Editor’s Note: The following is a hazy recollection of one night at this year’s Burning Man Festival. Not only am I usually prone to dramatic exaggeration, but also given the festival and mood, the prose here twists creatively. Yet, the events below happened exactly as I remembered, with the literary intensity attempting to conjure up the Playa.


Frequently, I’m asked with innocence or a jaded sneer: what is Burning Man? Is it a big hippie event, a place to burn shit up, a drug fest, an experiment in temporary community, a test of survival in an unpredictable desert, a huge nudist colony, a sex-crazed orgy, the world’s largest art gallery, a massive party, a spiritual retreat, a large man that burns? Yes, all of the above.

Burning Man is fairly inexpressible. It’s an event that you have to witness to see; comprehension may not even come later. I’m still figuring out the way of the playa. Stories don’t capture it fully, pictures allude to fleeting snapshots of it, television renditions like Malcolm in the Middle fail miserably. The Burn - as Burning Man is often called - is a lot of things to a lot of people, a meeting point of disparate cultures seeking different goals.


Instead of continuing to wax poetically fruitlessly over the ethos of the Burn, I present instead a moment, not a full day, just one evening. As the event is a week long, even longer for those that organize, there are many days and many nights. Here’s just one of them.

The sun grows quieter and lower in the sky. Heat starts to dissipate propelling the baked weary out of their tents, shade structures, and passed-out hammocks. Few people at the Burn have watches. Time is told by the natural rhythm of the sun with times like dark thirty. The moon also counts time, that is if the moon deigns to show. This year we had a timid waxing crescent.

Sunset is the time to prepare dinner and to prepare yourself for the night. In darkness those uncracked glow-sticks, water bottles, trinkets, and furry go-go boots are harder to find among the dusty detritus of your tent, your neighbor’s tent, the disheveled car. We ate a cooked meal, important to tell the body: food, as the previous heat of the day is spent snacking both in camp on density bars and beef jerky but off the munificence of the city from such unexpectedly found goods like hot waffles from Irrational Geographic Society’s four waffle irons; potatoes and peppers from a string band; and even a chocolate-iced, yellow cupcake from a wonderful cupcake spirit wandering the playa art.

When the sun sets behind the mountains, many let out of whoop of joy and hope. The day is often for resting, exploring, chilling, yoga, meditation, big beer parties, and fixing your camp. The night can be starkly different, both for the cold and dark – really dark in the desert – but also for the dawn of the rave parties, a point when the illuminated art like the Sola Project turns on. It is then a time to move your money maker.

I put away the day’s Papal outfit and found what I was to wear that evening. It’s tradition to wear some sort of costume, scantily clad during the day’s heat, layered at night, many in fake furs and goofy hats. Every night is Halloween and a chance to be someone different. Supposedly many years ago a group of drag queens from San Francisco introduced the Burning Man founder Lee Harvey and normally ranger-like campers to feathers and sparkles, features that stuck in their whimsy. For this Wednesday night, I found a black tuxedo jacket, white collared shirt, black bow tie, skinny beige pants, black cowboy boots and a tall furry black hat. With a small whip, I was a cross between an equestrian rider and a circus ring-leader. Size forty-six boots are a bit big for miles of walking, but sometimes fashion is more important than function.

There’s a lot of ways to spend a night at the Burn. If you got fried during the day, sometimes it may be best to turn in early and get some sleep before the rise of the next fiery sun. You could find a few of the many rave clubs springing up in geodesic domes or under large art projects and shake your beauty until the sky lightens and then go much later as the city never sleeps even if the moon does. Or you could sit contemplatively in Center Camp, a large covered space with couches and benches, coffee and tea, quiet moments and a place to meet up with old friends and new soul mates. You might stay in around your camp, get pleasantly goofy with your village, and stare at the stars, while plumbing the fathoms of your kindred spirits. The deep Playa offers remote walks from obscure art piece to cryptic giant chess set or oddly placed saloon at the edge of a mountain range.

Then there are the streets worth wandering. Black Rock City, population about forty thousand, is the city name of the temporary society that rises for just a week each Burning Man festival. The city lay-out has developed over the years and now has stabilized into a giant horseshoe or almost full torus. If you think of the torus as a clock, people camp in the long arc between the two o’clock and ten o’clock positions on the clock. There are streets between camp sites, the radial streets are methodically named after clock times like 2:30. The concentric circular streets are alphabetized, the first street - the Esplanade - the exception but the streets behind it were named this year Anxious, Brave, Chance, Destiny, Eager, Fate, and so forth. The 2:00 to 10:00 walk along the Esplanade is between one and two miles. In the large open center of the city stands the Man, a reference point during the day and lit by neon at night for the lost. Where am I? Well, look for the Man. Further out along the 6:00 radial street is the Temple and beyond that in the distance hulks the Belgian Waffle, a wooden wonder the size the Playa has never seen.

The geologic formation in which the Black Rock desert lies is called a playa, a desert lake that fills briefly in the winter and then dries and cracks the rest of the year. The retreating water leaves no vegetation, no hills, no rocks, just cracked earth and gypsum dust. The nearest large employer for the neighboring towns of Gerlach and Empire, Nevada, is a gypsum factory that I suppose makes sheet rock. The word playa in Black Rock City thus refers to a lot of different entities: the empty lake bed, the dust that coats everything especially later in the week when cars kick it up, the unsettled space inside the Esplanade and onward past the Temple.

A popular night time excursion is to roam the Esplanade. Much like a boardwalk, as it is the frontage street of the city, a lot of the larger villages, interactive art projects, and sheer zaninesses are located on the valued commodity of the Esplanade. I resided this year at 2:30 and Esplanade in Irrational Geographic Society Village. There are plenty of streets behind the Esplanade, just a little less traveled. Great fun can be had poking into the unexpected finds along Brave like the Black Light Museum or check out the peeps on Destiny that are trying to gentrify their neighborhood with a sushi party, the sushi served decorously on reclining naked people.

This year, I tried a strategy called the dance card. Since a bunch of my friends were staying in disparate camps, instead of pushing them all together in one big mob, I thought I would spend one day and one night with a different person, a slot on my Victorian dance card. I could thus get away from the inevitable drama of my own camp – dammit, does anybody clean up this kitchen? – and dine metaphysically in the environs and from the experiences of my far-flung friends.


