Burning Man, Love, Grief, & Creativity
When water meets the sand, the sound of the soul is revealed.
Greetings great humans,
Here you will find a lengthy contemplation about Burning Man.
This year’s topic is where grief and creativity meet. And a few more stories about how great it was in the rain — and the greater metaphor about how dangerous our drama addicted news outlets make climate change to be the bad guy in our greater story.
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[Temple of the Heart — photo by Jamen Percy]
Since the man didn’t burn on time.. we renamed it.
Water Woman (the obvious)
Slow Man (no biking)
Sleeping Man (best rest ever!)
Intimate Man (you really got to know your neighbors and campmates)
14 years, and I love this place as much as ever.
It has everything I treasure: wilderness, art, a creative community, healers, weirdos, music, and a lot of people who want to have fun together.
And yet every time I land in the dust, I still always ask, why am I still going?
For some reason, on the return I am often compelled to make sense of it– perhaps because of my annoyance I experience when I speak to people who haven’t gone whose ample curiosity is informed by instagrammers and news outlets that it is just a drug induced rave– and of course that is there.
But there is also a story about an elder wilderness guide who once brought youth into the wilderness for the first time, and how a young female student charged into his office furious with him. “You took us out! But you didn’t teach us how to bring it all home!!”
PSA: I am co-creating a guide with a fellow artist and burner on how to host integration dinners where you can reflect on your experience. While it isn’t ready yet..if you want it please email me with INTEGRATION GUIDE in the subject.
My loves comes from that it is one of the greatest social experiments on the planet as the largest gathering on the planet that is emergent in nature–
where the expression of being human can transpire outside of the field of consumerism.
Of course that is joke.
Given the amount of money that so many spend on preparing.
But there are many truths happening at once.
Because once you pass through the gates, the language of capitalism shifts, and the focus is no longer on what you can get– but what you can give.
That’s right… it is a culture largely organized around an obsession with giving,
Turns out, when humans are given the opportunity, that is what many will choose.
[Image by Scott London]
Of course plenty of people are there on the get, simply not knowing what it is to give.
But what a fabulous place to see where you are living in the giving and receiving cycle of life.
Because while most of us are trapped in a consumer based reality based on taking– it is really something to experience another way: a culture of giving and generosity.
One way of looking at Burning Man– is as a magnificent reflection of our global culture in real time.
It is all there….. The creativity, the eros, the beauty, the innovation, the joy that comes with simplicity, along with the excess and the shadow.
Within in the same container and collective field there are those who want to tune in-
and those who want to tune out—
and they all find each other.
I have found that this is a place where I can easily see and face myself by what is attracted or repelled.
Like the time Dan, Trina, and Uri and I found ourselves at the farthest outpost in deep playa around a fire, and the fellow next to me sang a song about Orcas. And so I told the When We Were Whales Story, and then someone else shared a song about whales that arrived through a DMT journey.
And on the way home I stopped next to a beautiful work of art, and met Juan, who handed me his gift, a post card with humpback whales and a prayer to rest anxiety.
And then as I was walking home, I passed a car with the esoteric untranslated Polynesian language made of symbols that is in my novel, The Whale Dreamer. And then of course there was the drone art of whales flying through the sky. Hard not to to imagine a message coming through the universe.
A brief PSA since we are here and the SACRED STORYTELLING SUMMIT BEGINS ON MONDAY!! This event is free and live and interactive and includes over 14 Live free master classes and 5 panels that explore indigenous perspectives, mythology, story as a tool for social change, and so much more!
More on that soon… but now back to Burning Man.
Excess is visible.
The over the top outfits– it is easy to feel if it is an act of creativity,
an act of hiding,
or an act of posing.
The distance between the liberated authentic expression of eros—
and a purchased outfit on amazon because one saw it on instagram so one can fit in since “this is how burners dress,” is apparent.
[image by @debbiewolffvisualartist on instagram]
And yet, without the distraction of a modern world designed to disrupt and separate–
our animal instincts come back online,
and instinctual beings remember how to relate again.
[image by _psykiss on instagram]
And still every year when I land in the dust I ask, what am I doing here… again?
Where else can one can walk into a crowd of 1,000’s of smiling people who aren’t on telephones? Where (almost) everyone is willing to play the game that we all belong to each other? Where kindness and generosity is a cohesive norm? Where artists and creativity is recognized as one of the keys to a great life? Where magic and serendipity are the main staple ingredient?
73,000 people go for 73,000 different reasons.
And so much more.
When given the opportunity,
a blank canvas outside of the field of having to act out of survival–
humans will do what they have done since the beginning…
and will honor the unseen world through the ways that they do.
The festival is an ancient structure of gathering where people imbibe spirits to cross the threshold to engage the unseen worlds, and to lend their energy to feed and nourish the gods…this way of being is about as old as it gets and exists in every ancient culture.
So when given the opportunity– it seems we can’t help but repeat what people have been doing since the beginning.
There are plenty of festivals.
