12 Oct Burning Man Journey – Part 3

When I came back from the Black Rock City, exhausted, fulfilled and definitely still in an intense mode of existential questioning, I still had not found a place to stay in SF. Providence came to me again and a former Burner offered me to stay in his guest room for at least a little while. When I got there, I did not even open my dusty luggage but started investigating his neatly organised  library. I randomly opened one, book and read the first thing that I laid my eyes on.

“She kept asking if the stories were true.

I kept asking her if it mattered.

We finally gave up.

She was looking for a place to stand &

I wanted a place to fly.”

(For the interested, I have now adopt as my new bible: The World is Made of Stories)

This quote from Brian Andreas, really made me connect the dots regarding what I had just lived;

Everything at Burning Man is true yet doesn’t correspond to what is universally accepted to be real. I’ve heard so many times “this is great but seriously, this is just a big fantasy, it couldn’t be applied to the real world”.  I agree that Burning Man is a fantasy, in the sense that is the result of the intensification of each individual reality.

To me, most of our real world is made of myths and stories. That is  from the Genesis passing by the Second World War history, but also in the way you first reacted when you saw yourself in a mirror. What we believe in today remains as stories rather than actual facts.

In that light, Burning Man is a place that allows individual to connect and explore the limits of what is said to be impossible and what is deemed to be facts. “The real” takes place when Burners get back home apply their take away from the experience they just lived. Burning Man takes all its meaning through the stories that emanate from it. From what I’ve seen they all carry a sense of humanity & openness to different realities. For most, this converts into the ambition to apply what they’ve learnt from their experience into their daily life.

So, to those who tend to question the “reality” or sustainability of this community in order to judge Burning Man (or on anything else actually)… I can only have this question: Does it matter?   – To me anyways, the creativity and actions that emanate from this whole “fantasy” experience are fundamentally real and outstandingly persuasive. And that matters!