went looking for a camp ground, since in the states you can’t camp anywhere else. But the only grounds we could find forbade tents, RVs only, effectively making it illegal for us to sleep. We ended up driving into the hills, looking to take the law into our own hands, when we came across a bonnified redneck karaoke bar, and were screamed at by the peroxided bartender that eight miles up the road, sleep had been at least decriminalised.

Waking the next morning and looking around the logging road culdesac on which we’d spent the night, we found enough car window glass and bullet casings that the only thing that could’ve happened there was a series of cars parked and blown all holy hell out of by various handguns, shotguns and rifles.

Barring three missed turns and the half hour it took to realise we’d missed them, and some overly politicised conversation, the rest of the drive passed without notable incident.

Ok there were a few little moments, like when we were having breakfast (for budgeting reasons, I opted to starve) in a little place with a sign on the wall saying ‘please do not profane the Lord’s name here’ and I’ve just asked the guy if he likes Ani Difranco and he quite loudly proclaims that that sort of thing he likes to call Stinky Pussy Music, and I just bunker down and wait for the lynch mob. Apart from that and things like it.

I found myself subconsciously refraining from swearing while talking to Americans. I realised I was doing it when I caught myself actually saying holy cow.

So we arrive on the Playa (ply-er; technical name for a dried lake bed, also used to refer to the dust). It’s midnight, five minutes before the gates officially open. Its very still, the sky is clear and dark, there isn’t a city for miles to light it. In the distance the hills are silhouetted black. I don’t remember if it was loud or quiet, but there was a long line of cars and the people seemed exited to be there. I think there were spotlights on the road.

It was cold. Our van was checked for sneakers-in, but even the girl doing the checking had to admit with the amount of crap we’d brought we could have six people in the back for all she could tell. Me and Daniel were Playa virgins, so we had to be spanked.

I don’t know, it’s some ritual thing. Drop trou, couple of bare handed smacks from drunken greeters almost mostly wearing schoolgirl uniforms. Later I found out we were supposed to have a choice: mystery prize (spanking), or ring a bell. They must’ve been in a spanking kind of mood.

Drive out across the Playa with the side door open and me standing on the edge, to somewhere in the vicinity of eight thirty and Saturn (radial streets are named for hours on the clock, concentric streets, this year, for planets in the solar system. Ahh… it’s starting to make sense now, isn’t it?) to set their camp and shade structure. I was to camp with the Lamplighters, much nearer the centre. The shade took a while to set up and soon after, blew over.

There were two first nights for me; the night we arrived, and the next, which was the official first night of the thing. In many ways they were both the nights I enjoyed the most. The very first because it was the weirdest. Rolling quietly through the town, the ground slipping beneath me as I leaned out of the van watching people slide past, quietly or raucously preparing their camps and mutant vehicles and impossible structures. It may have been a little less ethereal at the time, but that’s how I have it now.

And the second because it just fucking well rocked.

We’d spent the day setting up our camp’s shade structure slash lounge slash water feature; a fairly considerable pavilion with seats, walkthrough waterfall and freeflowing bar, which had required a lot of lifting and carrying, so we had a little party. Just the eighty of us, two hundred friends, four hundred members of the extended community, and anyone passing by.

I liked it because the vibe was right on. Everyone was in a good, excited mood, there was unlimited sangria (free, of course), and because at one point a girl crouched down behind me and whispered in my ear that she really, really wanted to make out with me.

Well, I kind of said I’d go on a bike ride with this other girl over here, but I can probably spare you five minutes.

Or I may have said “Ahurr, hur hurrr (yur perdy).”

Hi Grandma. (She reads this.)

Lamplighters. We light the lamps. Every evening we get together to clean, refuel, light and ultimately place the eight hundred kerosene lanterns that light the major streets in Black Rock City. There are three subspecies: the Bearer, the Lifter and Support.

Bearers carry long poles across their shoulders with twelve lanterns hanging off them, kind of heavy but the biggest pain is in keeping your arms from going to sleep.

While we’re processioning Supporters run round removing lanterns and putting them on the very long hooked poles that the Lifters use to place them on the tall spires that line the street. And we do this in long white robes, proceeding solemnly as every single passer by screams We Love You Lamplighters! Woohooo!

Because we mark the nightfall. When you see us you know the fun is about to start.

In exchange for doing this every night I got fed and inebriated. I barely touched the food I took down with me. Volunteering is good.

And what did you learn today Daniel?

Too-daay I lerrrned… that gifts are better than barter, that Playa dust gets into everything, and that watching other people have sex is really creepy.

It is. Some things are just personal. Damn you Orange Dome. Ew ew ew ew ew.

It’s all about the little ironies. Like how a festival at least largely based on awareness of your environment (leave no trace!) takes place in one of the most inhospitable, dead and deadly environments on Earth, where everything you see other than dust is completely artificial.

And like how to get the things I needed I had to shop at big box stores like Canadian Tire and Home Depot and Walmart.

And how with everyone getting down there and around and back, and all the generators and mutant vehicles, we must’ve gone though an entire Alaskan national park worth of petroleum products.

Ironic that the supposed focus of this writing, the Burningman festival itself, will not have the most written about it this mailer.

Case in point. The second to last night the man burned. We were sitting, watching from the Lamplighter truck, but as he fell (sixty feet tall of wood and metal) and the crowd rushed him a few of us jumped down and rushed him too. The ritual states, run a circle around the fire until the fire has burnt away.

I was three quarters of the way around, ducking in and out of the inner ring of two thousand people running, shielding myself from the intense, intense heat, when I stopped and actually looked into it. It was like looking into hell.

But not hell.

Later I would try to describe it. I can only attempt to express how it feels now to have been there at the time. All I have are what the memory and idea of it has become. That’s not how it really was. That isn’t what really happened. Maybe you’ll understand if you were there. I wish you’d been there.

Let’s just say that it was pure.

It was very pure.

I was keen to talk to people about how their festival was going for them. Thirty-five thousand people, and each one experiencing the thing in a different way. That’s a lot of burning men, a lot of Black Rock cities.

For me, the majority of time was spent exploring. There was always something to see. One night I made it out to the perimeter. There was a false tree standing in the desert. A handful of people were silently placing prayers and mementos of lost ones on its body.

It was freezing cold that night, I rode back with my lights turned off and the dust glowing silver beneath my wheels. I thought about crossing the fence and just picking a star to aim for, out towards the distant hills. I had no desire to actually do it, but the knowledge that I could, if I chose, is what keeps me ticking.

And that’s probably pretty much all I have to say about Burningman. I’ve learned not to write about ‘you had to be there’ type experiences. There’s no point. A few of the more important things I can try to describe by way of excessive lyricism, but that gets dull.

So yeah, it was really cool. Not earth shattering or religious or anything, but a bloody good time. I’d go again, and I’d travel a ways to do so. I’ve been thinking about some things I’d like to make, articulated solar funnels and reclaimed water shower stalls and giant sandworms that really breach and suchforth.

I’ll see where I’m at next year.

The man burns in 326 days.

And from the Lest we forget to be cynical file, there was some bad stuff.

Like apparently there were some people putting things down the porta-loos to block them, piss off the porta-loo people and get the whole thing shut down. (Because if we don’t deliberately shove things down the toilets at Burningman, then the terrorists win.)

And there was stuff getting stolen, but not nearly as much as most big festivals, and that which was was apparently mostly by Nevada locals who get tickets for cheap.

The voyage home was kind of insane.