Plenty of raves.
Plenty of dance floors.
And what makes this different, is that the creation destruction cycle of life is honored,
as the temple is the place where all can go to honor what is being grieved.
For all the names we gave Burning Man this year…
mine was: Grieving Man
as I was carrying a heavy heart given a being I treasured with every ounce of my soul recently left the land of the living.
image by benfeibleman on reddit.
I wrote the letter of goodbye at the temple,
and tried to lay down my grief
as if such a thing is possible.
And left a few other things behind as well.
This much I know is true.
Grief is beast
when allowed in
will take you down
to the center of your soul
and once there
in the darkest cavern that any person in their right mind would not dare to go
(because only love lost can take you there)
you are left with the dust bunnies of cobwebs of any other grief left behind and unprocessed.
Compounding.
Mixing and mingling with the suffering that paved your road there.
And there you are
stuck in a chrysalis–
dissolved by the pain of loss
if you let it
with the hope and prayer that there will be a thread on the other side of life that you can one day climb back up.
Hoping that as far down you are willing to go, is as far up as you may live again.
I discovered grief is both repellent and magnetic.
Even when I hosted a mobile art project:
A Moveable Feast: a table set in the middle of the playa where we feed each other with stories…. The first woman who sat down wove a story from the threads of a life of someone who had recently died.
It was an incredible story.
“You have been given the gift of beauty, take care of it,” was one of the lines that still lives in me.
Why mention all of this— because griving was never designed to be done alone. It is meant to be done in community. With others. And that temple… was the gift I didn’t want to receive.
I wanted the grief that was weighing me down to go away with that letter.
To get up and dance freely
I wanted the flashbacks to evaporate
I wanted the tears ducts to stop being a home to rivers.
But none of that happened.
The only thing to do was to walk through the most joyous of places,
feeling the all of the all.
I offered Scarcity to the fires.
I offered Fear and Doubt and Criticism to the fires.
I left behind a few patterns.
A few belief systems that were pleading to be released.
I gave a lot to those fires.
And then the rains came.
I was at the farthest place from my camp, telling a story about how Earth got her name at Heart Tribe, when the rains started.
Getting stuck at a healing sanctuary didn’t suck.
We rested. Restored. Napped.
“This rain… it is cleansing,” offered a healer. at the sanctuary.
Fuega got a healing session.
And then, realizing the rain would not be stopping,
and our bikes would not ride through the mud,
we set out on a long walk across the playa.
I had left camp that morning in the warmth and the sun,
and now with nothing but a lacy top, we were walking through a nice cool rain.
After 3 burns, my boot lost a soul.
We laughed.
Enjoyed the art.
Enjoyed the walk.
“I think I’m in my happiest place,” I told Fuega.
I could have walked for miles through that rain.
When we finally arrived home to our camp many hours later, everyone was nestled into our community space, and settled in for an evening at home. We got to know our neighbors. We laughed. Adjusted to change. Neighbors with starlink were found. Plane tickets were changed. Food was accessed. We stuck together. Asked who needed more food. Fed them. (oh right, we weren’t even at the point where anyone was staying longer than expected).
The next day a woman walked by our camp and reflected, “You guys are so zen, if you want to experience chaos come on over to my camp.”
I am beyond grateful to Peter, the creator of Shutter Buggy for his freaking genius design of a solar run camp that housed refrigeration, freezer, but most brilliantly, ground cloth that was laid in advance that saved us (as much as it could) from the mud.
The toilets!! Everyone screamed. There were 73,000 experiences… mine was that the only toiled I saw overflowing was in a camp that brought in their own toilets.
The public toilets were fine.
It felt like a great big mirror of the story of climate change.
It rained, There was mud. It changed the course of, “life as normal.”
But humans are designed to adapt and be creative innovators.
So while the newspapers made noise about how horrible it was, and while a lot of people did leave– those who stayed– will tell you, many had a great time. We were closer. Checking in on each other. Missing out on all of the conspiracy theories as we made sure those around us had what they needed.
I remembered research done on people who lived through the bombings of London during WW2. When asked about it many years later, survivors said they remembered those years as the happiest time in their lives, when their relationships were close, intimate, and immediate. (apologies that this memory bank has no idea where I read that bit of information).
Was it horrible because of the rain?
It got better.
IF: you were well prepared.
IF: you were with people you enjoyed and resonated with.
IF: you had a strong infrastructure that could keep you dry.
Ease and comfort weren’t defined by objects or things… it was defined by social capital. Who you were connected to.
This was a time when you really wanted to love the ones you were with.
“Will you fulfill a dream and come take this photo with me?” I asked Fuega.
After days of slogging through mud– we went onto the playa and took a few photos.
But really– it wasn’t the photos I had wanted.
It was the experience.
Last year I took a red dress and 5 rainbow umbrellas to the playa with the intention to host a day time storytelling event– but it was too hot last year for day time on the playa.
This year– too muddy.
So we took a photo of what might have been.
And while there, we lived in a moment.
