Burning Man is a week of nothing but intensity. The environment, the people, the FOMO… Most of the time you’re just trying to wrap your head around what’s going on.
You sleep in the hours between sunrise and whenever it gets too hot. Actually, you pass out. “Sleep” implies you have some choice in the matter, rather than your body just shutting you down, which happens because you’re not taking care of it--eating too little and too infrequently, feeding it calories almost exclusively from beer, then working up a sweat riding a bike miles across Black Rock City. You climb all over art installations, head back to camp to regroup, (maybe) gobble whatever drugs you have or can get your hands on and dance all night. Lather, don’t rinse, repeat.
Everything is happening all at once and if you stop to brush your teeth you’ll be too late to see any of it.
I laughed myself to tears more in those seven days than I had in the last 10 years. I cried for the first time in I don’t even know how long--and not from exhaustion. I was more in touch with myself than I am 99% of the time.
Life immediately after Burning Man is like watching Pleasantville in reverse--you start in a world of vibrant color and then societal norms and mind-numbing repetition suck all that out and you’re stuck in a drab, colorless suburbia where your parents make you go to bed at 9 p.m. because you’ve got soccer practice in the morning.
There’s a term in the community to describe that period of color-bleaching readjustment--decompression.
Decompression is working through post-playa stress disorder. It’s mentally unpacking all the experiences and emotions you forced into your woefully undersized skull over the course of 168 hours. You find stuff you didn’t know you picked up along the way.
For me it involves waking up and not knowing where I am, generalized depression and an inability to focus.
And this year it included some profound realizations about who I am and how I live my life.
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Whereas most people commemorate their time at the Burn with cameras, I used a voice recorder to interview most of the members of my camp
Apologies to those I missed.
I did something similar last year, but much less organized. I rediscovered those files a week or two before departing for the 2019 festival, and it brought back a flood of memories I’d forgotten. I decided to be more serious about it this year.
It started with an uncertain series of questions, but after three or four interviews I developed a checklist.
how many burns is this for you?
what did you come here planning to do or see?
What’s stood out to you about your time here?
What have you learned from all this?
The interviews ranged from five to 30 minutes. A couple times they turned it around. We told, now you tell.
It’s been about two months since the burn ended and my answers are mostly the same now as they were then. My answer to the last question is vastly expanded though.
What have you learned, Donut?
I thought I’d learned to stop talking so much, and so loudly, and definitely put the megaphone away if I’m going to surrender my night to the turbo juice. However, I’ve learned that basic lesson a lot over the years and it never sticks for very long.
Earlier today I realized what the playa really had to teach me, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
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Context First
I’ve been single for… three years and change. Right or wrong I was head over heels for the last one. Parts of me still are. As I shouted at my depressed roommate after his first serious relationship ended:
“You only care about the first because you haven’t found the second!”
Taking advice and giving advice are two different skills.
I’ve been chasing the “second” for a while now. There have been a few hopefuls here and there--one that failed because our age difference kept me from giving it a fair chance and one that failed once we realized a mutual dislike of Stephen King wasn’t enough to sustain our fading infatuation.
Both times I’ve been to Burning Man I’ve been looking for that second. If there’s any place that desire would manifest, it’s Black Rock City.
My campmate Fudge is living proof. She found it out there.
Donut: Were you looking (for love) when you came out here?
Fudge: Totally. I was talking to Pat the first day, he asked what I was looking for, I was like, ‘my Person.’ Spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, my Person.
Donut: You gotta tell me what frequency you’re on, I’ve been looking for that both times I’ve been out here.
Fudge: You really have to will it. I’ve been doing a lot of manifesting lately… That shit’s real, especially here.
Pat, for the record, is her Person beyond any shadow of a doubt. We all thought they’d known each other for years but nope—they met on a Sunday and were in love by the next Sunday. We spoke about a month after the Burn ended and Fudge told me they’d already met each other’s parents, if that gives you some context.
You look at them
sorry guys
even a week into it and can’t help but crack jokes about the wedding, because they’re so clearly meant to be together.
They’re both unreasonably positive and fun, adventurous and never too cool to be cool.
Spag and I were drinking off our hangovers in the back of camp one morning when we heard Pat laughing and joking somewhere in the middle distance.
I wondered aloud how he could be so positive and energetic this far into the week—it was Friday or Saturday and we’d been partying for days. My well was getting close to drained.
Spag just looked at me.
“Have I not told you he has a shard of the sun permanently lodged in his heart?”
