Burning Man '98 | Tia Woodward

1997 Burning Man 1997 by Krisen Ankiewicz

After being subjected to so much electronic teasery and bam-a-lam preamble on the Burning Man Tom Jones Instant Intimacy Hut and Cliche Bar project, I thought you deserved a wee bit of follow up! (OK, wee-plus)

I first heard of Burning Man when I ended up out here in San Francisco on a road trip to Colorado (I overshot a bit). Although I was interested in checking it out, it took me another three years to finagle the needed time off (it being right on the heels of RAGBRAI) and to figure out the logistics of a seven hour drive to camp in the Black Rock desert--a dry, prehistoric lake bed in Nevada.

That first year, my friend, Mr. Steve rented a U-Haul, stocked it with tubs of smoking dry ice and two enormous shrink-wrapped palates of bottled water from Cost-co to sell (his get-rich-quick scheme) and drove me, my friend Ralph from Oregon, and some willowy German girl very slowly over the Sierras toward what, we weren't sure.

How much do I remember of that year? I remember the painful realization soaking into Mr. Steve that organizers hadn't been lying when they said that nobody "vended" at Burning Man. I remember how hot it was--lie still on your back in the shade-hot. I remember riding my one-speed bicycle, Carmalita, out across the flat, cracked playa for miles and miles and losing all track of distance or time; hearing only the wind. I remember having the feeling that I couldn't make myself physically big enough in the immensity of this place--such a contrast to how you unconsciously compact yourself when living in a city, keeping your elbows in and your "pardon me's" at the ready.

I remember the amazing art set out on the playa--metal, glass, fabric, wood, mud...each creation enriched endlessly by this constantly changing big sky "gallery." The huge paintings and complex structures and sun and dust and end-of-the-world dishevelment next to drag queens in perfect theatrical makeup and heels.

I remember the violence and the terrible raw danger of the fires at night. Hearing a demon/man on a stage scream that one of our fellow Black Rock citizens, Michael Fury, had died and not knowing if it was art or life--death or performance. My nerves and muscles clenching on the edge of panic like an animal as I watched grotesque remote-control monsters gag gasoline fire on a cardboard set of "HellCo" and breathe the 12-foot flames out into the unrestrained, unprotected crowd. That night I was shaken by the intensity of this "play" and the incredible potential danger--no amusement-park safety-checked docent-led diversion, this! I remember seeing the thousands around me--their strange costumes and painted faces lit by the fire--and being carried away with the intensity of this unrehearsed spectacle, like a car careening on two wheels around a blind bend. Who WERE these people and how was this happening?

Fly Geiser

In the day we went to Fly Geyser--a series of natural pools--to escape the heat, and coated our bodies with viscous clay mud, slipping up onto the shore to bake ourselves dry. The condition of "nudity" evaporated against the blue and brown mountains--in our clay sheaths, we were no more naked than they--rules seemed suspended; structure obsolete; assumptions invalid here through the looking glass. There was a sense of minute-by-minute creation; of walls falling; of edges becoming round. And a fantastic shark-shaped "art car" crept slowly toward us with it's driver on a megaphone announcing, "Attention! We are not artists! I repeat: we are not artists!"

When the man burned--shooting whirling pyrotechnics to the four directions--the sheer pagan pull of the five-stories of flames stirred things in me I still can't begin to define. The glory and ferocity in that destruction immediately connected me to my own human core--my previously ignored need for ritual and the power and importance of communal acts not necessarily understood on a conscious level.

So that was the first year; we drove home sharing stories and trying to reconstruct what exactly it was we had just lived through--knowing to our depths that it was completely unique and real and boundless and never--ever--to be missed again.

My second year out, the theme was "Fertility." Although many of the attendees weren't even aware that there was a theme, BM 97, predicated on this kinder, gentler motif seemed a different event. The demons were gone and the art was more organic. The only real rule was "Don't interfere with anyone else's' immediate experience." It seemed the essence of freedom to me.

I remember driving through the warm night in our rented 4WD and suddenly seeing the man appear over a hill. Purple and glowing, he towered over a twinkling, incongruent curve of activity on the Playa. What your heart does when it sees this scene! How many humans in all of history have been given the opportunity to act creatively with a total lack of prescribed meaning--or doctrine--or procedure--or even purpose. Each culture uses art to interpret, reinforce and pay homage to some recognized system...but how many communities have dared to remove the recognized system and keep the expression for expression's sake? When it begins to dawn on you that absolutely anything you can think of you are welcome to execute, your mind reels! Your tail wags! You start spouting sentences that begin, "What if we took a..?" and "If I can get my hands on one of those, could you make..?" Community forms spontaneously and joyously and without limit.

This proposition would be delightful enough if the participants--the community--were made up of half-wits and morons--but imagine the excitement when it's composed of scientists and playwrights and musicians and architects and enlightened pranksters!

Imagine if no one won a ribbon--no one "made" a penny--no matter how priceless their contribution. Imagine if everyone provided for themselves and thought for themselves and there was no allegiance pledged--not even to the event's visionary founder, who while being an articulate spokesperson, has purposely let Burning Man's light fall on it's community rather than on himself. Imagine NO SPECTATORS, but instead all eager, eclectic participants challenging themselves to create something absolutely wonderful...imagine and imagine until you surpass even yourself!

The second year found me venturing out more, interacting, playing, exploring. I discovered that my fellow citizens had invested inordinate amounts of time and love and money into the gifts they brought for all to enjoy. Inspired by this amazing generosity, I gravitated to camps where I could contribute, most happily finding myself in a tent mixing bright paints in Styrofoam cups and carefully body painting friends and strangers with intricate strokes. A slight, middle-aged woman marched into the tent, lifted up a plastic jug of viscous blue paint and poured it over her head, molding her shoulder-length gray hair into a dazzlingly colorful cupie-doll top. No rules. Many approaches. Light hearts.