Two see I, K and K. This evening, I met up Kim and Kyle, Cambridge, MA residents, second-year Burners, and great spirits. Kyle and I actually met for the first time exactly a year ago at the Burning Man festival. Kyle works by day as an analytical chemist and Kim is a famous pharmacologist, but on the Playa nobody works and few ask about that other life you lead fifty-one weeks of the year. For the Burn, the two of them resided with four others – Patrick, Dr. Mercury, Linh, and J.D. – at Pop Science, address of 3:45 and Anxious, fashionably across the street from the refreshing Steam Bath Project (SBP), a working sauna in a tight geodesic dome with teak flooring and benches for an invigorating sweat steam day and night.

Kim and Kyle got ready in their camp for an evening out. I shot the shit in their large PVC-piped geodesic dome covered with a green parachute. By Wednesday, food and trinkets were all over the place on chairs and make-shift tables, but nothing was overly chaotic, yet. As the desert at night is dark, it’s important to wear something that glows otherwise an errant bicycle or a barreling art car might run you over. I had a blinking swirl of EL wire on my fuzzy top hat.


The three of us set out probably around nine o’clock but who knew the time or cared to? We walked a block to the Esplanade up the 4:00 street. One of Boston’s big camp, Automatic Subconsciousness or just AutoSub sat conveniently near the corner of 4:00 and Esplanade. I knew a few people residing there including the maitre d’hotel, Antarctic physicist turned photographer Douglas Ruuska. AutoSub was quiet, folks eating dinner while standing in the back. In true Boston fashion, nobody looked our way or paid us any heed. We left as quietly as we came in.

Now that we had reached the Esplanade, it was time to wander it. There is just one simple choice in a situation like this: turn right and wander to the 2:00 arm or turn left and wander to the 10:00 arm. Unlike in politics, both choices are always equally valid. We choose right and that made all the difference.


A crowd had gathered by a makeshift stage for a performance/video game called DDI. The Playa always has games, often based on the ones you played as a kid. I’ve dropped trash-can lid sized chips from a step ladder down a giant Connect Four game. I’ve pulled cartoon wooden blocks depicting a hookah and a mushroom out of a giant patient in a large game of Operation. I’ve even rolled a bowling ball down a parquet alley plastered with magazine porn at Porno Lanes.

These games are great but they lack that ineffable sense of danger that generates mirth. Isn’t danger what Burning Man is all about? Dance Dance Revolution is a popular arcade game where players move their feet on floor pads to track the left, right, up, down arrows scrolling up the video screen. The arrows are timed to music so the rhythm of the feet is akin to dancing. I feel like I’m explaining Gansta Rap to my dear aunt. Fun, huh? DDR gets old after a while. Where’s the danger?

What if you put on a large insulated suit with face mask, climbed up on a stage, faced a giant video screen, and with the eagerness of the crowd and the cynicism of an emcee danced to DDR, except, well except when you fucked up, a huge jet of flame several feet long smacked you in the face? Yes, Dance Dance Immolation. These guys are geniuses. Two contestants battled each other over songs such as YMCA and Like a Virgin, jets of flames buffeting them back periodically while large pistons above the stage ejected even more flame skyward. Naturally, the crowd went wild. The clever announcer asserted, “Nah, we don’t really know what we are doing. Is this safe? Nobody’s dead yet. The DDR folks are on the Playa and they love us.”


I was having a hoot but I wanted a drink, a pick-me-up, a slice of tiramisu. The Playa is fan-fucking-tastic, but a little bleariness turns it into the most magical environ inconceivable. Kim, Kyle and I made quick feet back to Pop Science camp. There I met up with a friend named Dr. J and we were on our way.


A block away back on the Esplanade, we heard a haunting cacophony of compressed air. An androgynous older Asian man was sounding his fire organ. Imagine a silver car the size of a VW bug. Mount on it an elaborate rack of dark brown trumpet pipes of all sizes bundled together pointing skyward. Now light all these pipes with jets of flame. Hook up this otherworldly contraption to a handheld synthesizer. Playing a key ignites a pipe with a belch of flame simultaneously issuing a resonant rumble, whistle, or call. The conductor played with such fierce intensity as the heat rolled over us. The analogous set-up you could do at home: take a grand piano, light it on fire, and mount it on a car, and you might get the sense of the awesome spectacle, just sitting randomly on the street.


We pulled away from the fire organ to inspect a boat nearby. It was a simple rowboat but mounted on a tall frame by a rope that allowed it to swing over the ground like a kid’s swing. Kim looked upon the rowboat in askance but I climbed in and then got her to tumble in a well. There were oars in locks, for paddling the air of course. Kyle gave us a mighty push and I saw the world drift away, the ground followed by the revelers on the street and then the sky. I felt a character in the Fragonard where a man pushes his wife on a swing.


What the fuck is that? Across the street. A three-storey tiny Victorian house made out of wood with its top two floors romantically lit with what appeared to be gas lamps. That wasn’t here just a few hours ago. Not only does the city grow during the week but the buildings shift. I heard the following day that the engineering crew that built this Victorian house also put together last year’s magnificent clock tower. The house was indeed mobile but its motored died. Never fear, a 1917 steam engine pulled it around the desert. One night the steam engine ran out of steam and the crew had to haul their house back from the Waffle.


Entheon Village had three large white structures, a central dome, a saddle-shaped building, and a smaller tent. The Village hosted lecturers on psychedelic art and the latest in psychedelic research. The wooden walkway through their arch had seven seals in the flooring wood, each representing one of the seven chakras. We walked into the central dome, a massive interior space with only a few cushions. Noted psychedelic artist Alex Gray had his work displayed in large twenty-foot tall reproduction hanging all over the walls.