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So what have you learned, Donut?
I learned I need to uncover my shard of the sun.
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I’m not done growing by any means, but I thought I was in a place where I was ready for my Person.
I know now that I’ve got a ways to go.
In listening to these interviews and reflecting on my experience, I realized I need to learn to love more—that is, to be more positive, love myself and my community better. To risk being hurt. To stop keeping myself to myself.
Stop being too cool to be cool.
I tend to find a romance in the dark and bitter. I’ve been idolizing alcoholics and societal rejects for years because there’s some beauty in accepting the pointlessness of life, and going through with it all the same. It’s cosmic comedy, and a sure way to come out ahead when things go wrong.
But maybe things go wrong because you expect them to.
I joked plenty about Pat and Fudge being sickeningly cute. Everyone’s saying “aw” and I’m rolling my eyes and sneering “disgusting.”
I don’t actually mean all the negativity, but I think part of the problem is I’ve been making the joke so long I don’t know where it stops anymore. It’s become more comfortable to scoff and point out that over half of all marriages end in divorce. There’s a hell of a lot more risk in admiring the positivity--you might end up crying and screaming “WHY NOT ME?” like the lonely bridesmaid that never catches the bouquet.
I also think it’s important to be aware of the uglier side of the coin, of how easily things can turn sour, how quickly the flame can be snuffed out. Death, destruction and ruination are entirely pedestrian and can sweep you up in an instant. I almost died in a car wreck last January, on a rainy Sunday night in Gilroy, California. The world keeps spinning regardless.
It’s important to understand the darkness can find you at any time. By recognizing that, my hope is I can stave it off. However good things are, they’re just a few eternal seconds from going horribly, terribly wrong and ruining everything you’ve been building toward.
It’s a defense mechanism of sorts. I’m capable of leaning hard toward the positive, I just don’t let that side of myself out easily or comfortably.
My joy is a bit like Lenny with the bunnies—I temper myself as a precaution against the retard strength of it for fear of getting walked outside and shot in the back of the head.
That smothered positivity is why I gruffly insisted on taking a couple’s photo of Pat and Fudge in front of the sunrise. It was, to me, the exact perfect moment to cement these two beautiful and loving freaks on film. If I were in their shoes it’s the photo I would want, mock myself for wanting and then treasure all the same.
I’ve gotten really good at playing the curmudgeon with a heart of gold, who only lets it peek out occasionally, like after the relentless and good-natured prodding of two Canadians.
It’s easy, and comfortable, and only puts me at risk in small and infrequent ways.
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Failing
I sat in Center Camp rolling my eyes and making the occasional comment about a band that was playing a mash of funk and hip hop
white dreadlocks
Singing (and rapping) about corporate America and the need for societal change, blah blah blah.
Straight outta Zuccotti Park
We’ve all heard it before.
I wrote off the part of me that could appreciate they were making music, making an effort, putting themselves out there by playing to a passive audience. And I did it because… it’s right there to see. What more needs to be said than, “they’re trying”?
Trying is so lame
I could (and have in the past) go on a tirade about why their music was no good, why they’re one of 1,000 unoriginal sounds and really only adding to the cacophony of mediocrity. It’s basically a Mad Libs speech—just fill in the appropriate names and adjectives and I can apply it to just about anyone.
The thought is basically:
Yeah, you’re playing, but what are you playing?
It’s time I start ending that thought before the ‘but.’
Maybe I’ll learn that seeing the good, choosing to express positivity, to get silly and put myself out there, doesn’t have limitations--that giving doesn’t drain the well, only shows you the well is pretty fucking deep.
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Succeeding
On Tuesday a girl rode her bike by the bar while I was working the megaphone—my usual routine:
“Don’t stop here! This isn’t the bar for you.”
Of course then she stopped, a contrarian after my own heart, challenging me about why she should keep riding, what would happen if she were to come in for a drink.
I know this was on Tuesday because while I was telling her to move on, Ace ran out from behind me wearing his burgundy tutu (tutu tuesday!) and started spanking her with a hockey stick. She scrambled to put feet to pedals and ride off.
In between tears of laughter and gasping for breath I shouted at her retreating figure.
“I TOLD you not to stop here!”
We had not planned that, and could not have planned it any better.
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Walking to the temple burn with Paul in silence. Time got away from us and we were so busy breaking down camp that we didn’t think about it until there was an explosion in the distance—the temple going up.
