My first Burning Man
I initially wrote this as a letter to a close circle of friends and loved ones. Some names have been changed for publishing.
This is my experience and only my experience. 70,000 people shared this place in their own special way in 2018. Let this be just one of those stories.
To set the scene: The Playa (the name for the land where Burning Man is held) is not easy to get to, and the environment is not hospitable for anybody looking for comfort. The highs are in the 90s, and the nights can drop into the 40s. There is sand in every crevice of your being by the time you leave, and you’re susceptible to pretty intense dust storms at any time with winds north of 30mph. There was a whiteout (intense dust storm) once we arrived at the entry line (aka the gate line), and it took us about 10 hours in total to get through the line to our camp. As you will discover, those 10 hours in line were of the same spirit of Burning Man, filled with so many laughs, so much sharing, and a lot of love.
So, what exactly does the land look like? Well, it is a GIANT desert with absolutely nothing besides mountains surrounding a thick, compact layer of sand. The only form of life is shrimp eggs in the sand that grow when the very occasional rainstorm comes. A huge premise of burning man is leaving the land as sound environmentally as when it was first used. This is taken super seriously by every participant, and hundreds of people stay weeks after Burning Man to remove any sign of a human trace (called MOOP). Burning Man is a grid that goes from 2:00 to 10:00 and outward from A to L. At the very center is the Man, and “north” of the man at 12:00 is the Temple. Beyond the Temple is what is called “deep playa” that stretches probably about two miles until you reach the outer fence. The playa and deep playa are filled with installations of art and art cars that have parked there temporarily. All of the camps are between 1:00 and 10:00 and A and H. Most workshops and sound stages are at camps.
Now you have the set and setting, and it’s time for the fun. At a high-level, I left feeling radically open, full of love, and with a lot of gratitude. I did not drink while I was there, I did a lot of workshops, and I danced 5+ hours a day (split between day/night and alone/with company). Burning Man is almost impossible to optimize. For one, the weather can change in a heartbeat. Two, the schedule is very loose, and there are 150+ workshops a day so there is no way you could come close to seeing it all. Three, a lot of the art isn’t even mapped so you have to wander on your bike to find it. Four, the art cars, which are one of the coolest parts of burning man, have no set schedule and move in a random manner. For example on that last point, Diplo played a set on an art car scheduled “sometime after midnight Wednesday.” The only way to find it was to bike around looking for a mass of people in deep playa, listening for his music.
You very much end up surrendering to the flow of Burning Man, which is exaggerated by the fact there is no cell service, and everything is bike-able. Most days, you hop on a bike and see what calls your attention while you go. It very much feels like I would imagine traveling alone for months would in a very foreign place.
It’s so different from normal life that your mind enters into a space of openness in terms of how it perceives the surrounding environment. It’s as if our minds are a snow-globe, and each of our snow-globes were fundamentally shaken by simply being on the playa, allowing ourselves to fall into a new state of peace and order.
I am feeling a desire to share every experience — each meaningful workshop and each interaction. But, that’s not really feasible and words won’t paint the full picture. I’ll share a few that stand out, and I’ll try to be very intentional with my words.
My first morning I was biking with my friend, Nick, to a morning dance party we had heard about from a friend. We passed a camp called HBGB healers that had a beautiful sitting area in the shade. I told Nick it felt right to check it out and that I would (or wouldn’t) meet him at Rhythm Wave for the ecstatic dance class. As I parked my bike and walked into camp, I learned it was a camp of healers and anyone could sign up for one of the sessions on the posted time sheets. There was a section for mind work , for bodywork , for spirit work, and a section for other. As I noticed that all of the slots were full for the next two hours and reoriented my expectations to go meditate in the beautiful space instead, I saw a new time sheet being placed in the “spirit section.” I had told myself going into the week that my only goal was surrendering to what the universe brought so I signed up.
My practitioner that day ended up being a soft and loving man who was going to do some polarity work with me. Long-story short, polarity healing is very similar to other energy work and centers around aligning your chakras, releasing stuck energy, and bringing in your intention. Our work was done in a room with 15–20 other healers also conducting their sessions: from massage to Reiki to psychotherapy. Keep in mind: it’s Burning Man so there’s no “peace” in the traditional sense of quiet and stillness. As I lay on the table, I could hear three close by sound stages blasting different kinds of music as people biked by the tent expressing their beautiful and full selves. The session itself was wonderful, and I got up feeling grounded and connected. Richard (aka “OH-MAN” on the playa) asked me how I was feeling, and we began a conversation.