I stared in rapture at the intricate red paintings of single human bodies, the veins and musculature carefully detailed. I stared at one painting and then the next. Kim started to ramble. I quickly re-learned Kim’s drive to figure things out and to provide explanations to the world. She’s a scientist. Throughout the night she would elucidate meaning in what was to me a mass of lines and shapes. The dome was a chapel, a house for the gallery that depicted the arc of man’s ascension from humanity to the divine through the aid of psychedelics. The first image showed a kissing skeletal couple, the progenitor of humanity. The next image had a full-length human form, skeletal and bloody, but by the middle image, the chakras on the image were visible. Just to the left was a smaller portrait of Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman holding a space-filling molecule of his discovery: LSD, the gateway to the unconscious. Further along to the right, the body faded and the chakras grew more luminous. Lastly, the colors switched from predominately red to all blue and white, abstract lines arced from side to side. This was the representation of the divine. If this is divine, I am ready for the afterlife.

Like me, the crowd was similarly stunned standing or sitting quietly. The Playa has so few open interior spaces like this devoted just to meditation. In a corner, Alex Gray, the artist himself, painted. We walked next door to check out a gallery of smaller works. Further on was a large dance space, hung with soaring tapestries of rusts and reds. It was too early for dancing but I heard the music was usually trance.


Kim, Kyle, and I exited Entheon Village and headed down the Esplanade. We came across a large swiveled telescope like you might find at a seaside village overlooking a harbor but larger. We looked in at one end, just found a bunch of mirrors. I moved around to the other side. Kim figured out how it works. If both people had a light on, like a headlamp, moving in front of the giant kaleidoscope caused a bustling of reflective patterns inside. We giggled as our heads moved back and forth. A woman came by and we showed her how to work the scope. Sometimes it’s the little installations on the desert that captivate.


Next up: Thunderdome, a gigantic geodesic dome with no covering, just a large black sign on the very top of the perhaps three building storey that proclaimed in large text, Thunderdome. Deathguild, the dark folks that run Thunderdome are back every year to the Burn, and they are one big-ass attraction. A crowd had formed around the dome’s geodesic struts. Inside, a large Mad Max-looking crew of scary guys and woman orchestrated aggressive mayhem. Two contestants come into the dome, they get strapped into bouncy harnesses that hook to the ceiling. They are given bats and then whispered either the rules or told to fuck up the other fighter. A tall woman in black leather with a wild staff swung it tapping the ground in front of the fighters. Two men enter, one man leaves. The fighters swung at each other, foam bats flailing. Crunch. After a bit, either the bats were deemed ineffective or one fighter lost his bat, causing the two to grapple in the center throwing punches at each other, the ribs, head, whatever was accessible and most vulnerable. The crowd went wild. The crowd, though, wasn’t just on the ground. Lots of people had climbed the outside struts of the dome perching at different levels watching the violence inside. I looked up to see a man in a top hat and suit way up on the apex of the dome judging with rapt attention. Rumor has it that a woman fell a few nights later from the top. I saw one guy slip on a ground level strut causing one of the Deathguild thugs to march over and lecture him. The fighting isn’t just for men. Teams of women beat the shit out of each other. Burning Man isn’t just free love and rainbows. People also call forth aggression. I read in the event guide that a fight club was happening somewhere on the Playa. Later on, a video crew from Space Cowboys, neighbors to Thunderdome, projected the Thunderdome fights onto a screen on the Esplanade. I should attend the fights one year as a bookie giving out score cards.


Stunned from the mayhem, we pushed on. On the Playa, one encompassing world dissolves into another. We approached a twenty-five foot tall metal column made up of interlocking semi-cylindrical tubes. Each tube moved independently from the others. A video projector on the ground shot images on the whole column. An unearthly glow bounced off the moving metal parts with music pumping from the installation. I circled like a fox, preferring the view from behind of the structure with the scattered stars on top from the night sky. Once I got turning around the column, I couldn’t stop moving.


We passed the 6:00 spoke with a look at the big top tent with its furling colored flags that is Center Camp. Probably lots of folks were drinking coffee, strumming guitars, yoga stretching, and just hanging out at Center Camp. We weren’t ready for such a sit. Further along the Esplanade at 6:30 sat Image Node, two white geodesic domes connected by a white tunnel with an arched entrance in the middle. The left dome was playing atrocious spoken-word political techno so we cleaved to the right dome. Inside it was dark, padded, and cozy.

I knew Image Node from the previous year and sometimes such familiarity is a boon. Along the dome wall is a section of dark brown fabric with a slit in the middle. Like a baby going back into a vagina, you can crawl through this slit and down a narrow tunnel. After six feet or so, the tunnel opened up into a low, spacious room made from one giant bag of aluminum foil or mylar kept inflated by an air compressor. Lots of taped sections attested to the number of joined sections or the frequent rips of the bag.

I sat Kim and Kyle down on some inflatable furniture. Except for a few lights and low inflatable chairs, the room, called Prag, was deserted. I picked up 1-foot cube portable lights and gave each of them a light to look into. Cruise directing. They giggled and laughed at the pattern of lights. I took photos. I love these little spaces at the Burn, a spot that you would have to know existed before you stumbled on it.

We birthed, crawling through the aluminum tunnel and out the brown fabric. Why not check out the left part of Image Node? That annoying political techno music was a set of brilliants songs all composed of sound clips from the same singer-performer, George W Bush. Meanwhile, the camp had set up two Dance Dance Revolution pads on the floor, projecting the screen on the interior side of the dome. Instead of arrows scrolling up the screen, the heads of Cheney, Bush, Condi, and Rumsfeld ascended. When a head hit the top of the screen, it was imprisoned in a little cell. “Dick is a killer, Dick is a killer, Dick is a killer,” went the current song as two ravers moved their feet furiously. I laughed and laughed. The track selection changed to “Fuzzy Math.” The Burn has few overt political art pieces or demonstrations, but it was charming to see such a condemnatory, interactive, political statement created with such wit and technological savvy. I couldn’t decide which of the two DDR versions was better: Dance Dance Immolation or Bush Bush Revolution.


We stumbled across the god box, a large mirrored cube about six feet on a side, suspended a few feet from the ground from a rig, one of the cube’s points facing down. An older man ran the box, probably would be there all night shepherding his contraption. A top panel opened, a supplicant climbed in. He handed over a pair of 3-D or holographic glasses. He closed the box on the curled up, and then swung the box slowly from side to side. It wasn’t a wildly jerky ride, but I hear that the mirrored interior coupled with the glasses causes the boxed to be greatly disoriented. After a few minutes, a cute girl with black vinyl pants emerged from the box, weary but happy. Did she find God and what did he have to say? I guess an easier way would be just to give him a call but that was a little later in the night.


