Friday, 8/28/06: Waste and Ontology
On Friday, I woke up later than usual due to my nocturnal activities the night before. While I know that many people stayed up all, I have not been napping in the afternoons – and don’t plan to. Max, Adam, Vinay et al were up all night – they were still up at 8:30 discussing drugs, faith, and many other complex and interesting ideas that I didn’t catch as I was on my way to the porta potty.
Our schedule on Friday was a bit of a mess. We tried to attend too many fixed events. Mary, Zach and I left for hairwashing camp, but the line was too long. We wanted to do the Random Pizza Experience, but again, the line was too long (Make a pizza for yourself and one for someone who has unconsciously ordered one. Fantastic.). The 80s dance party was in a tent in Center Camp that was too hot. We advanced to the main pavilion in Center Camp and Mary participated in an activity called Monkey Chant, which struck me as rather tribal. I opted to stay in the shade rather than participating in the sun. While I waited for her, wearing my Freudian slip I might add, an older man with a 6 foot foam penis approached me and we chatted for a bit about people’s boundaries at Burning Man. After he went on his way, I noticed that people kept entering Center Camp with snowcones. I meandered outside and was delighted to finally that renegade snowcone cart. Mary had to chase after it as it was leaving to get a snowcone not 10 minutes after I had found it.
Mary and I walked home along Hope, past the airport. Some of Black Rock City’s inhabitants have the means to either own or at least fly small planes to the playa from the Bay Area. The distant playa has many interesting but low key camps, including the walk in camping area. Working our way back home, we stopped at a very large black pyramid, which housed a lawn made out of sod. The camp organizers told us that they used 100 gallons of water a day to keep it up and that they were donating it after Burning Man.
The notion of watering a lawn in the desert brings me back to a point of discussion that came up on Thursday night between Mary, Danny and myself. (I might add that Thursday, from the vantage point of Saturday afternoon when I am writing this, has been my favorite day thus far – based on conversations and people I met. There have been beautiful pieces of art and performance everyday, but the assortment of people that I meet fluctuates.)
In my mind, the punch line to Burning Man is how much waste is produced at the event.
Contrary to my fuzzy expectations, BRC is not populated by aging environmental and political activist hippies trying to relive their glory days and young people wishing they had been born in an earlier era. Burners are current artists engaged in the here and now – along with intellectuals and merrymakers attracted by the art, the fire and the remoteness offered by the desert location. The ravers in particular are free to party all night and take whatever drugs they want, with significantly less risk than in civilization. The art protects them. The rave scene, while fun, strikes me as merely an outgrowth of the main, art focused aspect of the event.
Various members of our camp have discussed the life-altering experiences that they have had while under the influence of various drugs and drug cocktails. While I have no personal insight into the matter as I have not taken these substances, I am skeptical of the value they place on their experiences. Are these experiences truly meaningful? Spiritual? Powerful? Perhaps the word I’m looking for is revelatory. While I know that drugs are fun, I am not confident that they bring deeper meaning to the surface that an individual could not find inside himself if he were willing to search a little bit more. It would require more effort and it would be significantly less fun, but it strikes me as dangerous – for one’s long term mental health – to place such a great degree of significance on these substances. To me, they pull the strings of the brain like a hand controlling a marionette puppet. I am concerned that the drugs create a fake experience. I am much more comfortable with an eruption of “dude, I’m so messed up,” from an addled person than “I have had such a spiritual experience because of this chemical.” I fear losing appreciation for real people, places, events and sensations because my brain would never naturally be able to secrete the same quantity of “happy chemicals” that it would on a substance designed to do just that. Perhaps I am being hypocritical – I drink, I’ll smoke marijuana – but I feel that those are mild enough so as not to drown out reality. Likewise, I’m sure there is a level, a quantity at which one can use drugs and not spoil one’s experience interacting with reality. Finally, and most importantly, where does one draw the line between “real” and fake? We see and understand the world as it is filtered through our brains – not, perhaps, as it really “is.” How do we know what “is” – what is reality versus the construct of society? Thus, it is less that I am creating a personal policy or passing judgment and more that I am beginning to unpack gut aversions that I’ve always had to drugs and the reasons why I might be wrong.