As it turned out, Richard is a PhD and a practitioner of gynecology at one of the best public universities in the country. He started to identify some of the other healers: one gentleman is known as one of the best psychoanalysts in dream analysis based out of Santa Barbara. Another is a very talented surgeon who does energy work on the side. The camp has been around for about ten years, and now 75 healers are a part of it annually. They come to Burning Man because they know there is a possibility of a world beyond what they experience in their normal lives. From my perspective, these healers choose to hold workshops and 3–4 healing sessions a day completely free because they’re finding so much joy in doing so.
My takeaway from this experience was two-fold. One, Burning Man isn’t a bunch of “hippies” or people in their 20s looking to have an altered experience (and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that; my journey is simply different). There were people here full of a lot of love who are leading life paths I very much respect. Two, generosity is the theme of Burning Man from my perspective. People come and share their life skills — whether it’s art, music, healing work, self-love practices, or dart-throwing into your genital area — because they see a connection through generosity and openness as something core to humanity that we’ve really cut out of our normal lives.
People come because they get to experience what they love in its simplest form — the way it was intended to be. None of those healers necessarily wanted to generate “financial returns” off the work they were gifted and share. That’s just what they were funneled into doing by a society where money is a prerequisite for existence. Everywhere I turned on the playa, I was met with gifts and shared talents in every form from people finding such joy in giving these gifts in a non-transactional manner.
The second experience which I feel called to share centers around a femininity/masculinity workshop I attended on my 5th day. I did not know too much going in — only that it was a workshop about balancing our yin and our yang and finding gratitude for both our sun and moon energy (as some of you know, I have been spending a lot of time trying to feel more into my feminine and moon energy recently). The warm-up included some breathing exercises, Qigong to free up stuck energy (through tapping), and tribal chanting. Once we were settled into the space and each other’s presence (about 45 minutes in), the facilitator, Ona, asked all of the women to form a circle and all of the men to find their way to the inside of the circle.
Ona guided us to begin chanting and screaming sharing the wisdom, “Think about all of the anger you’ve held since at five years old you were told that anger is scary or bad. Think about all the shame you’ve repressed because you know you’re angry but you’ve been told not to let it out. Well, let it out, and scream. Scream at your younger self. Scream at the people who told you to keep that anger in and cut off this incredible part of your being. Scream… louder...as loud as you ever could imagine…let every cell of anger come to the surface here and now.” For the next 20 minutes, we closed our eyes and yelled and yelled and yelled and yelled as the women held the space for us. By the end, many of us were crying. It felt like an incredible release of a lot of shame and guilt, and it also felt like such communion with these other 25 men and 25 women. Ona then asked the men and women to switch places.
The men held the space as she led the women through an exercise releasing any shame and self-judgement they held with a focus on any hurt many of the women had experienced as the result of men. A similar scene took place as the women screamed, cried, moved, and released. Then, they were instructed to “dance like the divine goddesses they are.” At this point, I absolutely lost it. Even writing this now, tears come to my eyes.
This moment was the most human I have ever felt. I was dropped into so much love and goodness being channeled by each soul in that space while also feeling all of the hurt that we inherently experience in this human body that’s created the illusion we are separate from source.
Ona then separated us onto separate sides of the room and we held eye contact with the woman directly across from us. Over the next several minutes, we were instructed to slowly move closer until we were together at which point we were to begin to dance as our liberated selves. This lasted about 20 minutes, and Ona then asked the men to form an outer circle looking inward and the women to form an inner circle looking outward. We were to hold eye contact with the woman across from us and hold hands if both parties felt comfortable (deep, uninterrupted eye contact is a big part of many Burning Man workshops).
I want to mention here that it is almost impossible not to hold incredible love for somebody after looking into their eyes for 45 seconds. Each time I did this over the course of the week, I felt like I could see how broken we all were and yet how perfect we also were.
We ended up holding eye contact for about two minutes as Ona shared some wisdom. A few of those words stand out. She said, “Women, look at this man in front of you. See how strong he is and how important it is for him to be strong. But, also see that he hurts just as much as you do. And see that he doesn’t think he is allowed to express this hurt. So tell him you love him. Tell him he is safe. Tell him you want him to be all parts of his beings.” She then said, “Men, look at the woman in front of you. Know that she is everything, and you are only here because of her. Know that she has experienced a lot of hurt in the same way you have by the judgements that have also caused you hurt. See the divine in her, and tell her she is safe.” At this point again, I couldn’t stop crying. After each partner, we’d share a long hug (if both parties were comfortable), rotate, and do it again.
I left that 3-hour workshop feeling so stripped and bare and yet full of what felt like real love for myself, these other humans, and our existence.