Next up, the camp of scary contraptions. Out in the open on the right of a dome twirled a little revolving iron merry-go-round that four could get on and whirl. On the left rocked a giant see-saw, like twenty feet long. This wasn’t an ordinary teeter-totter; this see-saw could also rotate on its four-foot stand. Good, huh? Actually, Kim saw the previous night a guy get dragged by the see-saw as it rotated past. Tonight, the crew at least put light cords on the ground denoting the footprint of the see-saw of death. A shirtless guy in white cow chaps rode the center of the see-saw like a bronco, arm a-flying. Two guys rode up and down the ends, one of them incongruously in a full Winnie-the-Pooh costume. Yee-haw. The testosterone was a-flame in this place.

We took a pass at the scary contraptions and worked our way inside the dome. This place had class. The hallway in had a bar right on the side so you could get a drink with your dance. I don’t remember the interior well as we didn’t stay long and eventually a lot of the dance domes blend together.


Not all the art is good on the Playa. Space Virgins next door had a little portal to what looked like the interior of a moving truck. The lighting was starkly white, fluorescent, and bright. From fishing wire stuck to the ceiling hung 6-inch circular diffraction gratings down to eye level. What the hell was this supposed to be? We giggled with some other confused folks. Do you put the diffraction grating on your head? Do you look through it? Funny faces through the grating worked. Sort of. I enjoyed the humor of two women at play.


We found another huge dome on the Esplanade. A show was underway: Cirque Berserk. Crowds stood in the back, more sat packed inside. Cirque Berserk looked like another troop of circus performers but gloriously on crack. The show had no words, but lots of acrobatics, dancing, music, and motion. A quiet man, the show’s protagonist, wearing little more than a red Speedo ascended to the rafters to come twirling, almost flying down like Mercury thanks to a suspended strap. As far as I could tell, in terms of plot he stood for the medieval Everyman, the humanity of us all. He was chased by another dressed almost completely in black. A bunch of demons emerged from the wings and consumed the Everyman. The theme of the performance: man’s battle with evil. I’ll give you a hint, man doesn’t win. Crucified by the devil, the devils paint the man’s face pallid white and suspend him from the rafters. He emerges later stage right suspended in a box rig like a marionette, the prize booty controlled mirthfully by the teeming folks in black. It was a little hard for me to acknowledge this descent into hell in my altered state.

A dance ensued, the spirits raucously celebrating All Hallow’s Eve. A devil breathed fire, and not just a little breath. I could see his lungs fill until he could hold no more and then spit out a torrent, over and over again. More fire I have never seen blown. Fire performers twirled their swords or large fire poi in groups. Now, I’ve seen lots of fire performances, but fuck, take a guy, tie his feet together, suspend him upside down into the ceiling, and have him spin a double-headed flaming staff under him while a woman with flaming fingers dances underneath. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.


The Cirque Berserk show ended. The night was just beginning. When the three of us set out eons ago from Pop Science, we had a quest. To give nights structure and accomplishment, quests are useful, even if they may be to find the most homely bar, hop an art car, or reach the trash fence. The quest for our super-heroes: the Cubaton. Last year, at his first Burn Kyle designated this Cubatron his favorite art piece on the Playa. It was cubic, roughly ten feet by ten feet, with patterns of oscillating lights. That year I never walked up the Cubatron, but I could see it from far away on the other Esplanade arm. When I saw the Cubatron’s distant changing lights, I thought of Kyle standing next to it in rapt attention, a kid looking at a bonfire.

We arrived. Like Columbus in the new world, we landed at the Cubatron. However, the Cubatron is no longer cubic, it’s cylindrical. It’s also a lot bigger than last year, maybe forty feet across and fifteen feet high. At this rate, the Cubatron in 2010 will envelop the whole Playa. Tonight, as we walked up the ten o’clock arm, we saw the lights of Cubatron grow closer. At some point, Kyle broke rank and headed out into the Playa towards his beloved blinky.

Spending a chunk of time by the Cubatron, I understood why it is beloved. The piece is pretty simple, ropes of LEDS covered with ping-pong balls, spaced maybe six inches apart on wired strands. The collection of strands stem from the ground in the center, rise up, and then spread out on radial spokes at different heights yielding a colorful matrix that resembles a tree, the tree of life. The joy of the Cubatron though, is that each ping-pong ball covered LED is individually addressable. The creator has written countless numbers of exquisite shows. Some of the shows are simpler with the lights making swirling colored arcs. In others, a large white and green paddle sweeps in a circle, moving faster and faster. For one great show, the Cubatron assumes the guise of a giant spider, yellow legs moving furiously.

Once again, Kim gave cogent direction. That’s why she’s a professor. From hours of viewing last year, she and Kyle determined the proper viewing distance far enough away, twenty feet, to take in the whole work. Closer and the lights surround but you can’t piece together the more intricate shows like that of the spider. The view works better if you are askew of a radial spoke and not face on.

We watched and watched and watched. I drew up to the Cubatron like a worshipper approaching the altar. Although the sides of the piece had been wired off, a large group of people had climbed through the flimsy wire openings and lay mirthfully on the ground under the lights. I had to be one of those people. The paddle arced over my head. The crowd laughed, gasped, and clapped. I couldn’t decide which I liked better: watching the Cubatron lights or watching the people watch the Cubatron. The glow was warm, fuzzy, and peaceful. As with Alex Gray’s Chapel earlier, I had found another spot where I wanted to spend the rest of the night. Not enough nights, not enough Burns.

Standing again right by the Cubatron, I watched a few more shows. For one, all the ping-pong lights turned on and off. The on-off oscillations grew faster and faster. And faster. Maybe it’s a known psychological effect, but as the frequencies increased, the crowd grew silent and riveted. My mind blanked, I felt like I was passing out. The humming in my head deafened. Once at maximum frequency, stunningly bright, the lights suddenly all turned off, the area went dark, a long pause, silence, everyone clapped.