He and I walked the whole way there and didn’t speak until we were on our way back. Then he told me about his mother, and a letter he wrote to her, long since turned to ash in the glowing pile of what was once the sacred space. I gave him a hug.
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Watching the sunrise with Spag near deep playa, the morning before the festival gates opened.
“It’s going to be a good week, Donut.”
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Thinking back now, I feel an intense love for these moments and the people in them, for the sublime, ethereal cinematography of a person just being themselves, for a world that allows life to unfold just so, and that allows me to be a part of it.
I could tell you stories about the discomfort or hostility I’ve felt toward people who were just being themselves, precisely because they don’t feel the need to temper their own brand of weird for public consumption.
I’ve been aware of that problem, and have been working on it.
I’m trying to shake loose the anxious self-consciousness that’s made a perch on my shoulder for the last who-knows-how-many years. That feeling, the voice that makes me say, ‘no,’ when I don’t need to say anything. The one that makes me worry about ‘how it’ll look.’
On the Tuesday of the Burn we took mushrooms. Part of my trip involved laying on the ground and talking with a friend about how tired I am of being lonely. She gave me a long hug and halfway through I realized that I was crying into her shoulder. She didn’t care.
I can’t stand up, so you’re going to have to come down to my level
The next day my megaphone spiel pulled someone into the bar. She brought her friends, one of whom I wanted to spend the rest of the day getting to know. We talked for 15 minutes or so.
It seemed auspicious timing given I’d spent the evening before tuning to the universal frequency to request my Person.
I’d sent a message that I was tired of dicking around and wanted to meet her, that I’d put in the work to find her. That I was being pretty close to the best version of myself I could be.
Better than I was, right?
I put my number in her phone with a too confident title (Donut is awesome). She wrote her name on my arm in sharpie, I wrote instructions on hers to return her to my camp should something go awry on her burn.
I messaged her after the festival, twice. I still haven’t heard anything back.
I’ll admit I’m still hoping, just a little bit.
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More context
My 2018 campmates will remember me waxing poetic about a girl I spent the night with on Tuesday of that year.
That also turned out to be a one-off engagement but not for lack of trying on my part.
I’m so focused on getting hit by the anvil that I’ll say the sky is falling when the wind blows leaves off a tired branch.
Stop limiting yourself to specific contexts. Maybe if you traded freely in this thing you’ve been hoarding you wouldn’t be clawing at the wrist of everyone who shakes your hand.
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In reflecting on it over half-folded laundry I realized I’d missed a piece. Yes, the transmitter in my chest beamed a message out to the cosmos. I thought the cosmos either didn’t get it or didn’t care, precisely because my post-festival messages to this girl were “seen” but not answered.
That little receipt is the devil’s greatest invention
The missing link is this—the universe heard me, and wrote back. I just didn’t understand the response right away.
This person who walked up to our bar, who sat and talked with me, she asked questions I wanted to answer honestly, whereas I’d usually dance around them because I’m not comfortable being nakedly honest (with strangers).
Tell me about the people you choose to have in your life.
She wouldn’t accept my playa name, so I gave her my real one. The one most of my campmates don’t know.
I recall telling her I keep people at arm’s length because it’s easier and safer than letting them in.
She saw me unsuccessfully try and drag an art car into the bar and observed we were “the mean camp” after I started cursing at their shrinking playa license plate. I explained that no, we’re just playing a game. If you get it, you’re in. If not, oh well.
It can be kind of shitty game when I’m playing though.
With greater distance from the moment, I’m choosing to see this person as an agent of the universe writing me back and saying,
Yeah, I got the message. Is this really the best you can do?
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The other lesson in all this—I’m a sucker for a pretty face.
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If this is really the best I can do, I’m basically a pistachio that’s all but sealed. You could get through the shell but you’ll probably have to use your teeth. I don’t need to be that nut that’s falling out of the shell, or worse, doesn’t have one, but you should at least be able to see some of the green, get a fingernail under the edge and crack it open.
I’m selling myself short—I know there are good, even great sides of myself. But much like that dreadlocked funk fusion band, I’m looking past those parts that are trying to the parts I see as failing.
The parts that make me compulsively babble nonsense to myself just to interrupt a cringey memory of when my foibles left people scratching their heads.
Too sharp to miss the bad, not sharp enough to cut it out of the frame.
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I don’t know how I’m going to fix this problem but I do know this:
Before I can start whining to the universe that it hasn’t delivered my Person, I need to make an effort to deliver myself to it. And that requires taking some chances and a whole lot of vulnerability.
Time to get uncomfortable.
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