I’m Poor, Thanks for Asking!

In the decade I’ve been apart of this community, the events, the camps, the discussions, and circle jerks of the entire playa and beyond – I never once felt as if I was exactly rubbing elbows with the fatest cats or the most elite. Maybe it was the low income tickets I applied for each year, embarrassingly having to prove that I am in fact a peasant. The money that I scraped together to buy just enough food and water, tent, and first aid hodgepodge that really only minimally increased my survival chances. My gifts of curios and gewgaws that I believed to be more crucial to my burn than the dust masks and goggles. Most of my fellowship with the other vagabonds was centered on our bad financial decisions, yet we still poured our fools gold into the Org machine and spun the Wheel of Misfortune, pretending that we didn’t eventually have to crawl back to our artistic slums. In fact, it was our shared belief of the world that was bought and gentrified by the plutocrats that often was the catalyst to us clawing to get into the parameters of our delusional dystopia, if only for a week we could live as truly free men.

My point is that the flow of revenue over the last ten years (really over that entirety of the event) has probably always been more lavish than we knew. Except now there’s a certain flaunting that has become trendy, even promoted, to showcase ones opulence by demonstrating just how far their prerogative fingers have fisted up the Mans ass, pass the colon, pass the small and large intestine, pass the stomach, pass the esophagus, until their bloody, shit stained hands have subjugated his mouth and now operate him like a puppet, a sock puppet in fact, the very sock they used to jack off into, dumping a sad, frothy, tone deaf load of privileged pompous semen – but hey, at least we can see Diplo every day all day, because who doesn’t want that?!?!?!?!

Episode 3: Waking Dreams

What I Loved About It: The participants who we’ve been following the first two episodes finally able to fulfill their acidic, chalky, stink bug swarming need for the playa ground. Snark aside, I genuinely enjoyed watching virgin burners Ray Christian and Lindsay Handren arrive at Greeters station and do that whole to-do. Greeters were my first (and only) volunteer camp/department since my very first burn. There’s a flow of things a Greeter does to welcome folks home, and it’s VERY important we do them! Watching Ray and Lindsay triumphantly, and probably a bit desperately, make their dusty angels as a signal of arrival, as if they were anchors finding the ocean floor, ready to be embraced by the disorienting desert. Almost everyone is given the same spiel, given a hug, roll in the dust, ring the bell. Here’s your map and book of all the things your fomo will absolutely be sick over, stickers and flyers, a map that hopefully you can understand while the street signs are still up anyway, don’t drive faster than 10mph, THEY’RE CHECKING! Drink water, wear sunblock, try not to die, try not to kill anyone, and have a happy burn – welcome home. The rest is truly up to them to decide, and it appeared that Ray and Lindsay, though they had two different burns, both fully immersed themselves in this ridiculous experiment that for whatever reason means so much to us. It’s so completely stupid and pointless yet it’s paramount that we do it for our own sense of evolution.

What I Loved About It: The inside look of mutant car artists Quill Hyde and Michelle Li Murphy, Hyde’s idea and materialization of Acavallo Carousel, Michelle’s influence and dedication, pouring all of their money into this project while just welcoming in a new baby, navigating the collapse of their marriage and the full circle of healing the rift of their relationship (though I’m not sure where they currently are regarding their union), all in all to bring this arduous estate of bells and whistles as a gift to the playa. Quill was extremely honest about the consequences and rewards of realizing this colossal concept, what was painfully lost in the process and what was joyfully gained. Their story allowed us to see the workings of one of the many artists who labor relentlessly for their design, birthing the physical fabrication of their imagination, who are audacious enough to even allow this seed of conception to develop fully in the tangible world, and then permitting, in fact hoping, that they can share it with all of us and we will love, nurture, appreciate, and always remember their wood and iron child of fire and magic. As well as the toll it takes on the artists, outside of the engineering and carpentry, the architect and building – they were two people who had a life together, created new life together, and the very thing that once fused their love, became the impetus for their severing. Burning Man doesn’t “ruin lives,” but it does offer the perfect environment that exposes a person and all their complex innards, and if we’re astute enough, we can grant ourselves this great discovery instead of a great demise.