Until now I had been carting my bicycle. It’s a convenient base with two baskets, a gallon of water, a large, leopard-print coat, and a backpack with camera, schedule, standard issue Papal postcards, chap stick, and assorted swag. But if I’m not riding my bicycle – Kim and Kyle were both walking – it became this large nuisance item to push from stop to stop. Well, time to stop that. I dumped my bike at a street corner, Esplanade and 8:30 I read. Until now, a large strand of red EL wire glowed the bicycles location so I could find it in a forest of other spokes. Unfortunately, the EL wire’s nine-volt battery ran out and my bike went dark. At least I stuck it on a street corner. Later in the week, I would leave my bike at an outdoor party and far too intoxicated, I could not find it again until bright noon the next day.


The three of us sauntered back to the parade of people on the Esplanade. The night was buzzing along and it seemed that everyone was out for a stroll. We passed a podium on a stage facing the Esplanade. The placard above the podium simply said “Rants.” I walked up, looked behind the podium to find a working megaphone. Shit, I’m too shy for this. Kim took charge. “I have a rant,” she said. “There are not enough rants here. This is a perfectly good ranting booth and nobody is ranting. I thought this was a participatory event. No spectators. There’s this ranting booth and nobody is ranting.”

Brief pause. A divinity appeared to rant. She was in her mid-twenties, brunette, had a little black eye-line. Incredibly perky and vivacious. She took hold of the podium and unleashed a 10-minute rant arcing from angry to sentimental to inspired. From what I remember, she had been on the Playa for weeks with the DPW (Department of Public Works) living in a tent, eating gruel, helping set up the Burn. She contracted dysentery – I remember reading an advanced-report e-mail that dysentery was spreading around the DPW. She had vomited out of her ass, as she put it, while Lee Harvey – the founder of Burning Man – sat in a hotel eating luxurious meals. What’s this about self-reliance while Lee Harvey lives it up on the sweat of volunteer laborers? A squawk box went off around the ranter’s neck: ship to Love Queen, ship to Love Queen, come in Love Queen. While on the podium, in the midst of her rant, she picked up her CB: Love Queen to ship, I’m here, just let me finish this rant before I rejoin the ship. Her rant took a turn (as I paraphrase): “Burning Man isn’t all about the art and the performances and the huge burning things. It’s about your friends that stick with you, that look out for you. It’s about community.” With much more ado from her fabulous address, she hopped off the podium through her stunned audience and off into the night, perhaps back to the ship. As you may have noticed, stunned was my word for the night.

Love Queen, I want to get married. To you. In her ten minute rant, I divined in her an intensity, spontaneity, levity, alacrity, and good will that I want, no need, in a wife. The Rant Goddess did not meditate and think through all her problems. She felt, did, acted. I want to be part of your ship, Love Queen – even the cabin boy - and travel the Playa with a similar gang of like-minded sailors. I ran into Love Queen the next day around noon near Center Camp. I stopped, thanked her for her rant, and then we both went on our days.


Kim and I had just started talking. Further down the Esplanade, we passed a phone booth, yes a phone booth, gray, solid, with three walls, and a sliding door, just that none of the walls had glass so although you were in the booth perhaps by yourself, your conversation wasn’t private. There was a short line of supplicants to use the phone. No, not for pizza delivery. The top of the booth in AT&T-style phone letter said in white on red: Talk to God.

Shit, I like talking to God, receiving life direction, but even better, I like being God. See, the phone line doesn’t ascend into the high heavens, but actually goes under the Playa street to a plush, canopied stage on the other side of the Esplanade lit discretely by a black light. There is luxurious chaise lounge in the center with two flanking chairs in the darkness. A white Princess phone sits on a small end table. The phone rings when a God-caller picks the receiver in the phone booth.

A spunky blond woman in a Catholic school girl’s outfit was curled up on the chaise lounge one hand on the phone, the other twirling the cord, as she answered calls efficiently in a slightly gravelly patience: “Hello, this is Goddess speaking. Yes, Goddess. What, do you think a man could do this job? How can I help you this evening?” I sat on one of the side chairs, ears strained to the overhead speaker to hear both the Goddess’s words and the conversation from the pay phone. It was entertaining to witness this dea ex machina.

Goddess looked over at me, made a gesture with the phone. The next call was mine. I hefted the white Princess mouth-piece and boomed, “This is God.” It’s fun to be God, but not as much as you think. A little ways into each call I took, the caller insisted on testing God, “Hello, God, do you remember that I talked to you last year from this very phone? Do you remember what I said?” I felt trapped in a losing debate instead of issuing edicts of free love and goodwill to all men. The Goddess next to me filled the deity role much better than I could. If the Peter Principle holds, then Pope is as far as I can aspire. St. Peter, Jesus, and God may be for me too much responsibility.

I called Kim over to field a few calls. She’s a natural Goddess, great with words. Meanwhile, I noticed on the floor of the stage a book of color swatches from a paint store. Wow, neat to look at so many swatches under the unearthly dim glow of a black light. I brought them over to Kyle but I don’t think he understood what I was getting it. He was busy swimming in his own world.

While we listened to the God calls, the strangest troop came up to the stage – and there is a lot strange out there in the far-flung Playa: four folks in matching costumes made up of dozens and dozens of pieces of foam pipe insulation, each piece sticking out from their bodies in three-foot sections making the four look like colorful porcupines. Each member had a different color foam that glowed under the black light. They danced for us, the assembled stunned and perplexed Gods and Goddesses. And then with a laugh, they were off into the night down the Esplanade. The world was a carnival and there was so much to see. Trick is, though, you didn’t need to go find it. It would find you.


I got that familiar feeling in the desert: dehydrated, chugging water all night out a one-gallon handled jug, walking and talking. Yep, I needed to pee. It’s not like you can saunter into the nearest restaurant or bar and ask for their bathroom key or slip into a scary train station commode. The bathrooms are located not on the main street of the Esplanade but further back on Destiny. We headed down the 9:00 spoke, a large open thoroughfare that led to a plaza. On the left was a brightly open-air red bar. This desert bar had a counter, stools, a backdrop with glass shelves and lots of bottles. Heck, it was a full bar. How did these folks drag out all these bottles to the desert? We loitered a bit but none of us were in the mood for a drink.


