Afterglow

Now that I’m here, let’s get down to business...

Myself and my travel companions drove from Vancouver to Nevada in Betsy, a massive van masquerading as a colourful moving mural. Betsy looks like she’s straight from Woodstock and, we were convinced, a moving target for the US Border Security, especially when driven by Yossi, its dreadlocked owner. Yossi spent the last few hours before our departure Spray-And-Wiping the interior clean after hearing news that the border guards had sent another Burner packing after discovering smoke residue on her vehicle’s windows.

Despite being completely clean and technically having nothing to worry about, we’d heard about the border guard’s capriciousness and so it was a tense crawl up to the boom gates. Marti had told us that they had high-tech surveillance that could pick up conversations from miles away, so we stayed suspiciously quiet. The border guard asked the driver whether he’d ever smoked weed, and after he was answered in the negative asked sarcastically whether the driver knew what weed was. But within moments our passports were back in our sweaty hands, the guard had bid us farewell and we were free and clear into the USA.

My fellow road-trippers were a group of Kate’s friends – a friendly bunch of self-proclaimed hippies. Despite their easygoingness and positive vibe, for the first half of our road trip I was squirming in my seat as the conversation flowed from personal contact with extra-terrestrials to shared consciousness to the benefits of crystals to theta meditation (which, I scoffed to myself, was a trumped-up version of Socratic questioning at $50 a session). But as the hours ticked by and as I bit my tongue on another logical debunkment, I started to question why I was so stand-offish to these ideas I’d never heard of and why I was refusing point-blank to understand them.

I hate to use my formal education as my whipping boy, but more and more I’m seeing how it’s shaped me. Studying law makes you a sceptic. You crave logic, demand proof, destroy arguments and dismiss concepts that you think don’t stand up to criticism as half-baked fuzzy thinking. It makes you a finely-tuned adversarial machine, but it also closes your mind and can make you a righteous little shit. I realised that if I was going to get to Burning Man and get through Burning Man, I would have to leave my prejudices behind. So I did. And it was so easy.

Burning Man is impossible to explain without using a mass of seemingly contradictory and hopelessly inadequate descriptions. It’s a hedonistic visual and aural extravaganza in one of the harshest environments on earth. It’s radical self-reliance within a generous and selfless community. It’s both art expo and orgy, yoga summit and dance festival.

It’s summed up by the experience of standing alone in the centre of the city in the hours before dawn, in the middle of a kilometre-wide empty space called the playa. In the distance there is wall after wall of sound and light and humanity, but where you are is the quietest, darkest and most solitary place on earth. If you go looking for something at Burning Man, you’ll find it.

The physical side of Burning Man is what most people baulk at. Every day is a battle against dehydration – you have to drink at least a gallon to keep the hallucinations at bay. While portaloos are plentiful, there are no showers – you either bring your own or, like myself, you do without for a week (beating all personal records, thank you, thank you). Dust storms strike frequently and fiercely, gritting up your eyes and ears and depositing a fine layer of dust throughout your respiratory system. The alkali ground causes a condition called “playa foot” where the feet get painful cracks and can only be prevented through daily bathings in vinegar and liberal use of moisturiser. But within a couple of days it becomes normal, and you get down to the more important business of living.

The beauty of Burning Man is that it’s user-produced, a kind of Life 2.0. The residents are also the artists, the performers and the gurus. Integral to this is the idea of a gift culture - that everyone comes to Burning Man with something to contribute. Apart from ice and coffee, nothing can be bought or sold. Despite this, there’s hundreds of bars, restaurants, clothing depots, massage therapists and bicycle repair shops operating out of tents, running on nothing but generosity. When you head out to party at night, all you need is a warm jacket and a cup.

But my favourite part of the festival was the people I met and the connections I made with them. Recently, the process of meeting people has made me weary. I’m sick of small talk, of having shallow, seemingly pointless conversations with people who will leave my life for good tomorrow. But, as Leah pointed out to me during a particularly eye-opening night, the content is up to me. So I started asking questions that I really wanted answers to. And I got answers I’d never dreamed of. People were so open, so willing to discuss deeper issues, so generous with their views and so accepting of mine. I think it’s ruined me for the world of employment-based networking, but I don’t really care.

Nakedness has featured prominently and exponentially since my last post. The first thing Kate and I did in Vancouver was go to Wreck Beach to drink beer, catch up and get naked together for the first time in our six-year friendship. At Burning Man clothing is optional and in the desert heat, honestly a bit of a burden. No-one stares and no-one cares. One of my favourite parts of the week was CRITICAL TITS, a 3,000-women strong topless bike rally through the festival in celebration of empowerment and beauty, ending in an all-female dance party with women hugging each other, laughing and screaming “WE LOVE OUR BODIES!”

On the way home we took the joys of skinny-dipping to blissful new heights at the Harbin Hot Springs, spending an entire day hopping in and out of hot and cold pools, lolling around in the sun, making friends with the regulars and enjoying having dust-free skin for the first time in a week.

I know there’s a time and a place but, you know, I reckon there should be more times and places. It’s not just how free it feels, it’s also the education you get from realising that nudity is separate from sexuality, seeing that everyone looks different, hardly anyone looks like a porn star or underwear model, and that everyone is beautiful.

The Burning Man ole timers (“Lifers”) nod sagely when you explain that you’re a “virgin”, and inform you that your life will never be the same. People have moved cities, quit jobs, ended relationships and changed their beliefs after their first time. It was definitely an epic experience for me and probably the best decision I’ve made all year. I hope that I can hold onto this feeling as I adjust to the “default world” which is significantly less colourful. But I’ve landed Berkeley, California, one of my favourite places in the States, and I think my chances are pretty good.