There seems to be a sharp divide between people who grok Burning Man and those who don’t. It just make sense to some people — of course that sounds amazing, why would you not want to go? And to others it just sounds like something to make fun of good-heartedly, a bunch of hippies running around in the dust worshipping weird statue things, and probably on lots of drugs.
I have a pretty unique relationship to Burning Man, in that I straddle that line of getting it and not. It’s always been my dad’s thing — my dad and his awesome crazy hippie artsy friends. I always thought I was a little too left-brained for Burning Man and couldn’t help but be a little cynical about the whole thing. But I got it, I respected it, I saw how wholly and positively it affected my dad’s life and mental well-being.
Something about this year has changed that. I spent a long time in Portland before my dad got ready to go. I also watched many of his friends debate with themselves whether or not going to the playa was best for them this year, and it made me see them in a new way — instead of just “dad’s burning man friends”, they were actual real people who had jobs and lived in Portland 51 weeks out of the year, and the week in Black Rock City was just a delicious bonus that they loved when they could have, and couldn’t always. Then Leora came to visit immediately before heading out for the first time, and I know her, and I know she is real and grounded and practical, in addition to being beautifully creative and achingly poetic.
And something about this year — maybe I am more grown-up. Maybe I have finally let go of my rigid categorizations of society (you are either this or you are this), or maybe my first two weeks of law school just made me understand more than ever before the need to spend a week in the middle of nowhere, battling the elements, creating art, meeting strangers and just being.
So you — my fellow left-brained, normal members of society — are free to not understand, even free to judge. I really shouldn’t be the one to defend Burning Man, since I’ve never been. But there’s something about it I feel I understand, at least as much as one can without ever attending, and maybe I can be a translator to the normal folk — a practical person with an itch in her heart for the desert.
1 year ago