burningman

Quinn (aka Ghost Dancer) is Burning Man’s Nevada Properties Manager, which includes the year-round oversight of Burning Man’s Ranch (our staging and production facility), located north of the event site. Apropos of this year’s Art Theme, Fertility 2.0, we’d like to share this wonderful piece he wrote:

"Free!" Photograph by Betty Emirzian, 2009

Beyond judgments and dogma, Burning Man is at its core simply a stage of opportunity for people of all the world’s cultures to come together for a single week of the year to explore, exchange and express ourselves without the shackles of fear within an arena free of judgment, free of repression, free of self denial in an open free environment which supports and encourages that very intention.

For 7 short days; some 50,000 human beings join together in peaceful self expression, passionate self exploration and joyful giving of themselves to their fellow man without expectation of return or personal gain. This organic stage of opportunity for potential enlightened self experience is unique in the world and it happens but for a single week right here in our small sleepy little town of Gerlach.

Long ago the Constitution of the United States was drafted, many wars have been fought and many lives tragically sacrificed to protect your unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and the Right to “freely express yourself” while doing no harm to others. Yet there are many who would deny you these Rights or who simply choose to live life in a self-imposed prison of conditioned fear while sitting brain dead in front of the Television vegetating on what Paris Hilton’s wearing today.

Not the Burner…

These human beings of ecstatic spirit and a lust for creative living who discover and attend the Burning Man event are not content to just sit and watch TV nor passively accept whatever soulless doctrine is currently being spoon fed by the media. No my friends, Burners are in my observation the Peaceful Warriors of today’s potential humanity who are inspired by confronting the lifeless face of the mundane, and who burn within to awaken and live life to the fullest with an open fearless heart passionately driven to create and explore meaningful and lasting relationships with their fellow man in harmony with the natural world which supports us all.

As the gate opens and the people join together to spontaneously create Black Rock City, each and every ongoing moment is a completely unique creative expression unlike the moment before or after it, each person is more clearly seen and accepted for who they truly are through the process of contributing their individual perspective while simultaneously giving birth to more and more beauty and art inspiring deeper and deeper self reflection for both the individual and the collective experience. Basically it’s freedom of expression giving birth to greater levels of freedom of expression and mutual respect as a result, for 7 days and nights.

At least that’s how I see it. You may call me a dreamer, I hope some day you’ll join me…

Thank you, Quinn!

The registration period for the Burning Man 2012 ticket Main Sale wrapped up last Sunday night, and our ticket vendor is currently de-duping and cleaning up the registrant database (including removing known scammers), before we do the drawing for the three pricing tiers on January 31 and February 1.

And guess what? Turns out, people are VERY EAGER to go to Burning Man this year. So much so, in fact, that they found creative ways to increase their odds of getting tickets in the Main Sale. As a result, there are a lot more tickets being requested than there are tickets available — an inordinately large number, in fact, and far more than we projected even after last year’s sold-out event. It seems that people a) likely got their friends, family and campmates to order tickets as well, and/or b) requested more tickets than they actually need (people requested ~1.7 tickets/person on average).

So the unfortunate net result is that there will be a lot of people who aren’t awarded tickets from the Main Sale … BUT DO NOT FEAR!! Because this means that there will be a large number of tickets in circulation within the existing community, tickets that simply need to be redistributed to those who need them. Based on our analysis, we hold a strong belief that things will settle out over the course of time, once that redistribution takes place, such that most everybody who wants a ticket will find their way to one.

In order to facilitate the redistribution of those extra tickets now in circulation, we have set up the Secure Ticket Exchange Program (STEP). The STEP is a web-based system that will allow Burners to sell their unneeded tickets, and Burners wanting tickets to access them. This will allow for safe and secure transactions in a central place for community-monitored, face-value resales. This is in addition to 10,000 tickets going on sale on a first-come first-served basis in our March 28th Open Sale.

We would like to reinforce that we all share responsibility for preventing the scalping of Burning Man tickets. Burners can commit to only selling their tickets at face value, and to never buying tickets above face value. Friends don’t let friends buy from scalpers! We can work together by using STEP, keeping a vigilant eye out for scams and inflated-price vending, and reporting known scammers on our ePlaya ticketing thread.

