09 Oct Burning Man Journey – Part 2

After a 24 hour road trip to Reno, we arrived at the playa in the middle of the night exhausted but in delight of what was ahead of us. In the urge to dive into this mystic experience, we duct-taped a couple glow sticks and headed to the playa, plunging into complete darkness. The playa at night is comparable to a crowded sea of art cars, surrounded by a jungle of music and living beings from another world. Biking around in this chaos without no other purpose than simply being, my  excitement gave way to an overwhelming feeling of perfection…

It is hard to put words on the Burning Man Experience; “it is one of a kind”. It carries a vibe, an openness, an overall culture that is completely unique.  Let me say it this way: at Burning Man everyone is part of the show as much as they are part of the audience. It just cannot be dissociated.  All the arts and the magic out there are made of  the people as much as the people experience them. It is integrated, it fits perfectly, it is harmonised.That’s the beauty of it. Burners often refer to this as the universe. (I know it sounds completely esoteric, but it’s not!).

When the man was burning, I took a moment on my own and took a step back to observe the scene and it’s at this specific moment that it all became  so obvious to me:

I was part of the noisy Jungle around the man. It felt like all of us were quite more a show to the Man,  than the Man itself was a show to us. I mean it was just a big-ass fire at the end of the day. It felt like it was almost the man that was observing us. And then it became simply a big ass bonfire. All this to say that the show, the art, the magic, is in the people around the man, in our interaction, in that jungle that is created by every single burner openly exposing his/her own creativity.

I think BM is one of the only place where you can really  get this complete feeling of harmony, simply because you have no choice but to be entirely part of it.

Beyond that I feel that Burning Man is a place where each individual’s stories, dreams and creativity co-exist. In such a way that it forces every single Burner to challenge what they have always taken for granted or deemed to be real.

If you’re interested to have a tease of this experience yourself, go to  the 15th Annual San Francisco Burning Man Decompression (This Sunday, October 12th, starting at noon @ Esprit Park, SF. )