We got our bathroom break done and headed back to the Esplanade. On the corner were two large chalk boards with large pieces of colored chalk. One board said Hopes on top and the other said Fears, Hopes and Fears were the sub-topic of this year’s Burn. Underneath the board, it said that your hopes and fears would be erased daily but with all the scribbling still on the chalk boards, I don’t think anybody was doing much erasing.

It was a goofy, simplistic art piece, but I was game. I picked up a chalk butt and started writing fears in firm strokes: Loneliness, Sadness, Unacceptance. The fears kept pouring out. Although I couldn’t read what I was scratching, the exercise was cathartic as I entered a little world of frustrated anxieties. Kim mentioned that the other board was for Hopes. I ran over to that board and scribbled away: Love, Joy, Peace. I know, simple stuff, but I’m in the desert at perhaps three in the morning, pouring my joys and sorrows on mute, receptive chalk boards eagerly believing that the hopes I wrote will come true and the fears I wrote will vanish. My list took over my thoughts with my hand moving on its own. I started: C-O-M for community and then word COMPASSION magically took hold. I tapped the board again and again. Compassion is what I’m after. That’s all. I took a deep breath, turned around, and re-entered the Playa. It was as if an fortune teller or tarot reader told me exactly what I knew all along but lost long ago under the bed.


The end of the street was thumping. We spotted a red dome called Opulent Temple. The party was happening, beautiful people moving to the music. We entered the throng, the space warm and red with two square platform stages for go-go dancing. The ends of the Esplanade and its further edge team with nightclubs, rave domes, outdoor ampitheaters of energy. This one was smaller than most but it felt good.


As we walked out of The Opulent Temple, a party on the move passed by: a huge two-storey, purple, articulated bus with strings of yellow lights, a fat, fake satellite dish pointing out its rear and what appeared to be sails on the roof. The bus swung towards us blasting its music and mood. We were in thick of its party. Should we run and get on, let it take us to where it wanted? As fast as it jumped into our view, it rolled out, disappearing down the Esplanade, the music retreating like a soft parade off to whatever adventures its ports of call dictated.


The next stop was another rave dome but a spectacular one. The white dome was huge and cavernous. Out front was a two or three storey set of red risers. Behind the dome lay a small field of teepees. What the fuck kind of night club was this? Inside was even crazier. One long wall was entirely speakers. In the middle, raised up fifteen or so feet was the large dj table with a guy grooving on the decks. To the left and right of the dj set-up were further elevated stages. On the left side a drummer banged along to the music. On the right was a go-go dance couple. The bass throbbed from the big speakers. In the crowd hung huge two cages that looked as if for birds if birds were six-feet tall. A group of eight or so people in white were hanging from the right cage gyrating against it causing it to swing slightly. A couple took over the left cage. It was party alright. We stayed for just a few numbers.

Kim, Kyle, and I had reached the end of the line, Esplanade and 10:00. There were plenty more destinations possible such as walking down the 10:00 edge past six streets of rave domes, or head inward to make the long walk to the Man, or further onward to the giant green waffle. However, we were tired. We exited the teepee rave dome, looking like the biggest party the Mongols ever threw, and headed back down the Esplanade.


Having walked this ground before, we moved more quickly. Of course everyone else is also moving so the scenery is shifting like desert sands. We ran to the most beautiful art car I have ever seen, a vehicle with a brilliantly lit, yellow and green, double-headed dragon covering the car. On the front of the vehicle hung giant, detailed sea horses. Some Hollywood set designer and electrical crew must have put together this car. It wasn’t a party spot as not many could fit on and those on board seemed to be settling into their plush for the night. We circled the car. From the four eyes of the two dragon heads, green laser beams shot out and upwards, the two heads pointing in different directions, forward and backwards. It was a smashingly good ride.

 
We meandered back down the Esplanade. The zoning ain’t perfect, the avenue has its dead spots, either places that had yet to start up during the week or those that hopped during the day. I passed by a brightly lit section of the Esplanade with music thumping. Yet nobody was thumping, an empty space except for one woman. The party was elsewhere but not for her. She was maybe Latino dressed in a puffy white suit. She faced the Man in the center of the Playa and was just grooving to her own party. From just behind her I saw some writing on the ground. With spaghetti glow sticks, she had written two words: ME to her upper left and MYSELF to her upper right. “Wow,” I said. She responded, “Me and myself.” I looked again and the writing wasn’t as clear. What happened? A bike had ridden over her words moving some of the strokes. She and I gathered the misplaced glow and set ME and MYSELF back on the Playa. I thanked her for her wonder and left her at her own party. She was having fun regardless of the blam, fire, wheee, and oh my god.


I ran to catch up with Kim and Kyle. My bike, my chariot, my luggage rack, now dark, was where I left it at 8:30 and Esplanade. We headed further to 6:00 and then down the spoke to Center Camp. By the gigantic statues of the mother and child, I unceremoniously dumped my bike. Center Camp was happily half-empty, soothing in its quiet. Kim and Kyle found a bench. I had to keep moving. Center Camp is a huge cylindrical white big-top tent with a central oculus surrounded by flapping colored flags. Inside are a café (the only vending on the Playa), small art sculptures, a stage for bands and open-mic work, lots of cushions and low tables. There’s a central circular pathway within Center Camp. Remembering the walking meditation from my mindfulness class last fall, I joined the circular pathway and then methodically put one foot in front of the other, not letting anything or anybody get in the way. While my legs moved, the scenery changed from folks waiting to buy coffee, to little groups chatting, to jugglers and a kid with a megaphone. I didn’t get far though, cause one-third of the way around, I spotted Patrick and Dr. Mercury sitting together a bit haggard. I had a brief chat and then brought them over to Kim and Kyle, our group now recollecting their bizarre evenings. I resumed my walk anew making a meditative loop.