What I Hated About It: Level and Marian driving around handing out “no-no” slips to plug in play camps. I would love this if I felt this was an authentic attempt to evaporate the overwhelming presence of these playa hotels, but I only see this as a feeble tactic to wag their abetting fingers, on camera of course, and pantomime as some sort of law enforcement to discourage this type of set up at the event. You could not convince me that they have no idea these P&P camps are coming out every year until they actually get there. The guy they were giving a meek verbal spanking to even stated “you guys know our deal…” I looked up what the supposed penalties are for turnkey type groups: stripping of good standing with the placement team, loss of the early directed group sale tickets, loss of placed camp space (meaning they are denied a space anywhere on the grid and can’t bring large-scale infrastructure or set up early), and eviction and banishment, such as the “Purge” camp that was banned in 2022, “Humano the Tribe” banned in 2019, “White Ocean” banned in 2016, and “Caravancicle” banned in 2014. There are also Federal BLM fines and vendor penalties for operating a commercial business without a specific permit, which is more or less what these concierge enterprises are doing. Not to confuse the imposition as wrong, but more or less the duplicity of the disciplinary conducts; you can’t castigate a luxury camp with attendees who paid thousands to be there and then return to your luxury camp that also has attendees who paid thousands to be there (hello $3,000 ticket option). My issue is that I don’t believe it has anything to do with the ethics and values we are barely holding onto, but that BM isn’t getting a big enough cut of those all inclusive camp fees, and the disturbing amount of moop that they typically leave behind which further jeopardizes the Orgs standing with the BLM.

What I Hated About It: Kimbal Musk obviously. His whole bullshit speech about decentralizing the Org because that’s what the community wants, really putting the ass in assumption. Of course, he would be our pioneering leader who steers us fearlessly into a dispersal of a CEO, localizing our precious city that still somehow centers around whatever the fuck he wants. You can’t suggest Burners need to govern themselves, independent from a specified leader while also grandstanding how your large money truck backs up and dumps its cocaine and feces traced dollar bills onto the playa. Do we need you or do you need us? I think he needs a ba-ba and nap. It’s a weird stance to shoulder the responsibility of the everyday folk while still being completely aloof to what we actually want. His tactics seem to line up to every crooked politician playbook – slacktivism, moral postering, performative virtue signaling and key words like “what the people want,” with no actual plan or intention on making it participant based, and eventually turning our space into their own personal playground. Personally, I hate the idea of any billionaire even relatively in charge, it’s never a good thing. The entire point of Burning Man is a volunteer effort to make something unordinary and brilliant happen, but the reality is that it has now become a business, a place of employment, organizers, patrons and investors. That’s not what’s bothersome to me. It’s the embarrassing truth that we’re allowing a group of the ultra-wealthy (especially wealthy and gross), to make an absolute bastardization of their subsidies by insinuating the event would be nothing without them, as if the money we pour in, the art and gifts we bring, the hundreds of hours we commit is futile. Their money disintegrates into ash right along with the Man and everything else that burns.

I took a big break from watching the series and writing about the episodes because my daughter and I drove out to the playa to visit our sweaty dusty friends who were in the middle of their BM contract. It was hot as all hell and I got some sort of stomach bug, missed Golden Spike (the whole reason we went) and just tried not to perish in the middle of nowhere. I’m so thankful for my community who rallied around us and made sure we were safe and comfortable and still spent time with us even though all the chaos was happening every minute. I was reminded of how fucked up it is to live out there for so long, all for a silly event that lasts what seems like seven seconds, in the heat waves, the icy cold, the wind, the rain, the barren, the drama, the injuries, the catastrophes, all grouped together in a Petri dish of regrets and recovery. Yet, even so, we’re able to make some of the best times out of all of the bedlam. We spend so much time together it feels like our cells fuse into one giant, disfigured, monster, but a closer look would reveal we’re all taking care of each other. We might curse and shout along the way, but there’s people out there who I would protect and cherish with my whole life. If you ever go to the event, be sure to thank the people who carry the heavy weight of actually building this spectacular shit show.

Highlight: Lindsey getting into the Thunder Dome and kicking ass – hell yea.

Highlight: Ray taking shrooms – “burners love their vegetables.”

Highlight: Participant, 10 year burner, and Taekwando competitor Angel Pie tackling Zoe Nightingale (who I’m obsessed with) to the ground in a big hug of love.

Highlight: The heroic shirt-cockers who want to ruin the instagram models photos with their uncompromising nudity.