The waste created at Burning Man initially struck me on Thursday evening during my big crazy conversation with Danny and Mary. The enormous quantity of emissions created by the fire is the most obvious incidence of pollution – both from the big burns and the fire exhibits. Secondly, though it is a “leave no trace” event, each individual present at Burning Man likely creates more trash than he/she would had she/he not taken the trip. There has so much packaging – both the packaging discarded before we left SF and that which accompanied us to the playa - disposable plates and individually wrapped items that I do not encounter on a daily basis. I was a bit surprised, as the leave no trace aspect of the “festival” made me expect an environmental conservationist/political activist atmosphere. However, it was refreshing that it was not focused on these issues. Rarely does art take center stage at such an event – usually the stars are politics and/or music. Upon further consideration, the leave no trace efforts are still as admirable as I first thought. Though the desert is dead and empty, every effort is made to leave it exactly as it was found. While BM is not dependent on the location of the desert, I think its remoteness, its challenge to survival and raw natural beauty enhance the event. Thus, even though we clean up after ourselves only because BM says we must, it counts.
Finally, I realized that though much waste is created at BM and the amount of waste I created was more than I do in my daily life, many people do create as much trash – or more – on a daily basis. Many citizens of Black Rock City were not driving their SUVs an hour to and from work for the entire week in the CA burbs. They were not using the electricity in their houses or the water in their towns. Ultimately, I want to believe that there was at least balance in the amount of waste created at Burning man versus the amount saved in other places during the week.
Back to Friday’s events – I believe that Mary and I visited the God Box that afternoon on the way to the grass pyramid. I know I was wearing my Freudian slip at both places. The god box was simple, but elegant. We were asked to sign a waiver, promising not to reveal its secret. Next, we had to write a confession, a hope or a fear in a small book. Then, we were taken individually to visit the Mystic Toad in another tent. A man and a woman touched pressure points on my neck and walked around me with incense and smudge sticks. Then we were taken to a small chamber, to the toad. The toad was a small mailbox that looked like a whimsical frog. Once I determined that nothing was going to jump out at me, I opened it. Inside was a small mirror. Predictable, but cute. I emerged, the people hugged me and said “the toad is happy.” All in all, I had a satisfying experience with the mystic toad.
The toad was extremely appropriate, as it turned out, as that night one of Max’s UChicago groupies claimed that he had seen a toad in the desert – that he’d almost run over it with his bike. I was sitting around with Max, Vinay, Mary and a few others, and we were skeptical. A toad, we asked, in the lifeless, alkali desert? He argued that it had perhaps hitchhiked in on a car. And survived 5 days, we persisted? (It’s true, someone could have arrived at Burning Man on Thursday – a minor detail I opted not to bring up, as this line of questioning was far too much fun.) I volunteered that maybe someone brought it to lick, a la Homer Simpson, “I’m not not licking [psychedelic] toads,” for its hallucinogenic effects. Elaborate? Max questioned, and then answered himself, “Well, Burning Man is fairly elaborate.” The final suggestion was that it was living in the Porta Potty water. All chemicals, I said. Then the two brain cells that I had left at that point in the day sparked and I offered up a final suggestion. “Perhaps it was someone’s anal toad.” Naturally, Mary erupted in laughter and Max’s friend decided that we weren’t taking him seriously – which we weren’t. There is really nothing more to add, save for the fact that the joke is still funny and Max’s friend was annoyed.
Friday night was pleasant, though I had more fun on Thursday. I think my body was slowly becoming exhausted from the harsh desert conditions. Vinay, Zach, Danny and myself visited exhibits, danced a bit. There were large parties at the Gothic Cathedral, the Waffle House, and a small dome called the Pink Spot. The last one played more funk infused music than Techno. They had soda with ice and it was lovely. I headed off to bed at around 3 am, I think. I was simply unable to stay awake until dawn. Considering that I had a work schedule - consistently early, 5 days a week, to return to, it was probably better that way.