When I returned to our party of five, I could sense that the sky was beginning to lighten. It was time to go home. I bade a temporary adieu but farewell for the evening – or was it morning?, grabbed my stuff, and headed out of Center Camp. I left my water bottle behind, but fortunately Kim and Kyle recognized it as mine, and few people take other peoples’ stuff in Black Rock City.


I hopped my horse and took off across the wide Playa. Wow. Sunrise coming. One hand held the bike’s handle bars, the other clutched closed at the neck my leopard-print overcoat. My tall furry top hat still blinked yellow. My black booted feet pedaled langorously. I was on top of the world.

En route to home, I stopped halfway at the Serpent Mother. Try to imagine - I know it’s hard - a forty-food circular snake made our of articulated stainless steel sections. As the snake curls in a circle, parts of it are raised higher off the playa, some spots high enough to walk under and others at foot level. On one end raises a huge metal snake head with two large fangs. Get this, the head moves, snapping the air, ascending and jerking. On the other end is the serpent egg that hatched later in the week releasing a barrage of fireworks. Ho-hum, a snake. Well, the whole fucker is on fire, each articulated section spouting skyward a jet of flame with the serpent head jetting flames out of its fangs. The flame jets, though, are computer controlled so a line of intense blasts would travel the snake from head to tail and back again. Freakin’ awesome. Because of the warmth of the flames and the power of the serpent, crowds gathered here after dark and stayed until sunrise. Some of the roving party factories like Space Cowboys pulled up to throw a rave. I sat and stared at both the animated snake and the mass of animated people.


I jumped on my bike for the last weary leg. The way was lit well by the Tensor, the departed Frostbyte’s magnificent grid of brilliant LEDs, brighter than anything else on the Playa. Trouble with using the Tensor as a homing device is that it is so bright when you ride towards it, the light obscures peripheral vision so you can’t see other bicycles flying at you. Fortunately, dawn was cresting and few were out.

I returned to camp and my tent. A tarp shade structure, masterfully designed by Sage, covered my tent so the morning sun wouldn’t be so oppressive. At this wee hour, I had to figure out where to put my contact lenses and had to take that last piss before bed. This ring-master was beat. My large tent contained just an air mattress, sleeping bag and toiletry bag so I had room to lay out. My four bins of paraphernalia like a disco ball and desk lamp lay outside my tent, all contents categorized. Techno music boomed from at least two different parties. I may be turning in but others were still partying. I had ear plugs. It’s often important to sleep before sunrise as the light can wreck the circadian rhythm, not that at least five miles of walking, a night out, and waking too warm in four hours didn’t already change my sleep schedule.

So, I saw divinity in a chapel, witnessed man’s descent into hell, became God, watched two Dance Dance Revolution games – one burning - found my future wife, entered the carnal abyss, and lay under a brilliant grid of ping-pong ball lights. I can’t remember half of what actually happened. And that was just one night at the Burn. There’s the other night where I had a six-hour, non-stop conversation with a Blue Man who took a vow of silence, the other night where I reached apogee in the cathedral of the Belgian Waffle, or the time I flew at fourteen thousand feet. Other nights, other stories, this is just one night in Black Rock.

Editor's Note: Hey, I didn't write the following, but it's a brillant observational piece by Holly with her accompaning photograph. Based in Seattle, Holly has become through a lot of hard work and stylistic genius the queen of wedding photographers on the west coast. If yer getting married and want someone who will take more than just pictures (no, not your wallet), look her up at www.spirelight.com.

I'm beginning to learn the patterns of a wedding. After seeing the same ritual so many times, but in different incarnations, you learn its core and its periphery. That is not to say the core is the actual exchanging of rings, the vows, the priest or pastor or what have you speaking his piece (I have yet to photograph a wedding with a female officiant). No, the core is in the smaller details, the strange things you notice again and again. First off, nobody really likes going to weddings, except of course the bride and groom and possibly their parents. There is this charade that the whole thing is one big rockin' party, when if you really wanted to party, you wouldn't be at Lake Union Cafe on a Friday night with your relatives. The wedding must be endured as a sign of one's dedication and loyalty to the bride and/or groom. You must get out that nice dress, wear a tie, drink the champagne, eat the cake whether or not it is delicious, and get out on the dance floor and pretend like you're having a grand time dancing with your cousins. When "You Make Me Want to Shout" comes on, you have to throw your hands up in the air and crouch down for the "little bit softer now" part. God knows you have to dance the electroslide, especially if you are black (I'm just calling it like it is). Although the one black wedding I've done was the only one with decent music, at least according to me. I am so tired of hearing Bryan Adams songs I could cry. The groomsmen, predictably, get drunk. Who wouldn't take advantage of the open bar or at least free beer? The better to drown your dissatisfaction with having to use a weekend day or night--or vacation days and travel expenses if you fly in from out of town. Other notorious drunks include the mother of the bride, occasionally the mother of the groom, and the gaggle of bridesmaids. The DJ is usually delighted because this means people will come out on the dance floor and make fools of themselves. The cake is an unknown. Sometimes it is an amazing gourmet experience--tonight the "cake" was seven cakes from Just Desserts, ranging from black and white chocolate to the heavenly lemon blueberry. I've been to weddings where budget was king and they had a simple sheet cake. And sometimes the cake is awful, or even worse, it falls apart in the heat. I've seen cakes spring a leak and tilt dangerously on their tiered pillars, but so far I have not witnessed full-on cake disaster. The other thing I see time and time again is the bride's struggle with control. Not control of her soaring emotions, but control of the planning, the setup, the details. I cannot recommend highly enough having someone else responsible for running everything the day of the wedding--someone who is not the groom, like your mother or a very responsible bridesmaid. Then the poor bride doesn't have to spend all day answering frantic cell phone calls and directing people where the flowers go. I understand the drive to personally ensure that everything is perfect, but it's a no-win situation when you are also trying to revel in the full bride experience. Make your minions do your dirty work and appoint a head minion to manage them, at least for the day of the wedding. And for god's sake, please plan. I have been to the Wedding from Hell where everyone was hours late, they forgot the flowers, the batteries for the boom box (making for a silent walk down the aisle), and, yes, the rings. I had to intervene with the cheery "well, you've seen 4 Weddings and a Funeral, right?" If it weren't for my further meddling, the bride would have borrowed a ring that was too small for her. It gets better--the groomsmen AND the groom had been drinking since the early morning. The bride kept telling me she would look better photographed when drunk. Half the guests didn't show up, making the reception echoingly empty. The bride sent out a groomsmen to pick up most of the food on the way back from the reception, and she spent most of the reception in the kitchen cooking and getting things ready. Not surprisingly, the bride and groom fought and bickered the whole time. This was the only wedding where I threw in the towel and got drunk with the rest of them, figuring that was the only way I was going to get into the spirit of this highly disorganized event. The list goes on, of problems, small fiascos, and more commonly just the simple banality we try to dress up and parade as the most special day of two lives. Yet we go through the ritual time and time again, because of course it is a meaningful ritual to its participants. So much of it reminds me of prom writ large, but I know underneath that shimmering facade of pink bridesmaids dresses and boutennieres, it is one of the few ceremonies left to us as adults in this bland, homogenized culture. I do believe in the commitment that underlies that ceremony, and I am still intrigued to see all the little things that are different, all the ways a couple chooses to commemorate their relationship. Along with the same old dance songs, there are handmade centerpieces that each have a piece of the couple's story. Although the bride may be ringless and music-less, she will have taken the time to create beaded votive holders out of a billion baby jars from her own kids. Maybe some elements are cheesy, but there is usually real love there, and for god's sake, let's hold on to the few elements of pageantry and ritual we have left in this society. Bring on the cake.

