Burning Man 2004
Part 2: Going Native
Some people are put off by "Welcome Home." One day as we sat under a neighboring camp's geodesic dome, a woman from another camp was saying that we all have homes somewhere else, and if we lived in Black Rock City all the time it would cease to be special. She has a point. On the other hand, Black Rock City is home to no one besides those who visit. Not being a permanent city, it has no permanent residents. So there can be no distinction between visitors and natives; everyone who shows up is a native. I'm sure some veteran burners would argue that the natives are the ones who have been coming for five or ten or twenty years, and the rest of us are all yahoos. But the fact is, Black Rock City is nothing more or less than the people who dwell there, and what they bring with them. This is why it's so important to be a participant and not a spectator. If too many people came to just soak up the sights, the city would be hollow.
When I first decided to go to Burning Man, I figured I would go as a sort of journalist, exploring this fascinating American subculture. Then I learned about the rule against spectators, and had to re-think my approach. It became something I struggled with. In any strange situation I tend to adopt the role of Observer, making Sketches and having Insights. But that just wasn't going to fly in Black Rock City. I went with Troy and Alyssa, both playa veterans. We called ourselves the Ball and Scones, and our theme was being the ultimate secret society/seat of conspiracy. (As it turned out, the extent of our theme camp was the banner Alyssa painted.) I tried to think of a sub-theme or costume that would force me to interact with fellow burners. I thought about carrying an assortment of colored Sharpies and being a human graffiti wall, but I'm too hairy to write on anywhere except for my head. So I figured I'd wear white clothes people could write on. While shopping for my dust mask I found a white coverall to be worn while painting--perfect! But I never got anyone to write on me. The whole thing reminded me of the end of 6th grade when we all signed each others' t-shirts, and it just felt too lame to bother. It was hard to imagine exactly how I could be a participant until I'd been in Black Rock City for a day or so. And by then it came perfectly naturally.
It took us a couple of days to drive to Black Rock City from Portland. The final approach on the outskirts of the fabled city is slow. Every vehicle is stopped twice. The first time it's the Tossers, searching the vehicle for unticketed passengers. Mostly they dress like Mad Max. The woman who stopped us relished her role as the hard-ass, saying we'd have to wait until we get to the Greeters for any kind of friendly reception. She was actually nice to us, but it was pretty obvious we weren't hiding anyone in our cargo van. The second stop is the Greeter's Station. A Greeter gives you a map and some other literature, impresses the commandments on you one last time, and with a "welcome home" directs you to a camping spot. And if you are a virgin--i.e. this is your first burn--the Greeter initiates you. It was a short distance between the Tosser and the Greeter, but our line came to a dead stop for some reason. The Greeter stations spread out in a line perpendicular to the road, and I got to see a lot of initiations. Mostly they involved pulling down pants and getting spanked. While this happens, the spankee rings a bell hanging from a pole and yells, "I'm a virgin!" No big thing, as Burning Man things go, but for me it produced a sense of impending doom. I'm pretty much cripplingly repressed. I did not want to hang my ass out in front of the playa with my bits and pieces blowing in the wind. Is this what it means to go to Burning Man? Do I have to confront my fears, overcome my limitations just to get in the door? I had only minutes to think about it, and decided I would do whatever was asked of me to become part of the community. I thought if I went into my initiation intentionally, it wouldn't necessarily be a humiliation to spoil the whole trip. Or at least I could muster the denial until we went home.
We got to our Greeter, and Troy sang out, "We've got a virgin here!" So our Greeter (a normal guy, looked like someone you'd see at Home Depot) went through his spiel and then offered me my initiation. "I want you," he said, "to go out there and make a playa angel." Are you kidding? I was so relieved, I dropped down and ground my arms and legs into the dust with gusto. I had yet to learn how tenaciously playa dust sticks to clothes, and skin, and everything else. My arms and legs were coated. My clothes were coated. And it never went away. After a few days it made me feel like a desert animal, wearing my environment in order to live in it. My companions took sponge baths every couple of days, but not me.
A lot of people use different names in Black Rock City, playa names. Troy's playa name was Hippie Shit, as in "Get that hippie shit outta here!" Alyssa was sometimes Summerleaf, sometimes Swaggy O. I had never thought of a playa name I would want to use, although Dirt Angel occurred to me after my initiation. I like the paradoxical element--angels' feet never touch the ground, or so I learned second hand from a mythological novel. I liked the idea of an angel dedicated to baseness. And there was something about taking on a name based on my experience, rather than me making up some fantasy nameÉ it felt like a ritual of transformation. But "angel" is just too loaded with piety for me. I tried the name on for the first day or two, then stopped using it. In a lot of ways I failed to overcome my limitations. At one point someone asked Alyssa us what we had done during the week to push past our boundaries, and all I could come up with was talking to strangers. But then again, Burning Man was not the spiritual journey into deprivation I thought it would be. How could it be when we drove in with three coolers full of goodies, plus costumes, bikes, art supplies and other toys?
I suppose I took my initiation as permission to just have a good time. Most people who come to Burning Man come to party. Still, Black Rock City feels sacred in a way. It's a fragile place that would disappear forever if its people had the wrong attitude. It seems like such a chaotic mass of high-energy realized visions would foster the worst kind of flaccid new age pseudo-spiritualism, where everyone swears they've found utopia without bothering to think about what utopia might mean. But people aren't like that here. That's spectator thinking.