My final experience I share is around my last night on the playa. The Man burned about 10pm, and almost the entire population of Burning Man was there watching. We went back to take a nap after as we had decided to spend some portion of this last evening as a group of four. Aza, Nick, Tomas, and I woke up around 1:30am and hopped on our bikes to find a place to dance. We stumbled upon a set by a fairly prominent DJ at a rad sound stage and decided to make that home. We danced for an hour and a half and then made our way to an art installation we had heard about all week. It was a circle (about a 200-ft diameter) elevated 25 feet in the air where the lights were timed to the classical music playing. We were pretty sweaty after dancing, and the desert was COLD at this point so we joined the 150 people laying under the instillation who were cuddling — -with their group and with strangers. This installation, I imagine, would have been a wild experience if you were in a state of altered consciousness, and it was still moving without that.
About 4:30am, we got up from the desert ground as Tomas had to hitchhike out of Burning Man to find a ride to his 11am flight out of Reno back to NYC (which of course ended up working perfectly as everything does on the Playa). Aza and Nick were worn and decided to head home to get to sleep before the sun came up. I wanted to see one more sunrise so I hopped on my bike and headed towards the furthest fence (known as the trash fence). The trash fence is the outer perimeter of the property and overlooks a mountain range where the sun emerges each morning. As I biked, I realized how cold I was so I redirected towards a soundstage on the opposite side of the playa where I had not yet visited. It ended up being a live trap set, and I LOST myself in this music more so than any previous dancing experience that week (I was also wearing a full tiger suit with my new light up shoes). That was my favorite hour of dancing I can remember having as I discovered new expressions of my body of which I did not think I was capable.
About 5:30am, I made my way towards the trash fence and meditated until the sun began peeking out from behind the mountains. I felt worn, tired, and beaten but also whole in a way I haven’t felt. As the sun moved into it’s daily journey, I made my way to the Temple nearby. Nothing at Burning Man has explicit meaning, but if I were to attempt to apply some, the temple is a place of death and surrender. It is a massive and beautiful structure that is built and present for three days before it’s burned. People grieve loved ones they’ve lost and share messages of hurt and suffering they want to release. All of this burns on the final night of burning man (the night after the man burns). This was my second time at the temple, and again, it was pretty damn hard not to break down. People have written messages of friends lost young to suicide or drugs — or of deep trauma they themselves experienced that had broken them up until this point.
As I read these messages and looked at the grieving faces around me, I felt so connected and so human. Part of our experience in this physical form is pain because we’ve taught ourselves that the physical form makes us separate from the oneness that we all are. But, instead of hating that pain or wishing it away, I found myself grateful for it because it felt like we were all experiencing that pain as one — -as we were meant to.
I meditated and prayed in the temple and slowly made my way home probably around 7:30. On my way home, I passed an art car new to burning man this year — -a 747 repurposed as a dance floor. I stopped by and danced until I got too hot as the night desert slowly became the day desert. I returned home at about 10am and climbed into bed full of dust, sweat, and love, knowing we would wake up around noon to begin breaking down our elaborate and wonderful camp, Miso.
I am intentionally (and unintentionally) leaving out a lot of the experience. Everything isn’t “perfect” and full of pure love by any means. There are certainly people that go to Burning Man to have Coachella with more substances. A lot of people drink every day and every night, and the whole thing is a blur. Even for me, I felt a lot of ego activation as I would at times try to optimize or find myself allured by the NYC models dancing on top of the Robot Heart art car. But, I think all of this also makes the experience. So many people are there for so many different reasons, and we can learn to give others the space for their journeys without it impeding ours.
There was a lot of the outrageous, childish fun. Our camp, Miso, has been around for ten years and is a favorite on the playa as it serves hot soup and sake from midnight until sunrise. They’ve built an incredible two-story bar that looks like something you’d find in a super hip part of Oakland. The night I was responsible for serving the bar with my clan (Aza, Nick, and Tomas), we brought in a DJ to play a set and all wore exclusively diapers and light-up shoes for the evening. We probably served 1000+ bowls of Miso Soup that night and met hundreds of wonderful people (Nick Kroll gives our camp a shoutout in his late night interview with Stephen Colbert).
In summation, I left the desert with a lot of self-love, new ideas and practices I want to implement in my life (ex. Qigong and tribal chanting), a reinvigorated inspiration for our existence, and a deep belief in humanity’s potential in our human form. We know small communities can work and operate from a place of compassion, and most of you know how much I talk about the way the indigenous live. But, this was a tribe of SEVENTY THOUSAND PEOPLE, and it worked — purely from a place of love and a desire for each human to reach their potential.
Thousands of people spend weeks/months building a city and tearing it down so people like me can experience this magic for the first time. I understand why people become so consumed with the feelings they feel at Burning Man. I understand why people just donated $6.5m to try and build a year-round city based on the 10 principles of Burning Man. It’s my hope to bring the feeling I have into my daily existence and not look to Burning Man as an escape. It is a vast feeling of surrendering to the flow of life and trusting in taking each step from a place of love. I am incredibly grateful this place in the desert exists and that it crossed my path at this time.
