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Burning Man is, at once, the simplest and most complex of things. What is out on the Playa, the desert where the festival occurs? Nothing, nothing at all in a manner that is starkly unimaginable to most. When one stands out on a warm windy summer day, one strains to hear the cicadas ... and is greeted with silence. The cicadas, like almost all macroscopic life, have been extinct in this desert for about 10,000 years. One doesn't even hear the howling wind of a movie director's imagination because there are no barriers for the wind to blow past. Not yet. Not even cactus or sagebrush. Just a blank slate waiting to be filled, in land even the desert dwellers view as being inhospitable.
That's the point. It is so empty that it opens up infinite possibilities. For whatever you can create, there is space and among the 30,000 very open-minded visitors, an audience, and nobody to tell you that you may not do it. The environment is a challenging one and more than a little ingenuity must go into making these creations work, but here it is man vs. nature, not man vs. man. At least, not until recently.
Some, on seeing freedom, embrace it. Others, on seeing the same, wonder who is in charge of that freedom and never see the contradiction. Our response to this is one in keeping with the spirit of a place where there is room for all things : We create a place where the rules they wish to impose on others do not apply. Faced with somebody seeking a shoving match, we step to one side and let him discover that we are not there to be engaged - and thus anarchy, in the best sense of the word, renews itself.
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By now, of course, you've all heard the bad news. We're all going to Hell, all of us at Burning Man, even the Christians among us and you can imagine how much of a shock that must have been to them. It's food for thought, but what about food for the body? Because if there's one thing we've always said, there's nothing worse than eternal damnation on an empty stomach and you know it's going to be hot down there, so you'd better get something to drink on the way. Starting in 2004, why not join your fellow condemned souls at Café Satan for a little African food and amateur Improvisational Theatre? Sure, Bealzebub will still be roasting your liver on his hibachi, but with a few strong shots of our homemade cherry brandy under your belt, you won't feel a thing. Drop by the Café Satan homepage and sign up for the camp mailing list while you're over there, as we're always looking for new members.
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