Diary: On the surreality of the early burn
When we arrive at Burning Man early Tuesday morning, the moon is full and bright, the lunar eclipse having just passed. The subtlest blue is rising on the eastern horizon, a bare hint of sunrise. Sun photographer Tiffany Brown and I are cycling on what’s known at this massive art festival and experiment in alternative living as The Playa. It’s miles long and wide, the dry bed of Lake Lahontan. The hard and flat surface make for easy cycling. We pedal about a half mile to the pavilion where the wooden sculpture, the Man, stands 40-feet in the air. The Burning of the Man is to happen Saturday night, an annual community ritual that has come to symbolize a cleansing and a dedication to first principals back in the home cities of Burning Man denizens: a life dedicated to creative expression and charity toward humanity and, this year especially, the earth, as the theme of Burning Man is “Green Man.”
So we ride over there, and the Man looks charred. And indeed, he is.
A man in white, fuzzy rabbit ears and a red and white striped shirt like out of Dr. Seuss is chatting amicably with an officer of the Bureau of Land Management.
Someone lit the Man on fire Monday night, just hours before we arrived. It was a tad surreal, like showing up a wedding, only to have the family tell you the divorce is final. Only an hour or two before that, while getting our tickets at will call, a man told us it was all too bad, especially given that me and the Sun photographer and videographer I was with had never been. The Man has already been burned, he said. We thought for sure he was joshing, as this would go along with Burning Man wry and whimsical humor we’d already picked up on the way in, when we were greeted with a kind of nursery rhyme poem, also quite Seussian, that poked much fun at the culture of complaint amongst some Burners who gripe about how last year was better.
In any case, he wasn’t joshing. The Man had been torched. Fire trucks arrived. The whole nine yards. Our spotty Internet access here has made it hard to glean many more details about it, and Burning Man officials aren’t saying anything (to me anyway, but more on Burning Man press relations at another date) except to say a suspect was taken into custody by the county sheriff’s office.
Of course, we’d like to think of the significance of this act, about its metaphorical meaning, its wider implications. I observe that religions — and make no mistake, Burning Man has become a religion of sort — have a long history of destroying their own icons, and even, in a few cases, their own messiahs. And also a long history of hereticism. Maybe this guy was nailing his protest on the door, ala Luther. And anyway, the festival is committed to radical libertarianism (Reason Magazine’s Brian Doherty is here, as he is every year), so is anyone surprised that someone has prematurely burned The Man in an act of anarchy? Isn’t it totally fitting? Almost to be celebrated? More on that later.
Anyway, there’s just too much to see, too much visual, aural and olfactory stimuli — senior citizen nudists, flaming pianos, industrial techno music set to fire dancers, arches made of used bicycle parts and temples made of garbage.
Overheard:
He: Maybe Burning Man is the perfect place to break up (followed by rationale, which allows for rebound relations.)
She: I think Burning Man is a terrible place to break up!
It’s been a long day, and as the morning heat rises, it’s time for a few hours sleep.
