Refocus

Its been surprisingly hard for me to miss Burning Man this year. I didn’t realize that it had come to mean so much to me until it began, and day after day I actually ached to be there. Burning Man is not definable, and so it is also hard for me to say just one thing that I most miss about it, but one thing that I definitely feel today is that I am not there with my community, celebrating the most important week of our year. Beyond the art and the naked (and often burned) bodies and the drugs and the all night dancing, Burning Man brings together a community of 35,000 people who want to believe that the world can be a better place and who are willing to open their minds, take risks and change their lives to make it so. It is full of progressive and intelligent artists and professionals who still remember how to love life as though it may end tomorrow. And while it is an event where love, lust and all the other extremes of the human experience are allowed to flourish, these run far behind the main focus of the festival, which is the powerful and giddy experience of pure giving. As soon as they leave the festival, “burners” all over the world spend the entire year stressing over the next art work they will make for the playa or what their “gift” to others will be for the next year.

This week was also the last week of school and the beginning of finals. And then there was the hurricane tragedy. I told a friend of mine that between Burning Man and what was happening in the south, I could barely stay focused at school. He said it was an interesting contrast – one happy and the other so tragic. I thought so as well. But today, after I turned on my daily dose of Burning Man live cam and radio, I was reminded why the two affected me in a very similar way. Today was the last day of the event and, as has become the tradition, it was the night of the solemn temple burn. About 5 minutes before the burn, Burning Man radio went silent, and then an announcement went over the airwaves to the BM community: “This is an update on the Hurricane Katrina tragedy. Several levies broke in New Orleans, and most of the city is under water. Thousands are believed dead and over half a million refugees have been evacuated from the city, which is believed to remain uninhabitable for months.” The announcer advised all people who may have been personally affected by the hurricane to contact Black Rock headquarters where other burners from the area have already been offering homes and aid for them. More information was given about ways that the community could help, and then the radio went silent again. Suddenly, the temple ignited, and a female’s voice began to slowly sing "Amazing Grace" over the playa. It was one of the most poignant renditions of this song I’ve ever heard. Her voice was clear and each note was exposed. When the song ended, there was silence again. The temple continued to burn, and you could hear the strong desert wind blowing past the microphone. Not a single voice of the thousands of people that were standing around the burning coals could be heard.

And that is what I love about Burning Man, and why it affected me in a similar way that the events after the hurricane did. Both are about people – usually complete strangers- experiencing the best and worst that life had to offer together, and reminding us how most of our life we are often alone and asleep. Stuck in our own little worlds, chasing after our consuming, but often unrewarding needs. Things have to happen to us pretty hard to remember how important life is, how important it is to treat every single person with dignity. Burning Man is one of the few places where one can experience this to the extreme: just how amazing people can be to each other, and this past week in New Orleans, we were reminded just how much that spirit still needs to be spread around this country.