If I lived in a Charles Dicken's novel, my story would progress in serial chapters like this one, abridged for Cliff Notes


The protagonist Pip shines shoes in the summer evenings at Covent Gardens. One night, a wealthy customer with dirty shoes recognizes an intricate badge that Pip wears on his lapel. Offering a large tip, the wealthy customer takes Pip for supper to an eating hall outside Fleet Street. Pip suspects that the wealthy customer is really a constable out to arrest Pip for truancy. However, in the eating hall, orphaned Pip tells the story of the badge, how he received it from an attorney as one of the few affects left from his deceased father, the ship captain turned drunk. The wealthy customer, named MacGuillic, has the same badge . Turns out, Pip and MacGuillic are long-lost brothers that haven't seen each other for twenty years. That explains the similar limp both have in their left shank. Over boiled beef and new potatoes, they share pints of ale and discuss a business plan.

 ***

Or so the story goes. Life can be stranger than fiction. Last night I met up with my long-lost brother with whom I haven't spoken for twenty odd years. We arranged a week ago to have dinner. We met one warm but misty Thursday night at seven, outside Park Street subway station. I came early, helped a confused Indian family haul their luggage up stairs. Outside, I sat on a wall and watched the world and all the other stragglers looking for someone. Two men had already found someone; they set up a portable speaker and a microphone so they could proslytize those getting off work about Jesus. A homeless guy fought them, but the calm prophet kept talking about sin and salvation.

I was looking too. looked through the crowd, nervous, eyes thinking that anyone could be my brother. Him? no. Him? maybe. What did he look like? Since I'm a writer, strange ideas go through my head. My brother Rob had contacted me about a month ago and then another brother John soon after. Why all the talk after twenty years of silence and muted, translated messages? Either Rob had a terminal disease and desperately needed a lung, kidney, or heart from a close family member... or Rob plotted a vendetta and would gun us down one by one. Hey, I need my lungs, and I'm in a public place. Gang-land shootings don't happen in public places, or do they? Probably more likely, Rob has moved back to Boston, and after all these years wants to reconnect with his family.

When I glanced, I didn't recognize him but I knew immediately it was him, some instinctual family bond that separates self from other. We exchanged pleasantries, looked for a place to eat. The Beantown pub was full and so was another bar on a side-street. I picked Silvertone, a upscale bar, and a good start for a friendship. The Couple and I had met here on our first Boston outing one April over a year ago. The waitress had a table for two ready. We ate and drank.

And usually I might go into the critical details, deconstructing a person. But because he's my brother and a new one at that, I don't find it proper. Nonetheless, here are some basics. He's thirty-eight, single, just passing another year around the sun on the second of July of this month. He's been a nurse for a decade, but a "traveller" as the itinerant nurses are known. An agency gets him thirteen-week contracts that he sometimes renews or sometimes lights out for another destination. He spent seven years in Florida mostly by a pool. He's come north to New Hampshire and hopes come August or Novemeber to head west for Denver, San Diego, a hopping tour of the west, thirteen weeks at a time, one place and then the next. He lives now on Beacon Hill, sharing an apartment with an old friend.

He prefers quieter hospitals. He works three or four days each week, seven to seven, that is seven at night until seven in the morning. The wee hours are slow, but he likes his alone time. Mass General is too crazy. The Florida hospitals work you too hard with the eldery during the winter months. The pay might be okay, but I don't think he can save lots.

He's different than me, lots. Longer face, different accent, more Bostonian. He went to three Red Soxs games this week. His hands flutter with a particular gesture. He's got the black hair from my father, not the lighter stringy hair I have from my mother. Parts of him remind me of his namesake, my grandfather. He drinks some, but then again don't we all? From job particulars, we moved to talk about family. I clued him in to the whereabouts of my brothers and their back stories. I steered clear of any of my own craziness; I'm just an upstanding but lonely chemist, right? We discussed a lot of travel. He wanted to know where I've been. What's Amsterdam like? He has flown to Costa Rica and the Bahamas. We both have a similar need to be away from home. We bitched about the lack of family vacations, our parents never spending a night away from home in the thirty-odd years that I have known them.

Three hours into the meal, I was ready to go home. We had covered all the salient details. Groceries needed to be bought, sleep needed to be had. With friendships, as with love, I'm learning slowly that it is best to move slowly. Rob and I will meet up at some other time, just not on the once every twenty years schedule that we have kept until now. I suggested he come to the big homestead on Saturday August 5 for a summer hurrah, the one weekend when both John and Ray will be in Boston. We parted on Boston Common at Park Street, he off to the unknown night, me on to the train. The mist outside had turned into fog. I felt clearer though. A hole had been filled in, the unspoken had finally been spoken, and part of my life had been restored. Pip, I have a third brother.

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