We were camped, that year, behind a delicately arching two-story fertility tower formed of cattle bones, across from the rainbow flag as big as a house. In Black Rock, you find your way "home" by referencing these temporary features of the landscape. You learn your street. You meet your neighbors. You group and regroup to venture out and return. You rarely sleep. Too much to see! Visions--ridiculous like the Wonderbread sculptures...profane like the guest crucifixion on wheels...magical like the bicycle strung with sequenced lights to give the illusion of great wings beating across the desert floor.

And the city's buzz calls you with overlapping purposeful sounds: poetry readings; political debates; drum circles; raves; Radio Free Burning Man; history lessons delivered from a soap box; an original opera with a cast of 200...On Saturday at sunset, a grateful, spontaneous whoop arose and vibrated across the city as the sky ignited with impossible oranges, pinks, and golds.

The night we were to burn the man, each of us prepared ourselves, mentally and physically, in our own way. The air was hot and rich. Drums articulated the urgency of our mission as the moon rose. I surprised myself by running last minute to the paint tent to decorate my naked torso with broad black bands. I was raccoon/warrior/spirit as the drying paint constricted my bare skin. Joining with my friends, and with heart beating fast, I fell into the march down to the man, now with his neon arms raised and beckoning. A brass band just behind me wailed "When the Saints Go Marching In." Stiltwalkers strode to my left; torchbearers jogged to my right. Metallic fire dancers performed underneath the man. People screamed "Burn the Fucker!" and others answered back "Fuck the Burner!" Finally a figure in a firesuit--totally consumed in flames--ran up the steps to the base of the man and flailed there for dangerous suspended seconds. Then the man caught and began to jettison sizzling red fireworks into the air through the top of his illuminated head, showering down sparks with loud cracks and booms into the shrieking crowd.

There is something thrilling and deeply satisfying in watching the man burn. It stirs you in an unformed place--and when he finally succumbs to the conflagration and pitches over--you find yourself screaming both in conquest and salute. While your post-modern millennium mind says there is no meaning here, all your recycled atoms hum in synch with this "meaningless" act.

After that second year, several members of our camp were ready to participate on a more formal and extensive level. The idea for the Tom Jones Instant Intimacy Hut and Cliche Bar sprung from a full-page ad for Mr. Jones' new LP, which ran in the paper where I work. It seemed to me that it would be fairly simple to create a Tom Jones flag using this old velox. Of course, everyone knows that Tom is famous for having female audience members, overcome with lust, toss their panties on stage when he performs. It seemed only right that any TJ structure should be made mostly of panties. Desiring an interactive installation, I proposed that visitors to our hut could trade their panties for a beer (instant intimacy)...or, if they had no panties, they could write a cliche on the wall. My original sketch for this installation was completed only days after BM 97 ended, and shows an igloo-shaped structure made of chicken wire. A few months later the basic concept was embraced by my friend, Maureen and under her direction, it was elevated to the ebulliently grand, consummately cheesy camp we sponsored this year.

What a difference it made to be full-on participants! Now we were able to stay "home" as our fellow citizens came to enjoy our sick humor. The colorful panties floated on the breeze and, combined with strains of "What's New Pussycat?," proved to much to resist. We took turns bartending and a buck-naked Don Don coaxed our fellow citizens through the love-bead entrance like a carnival barker. Our bar became a swingin' hot spot, that with the aide of a generator and festive lights, hosted all manner of Black Rock Citizens deep into the bleary morning hours! To our amusement, it even functioned like a real neighborhood bar--with regulars, cruisers, and the token total drunk. Patrons liked the "Hut" so much, in fact, that at one point we posted a sign which read, "We reserve the right to limit our exposure to you!"

And a funny thing happened on the way to the concept: we reached a point where visual proof of a lack of undies was required. The excitement rose as we enlisted everyone's help in "exposing" the patrons who attempted to conceal their bloomers and get by with only a cliche donation. There was a series of entrancing impromptu stripteases as patrons were found out and decided to make their payment in style! The whole mystique of public nudity was seriously challenged as grown people who, in many cases I'm sure, have trouble changing in a locker room, allowed themselves the license to bump and grind to Tom Jones in the midst of a panty shanty in the middle of the desert!

So, why is the voluntary loosening of inhibitions a good thing? I can only ask how it feels in your heart. We, each of us, know undeniably when we've acted well on our own behalf; just as we know when we've made a mistake. Trying something new--surprising even yourself-- is a form of opening. Opening is growth. Growth is a gift to yourself. My friend, Kim, puts it this way: everyone draws a line in the sand which they're unwilling to step over. We draw our line based on where we see others in our life praxis draw theirs. At Burning Man you can see so many lines so far out there that moving yours out just a bit feels OK. And once you've been able to move your line while retaining your sense of self, you are a palpably more powerful person with a notidceably more open mind.

I would like to invite you to experience this mental and physical space known as Burning Man next Labor Day Weekend. You must CONFRONT YOUR OWN SURVIVAL: bring all your own food and water and shelter and toys. And when you leave, you must LEAVE NO TRACE of having been there. (You are absolutly allowed to draw and/or redraw your own line in the sand--no one will presume to do that for you). Hopefully next year we can be more effective at delegating the work that goes into our fabulous camp so that so much doesn't fall on so few (we live, we learn, we are thankful). Our bigger challenge is to integrate some of this creativity and cooperation and questioning into our "real lives" --even when they no longer seem so real...

-- Tia Woodward