Burning Man - A Week of Radical Self Expression

'Burning Man is an Adult Playland', a 29-Hour a day party for a week; A Globally Charged Community in the desert of Northern Nevada.

'You can vacation in say Jamaica and see things that millions have seen before you and millions will see after you...Or you can trek yourself & stuff to BRC and see things that will only be available for one week to see'

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Burning Sensations - A Burning Man Movie

The movie Burning Sensations is available via Amazon. Here are my favorite quotes from the film.

	Each summer thousands of people converge on the Northern Nevada Desert bringing with them the desire to participate in a different America. Together they build the temporary city of Black Rock.
	Woodstock was so memorable because of the two unplanned events that happened. First a whole nation of youth crashed the gate, they didn't plan that, filled them with a sense of momentum & destiny and then it rained and they all rolled around in the mud. We plan Burning Man so that kind of experience can happen; we plan chaos, that kind of fertile chaos.
	At Burning Man everybody becomes basically the same, your mask, your normal cultural mask is stripped away and you get to be who ever you want for a week, you get to re-create your life.
	It is only a temporary community, but while it lasts it represents to people powerful unities in time & space. We try and create the most connecting environment we possibly can, on the theory that community is the medium on which culture actually occurs. In some ways we are on the forefront of what the internet does and will represent in the future. We're making a model; we're showing you what you can do. What you can really do in the way of creating a dynamic cultural situation.
	When we looked at the Black Rock Desert, it is one of the remotest places in North America, you have to make an effort to get there, there has to be an initiation, a pilgrimage, there has to be that level of commitment to make it that much more real when you get there.
	I just called a friend of mine Jerry James let's go down to the beach and burn a man; he was a carpenter and I had a background in landscape design, built structures; we went down to the beach and burnt this thing. I don't know that it was art, it was artistic in spirit. The reason we continued to do is not because it was splendid man, it was a ragtag scarecrow, it was a joke. Eight feet tall, a little taller than us, that's all you need, something to look up to; its that everybody on that beach converged. We persisted in carrying it to the beach because it was illegal, and that was a good thing, because it made it all that more immediate; otherwise we would have gotten a winch instead of raising it with people, which turned out to be this sacramental act, but we never assigned meaning to it, the meaning had to be immediate in the act.
	In the future every piece of dust will have a bar code...At the sound of the tone the time will be now... I am the hope giver, I am a deep well of light and strength, I am a foundation, a flow, a force and at times a shield. I am the dream seeker; I have a vision that leads me to territories unique and absurd. I am the wish maker; you know me I think; I was there your first birthday with a song and a wink. I was there when you inhaled and blew out the candle. I was there when you called for that secret to handle. I am the prayer keeper, some say I am nothing; but I am here and I have heard many prayers in many forms and many places; specific and so broad the subject is lost even to me. Hope, Wish, Pray, Dream; the Tri-Deluxe welcomes you to the future, you are cordially invited to engage in conversation with your neighbor.
	So what happen was we attracted an audience, but it was the community that did it, we took it out to the desert and suddenly the two became one; going to the desert required an effort. To go to the desert put everyone in the same little survival boat on that flat unyielding sea. In the beginning we had that little camp with the man beyond the camp, so you had to make a pilgrimage to him, you had to make an effort to go out to him.
	Early on there was a movement among some people to limit the numbers; they said well we only want cool people coming; Well who are they? We undergoing the growth pains from going form what was a village to a town to now a full scale city and moving towards an image of a civilization.
	Living in America it is mostly devoted to commercial strip and urban sprawl and convenience outlets; it might not occur to you what community was. There was a time when communities grew up amid unities of time & space and places were real places and cultures were real cultures; now that we have gained so much power in the world, time & space dance to our tune and the result is that our population is completely dispersed and disconnected; plugged into a production consumption economy that is holey designed to cater to individual desires without relation to anyone or anything else. What we have done is we have designed a society for one purpose only; to foster, host the kind of community that will produce this dynamic result. We do a lot of things that are against our economic interest for that reason.
	Its really how Burning man creates a community of people and a city out in the desert by releasing control to the greatest extent possible. You never get the thing you planned on getting when you give up control; but the point is that you get something that you could never have imagined; in some sense it is going to be greater, more organic, and more complete.
	We stress Radical self-reliance as well as Radical self-expression, unlike the hippies that were not big on radical self-reliance.
	This is an experiment, and we run a new experiment every year; we incorporate what works and we can say Be Gone to those elements that don not conduce community, we can tinker with it and change it.
	We have termed the Black Rock Plague; after you have experienced this you go thru withdrawal from it. Typically what they say is gee that was great and I do not want it to end. You try and tell your friends about and you realize that words don't work.
	Every year everybody says well Burning Man is not going happen next year; cause no one can believe it will happen again, cause every other thing that has ever happened that has been this good has always managed to self destruct.
	It gets to the point where people are living their whole year to get back on the Playa; get back to that moment.