By Brian Bulkowski, September 15, 2000
What went wrong? What caused a social gathering of magical, absurd power to turn into another freakshow? If it wasn’t Burning Man, you’d say it went commercial, and there would be knowing nods all around.
It didn’t get commercial. It was as uncommercial as ever. The basic tenants of Burning Man held: no commerce. New ways held sway: distrust, because of the undercover cops and drug busts. More barter, as people couldn’t believe someone would act out of altruism. Theft, for no reason that I can understand.
If I had been going to party, it would have been a great time. If I had been going to meet up with my friends and spend a relaxing week of vacation, I would have grumbled about the weather and dust but would have come home with a smile on my face.
I didn’t go for those reasons. I went to be inspired, to inspire others. I went to have my life changed, in some new, unusual, unpredictable way, as had happened the year before.
Our humble band of travelers endured various hardships to make it to the Playa (as they unselfconsciously call the flat, hard surface of alkali desert). The one who built our shelter lost his apartment. Of our band, Rosin Coven, we had nothing as dramatic, only the stress of finding the money and time to plan for taking our entire environment 400 miles to the ends of the earth. We brought ourselves, our spirit, our music, our art, with the goal of sharing.
It was a hard haul. All of us spent a bit more than we could afford in vacation time, money, and concentration. Other important life duties were done badly and shirked to make the scene at the venerable Playa. To have one’s life changed, to share the art, then no hardship is too much. As it should be.
This year, what did we receive in return? No cathartic burn, due to technical difficulties. Great music? Yes, ours was good. And there were some monster jams. But nothing beyond that. Doubtless there were other killer groups out there, but I never saw or heard them. It’s a big Playa, and you only ever see a fraction of what happens. Last year, that fraction was a mind-blowing existence.
Where did it all go? So much was the same. Megavolt was there, but had a small Tesla coil and no truck, no ecstatic followers. The Seemen (Jay & Co) weren’t there with his low-budget burning flaming robots. The huge flaming propane torch guys got their act together only on Sunday, due to technical difficulties based on the weather. There was even a shortage of great dance domes and pyramids. The toast of Black Rock City was Thunderdome, the Mad Max area of fighting on bungees. People kept talking about the black light city, which was nothing but day-glow plywood dolmen under a flood of black light.
Was I in a dour mood? Yes. The weeks of preparation had strained our group, and when I got there, all I wanted to do was collapse in a heap. Last year, our dome was filled with interesting people who I was meeting for the first time. We weren’t invited back to that group out of a sense that the Rosin Coven band was freeloading on the good intentions of the Arga Warga group, but we thought we were brining an attraction and our own wonderfulness. This year, my co-campers were druggier and although they had their own charm, lacked a certain quirkiness. One of the highlights of my entire stay was running into the Be-Wargans, as they were this year, for coffee one cold morning, and having a series of actually interesting conversations, such as whether a long-chain acidic oil would act as a foot salve for the Playa dust.
Sure, everyone was nice. Random people were just as nice this year as last. The fine people at Freekutopia gave us the fine hospitality of an hour on their well situated trampoline. On one long walk, Ann was still acclimating, and had a touch of that Playa queasiness that gets you while you’re still adjusting, and we crashed out on some person’s couch for a while.
But where was the fire? Not the literal, but the metaphorical. I missed it.
The Burning Man organizers have realized that they’ve created a monster. I don’t know what they’re going to do for 2001, and I’m still catching the Jackrabbit Speaks mailing list. I don’t know what they can do, unless they opt for censorship. Lowering the cost back down might help. Having a “burning man art committee” that funds groups and stages from the general take might help. It’s against the spirit, but the original spirit is dying.
I don’t know what I’ll do next year. The band has already said they’re not going to make the scene, so if I go, it’ll be as a lowly citizen, or doing my own music. We’ve been kicking the idea of our own festival, getting a group campsite somewhere nice with trees and no playa and playing music all day and all night. The BM web site says “Don’t like our scene? Make one of your own!”, and they’re right.