About 10 years ago I wrote an article about Woodstock, at the 30th anniversary, for a magazine called As We Are. I wish I had a copy. I began with a quote by a member of the brain trust of that era, someone like Bill Graham, comparing Woodstock to the refugees in Vietnam at the time. The writer was looking out over the apparent devastation of half a million people in the mud and described it as “a different kind of war.”
Today, all our wars are fought in the desert. And as we bring all our worldly belongings out to Burning Man, including our special, very expensive hobbies, we get a taste of life as a refugee in the desert. This is a climate not unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, where our society’s bloody, fraudulent wars rage on even as we celebrate existence at Black Rock City.
It’s not a big bite of refugee life, just a taste: we’re not under siege here. Rather, the goal is to have fun that we mostly make on our own. This is a special kind of challenge for Westerners, who are used to being entertained to death. But we have indeed packed up and taken refuge in a hostile physical environment, dangerous to our bodies and lacking most of the amenities of the Western world, such as prepared food, running water and flush toilets. And unless we’re part of setup or breakdown, we will be moving on within a week. What we’re doing is not unlike what the Army has to do: establish a city on a day’s notice. Firefighters battling wildfires in California have to do the same thing. And, so do refugees.
We don’t usually live like this under positive conditions, though Burning Man is an experiment in doing so. It’s a cool thing, if you ask me: a bunch of Americans, from the same country where there are 300 handgun deaths a week and 1,000 vehicular deaths and many more rapes, create a society that (with common sense precautions) is safe for everyone. Give people some freedom and suddenly women go topless and a third of the men wear skirts. Harassment seems to be nonexistent; people are respectful about taking pictures. If you’re friendly, you’re allowed to look. It’s not that there aren’t rapists. It’s just not a very safe environment for them.
There are no traffic cops or stop signs and I only saw speeding once. There’s a police presence, but it’s minimal. About 300 cops were sent from neighboring counties, but according to the wife and daughter of some of those police, they are there as much for a civil emergency as for any other purpose. You see the occasional Bureau of Land Management cops on their four wheelers; I bumped into them twice and a sheriff’s search & rescue team once. I see more cops than this taking a walk in my own neighborhood — and they are not there to help.
My traveling partner and I left our wallets in the glove box; I left a laptop and fancy cameras in the car; we rarely locked the doors and did not feel any need to. This, in contrast to my constantly checking for my keys swinging from a carabiner from my right side at home (a habit I could not seem to shake), because I lock my studio when I go any further than coffee at Dominick’s.
Maybe because there is exceedingly little commerce in Black Rock City is why we don’t need cops. I spent a grand total of $4 during my five and half days in the city. That was for a soy chai, which was too big, so I got a second cup and gave away half of it.В (This does not include the prepayments for the ticket [$240] and my week at Poly Paradise [$125].) When I got back to “civilization” the thing that was the most irritating was the constant exchange of money; the taking of credit cards; every last thing for sale and nothing given as an actual gift. (And not merely by the way, this is one of the challenges I face running Planet Waves. I would prefer the whole enterprise be on the level of a mutual exchange of gifts rather than commerce — but very few people speak that language, it seems; so we have decided to make peace with a commerce-based model.)
Burning Man reminds me how much we all have, and how much more we have if we share. And there comes that point where we can let go of our obsession with money.