Burning Man actively discourages the use of secondary resources (eBay, Craigslist, StubHub, etc.) for the resale of tickets, and we encourage those who do not obtain tickets from the Main Sale/Open Sale to utilize community-centric sources to keep a handle on this process together. Please use STEP and/or direct local connections to known Burners to find the tickets you seek. We will post information on how to access and use STEP next week.

So, folks, it’s up to all of us to decide how this all plays out … we can work together in our communities to ensure that most everybody who wants a ticket to Burning Man can get one, and avoid falling prey to third-party price gouging. Just as we’re able to create the world’s largest Leave No Trace event — against all odds, in the middle of the remote desert — we can see this challenge through together as well.

As always, you can find full ticket information on the Burning Man tickets page, and you can be sure to stay informed by subscribing to the Jackrabbit Speaks email newsletter.

I admit it. I search for related communities around the world embracing and incorporating collaboration and gifting into their everyday lives. With this lens, I stumble upon many interesting projects, ideas, and happenings around the globe. Given this years’ Burning Man theme, Fertility 2.0, the following example seems rather topical.

Ai Wei Wei holding the seeds from his Installation Sunflower Seeds at The Tate Modern

You can love it or hate it, but the theme this year is an interesting and timely one. The beauty of the theme is this: the myriad ways it can be interpreted. I’m sure there will be lots of mother-earth-vagina-art, which is beautiful in its own way, but I choose to view this year’s theme as a metaphor; one of sowing seeds. Seeds are an eloquent imagery that describe the process of dissemination, care-taking, timeliness and growth. These elements also aptly describe the formation of an idea, a community or a movement. There are many varieties of seeds in all sorts of shapes and sizes, all of which have evolved to interact with their environment. Seeds can be receptive to light, others to moisture, some even need fire to start their process of germination (hmmmm, I seem to like this one best). Their diversity is spectacular. Some seeds must germinate within a specific time frame, and some can survive for thousands of years.

And now for an example of seed sowing; the Incredible Edible project in the town of Tormorden in the UK.

Surplus vegetables grown at the high school go on sale, with all proceeds going directly back to the school. Image from wakeup-world.com

The lofty goal of Incredible Edible is for the town of Tormorden to become totally food self-sufficient in 7 years. How did the seed of this idea start? With a bit of something familiar to us – that good old gift economy. Three years ago Mary Clear, co-founder of Incredible Edible, did a very unusual thing. She lowered the front wall to her yard and encouraged passers-by to walk into her garden and help themselves to free vegetables.

There were signs asking people to take something but it took six months for folk to ‘get it’.

Now there are 1000’s of vegetables grown around town in 70 large beds. And one of the biggest recruiters for the project is officer Janet Scott. She watches from the station’s security camera as townsfolk come up and pick from three large raised flower beds in front of the police station.

“‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.”

Why the smile, these vegetable enthusiasts are not thieves. These veggies are for taking. They are Free.

Have you seen examples of other seeds that have been sown? Please share them here.

And to find out more about Incredible Edible, visit: http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/ and Follow: @incredibledible

I’m not so sure.  Burning Man has a profound psychological, even spiritual, impact on people – but are we really more authentic than anybody else?

I’d be a lot more convinced if so many people at Burning Man didn’t dress so much alike:  as if strapping on a leather harness and glow sticks because it makes you fit in at the sound camp really makes you more authentic than someone who dresses in a gray flannel suit for his job at the accounting firm.

I’d be a lot more convinced if all the music wasn’t so similar – surely all our inner selves can’t be DJs?

I’d be more convinced by claims to authenticity if more people’s “authentic” selves didn’t fit so neatly with ideals that other people thought up. Nobody gets authenticity points for following the 10 commandments:  why should they get them for following the 10 principles?

While there’s certainly a lot of iconoclasm and personal eccentricity at Burning Man … there’s also a hell of a lot of conformity.  Given the chance to go out in the desert and do anything, it’s obvious that many of us decide to imitate each other.  But the rhetoric of authenticity persists.  What causes so many of us to feel authentic while we’re keeping up with the Sparkles?

I’d say there are three reasons:

• Burning Man is an ecstatic experience, and ecstatic experiences always feel authentic no matter what you actually do;
• The issues Burning Man brings up in people are deeply personal and, in that sense, “authentic,” even if people choose to address them in an inauthentic way;
• That however much Burners may conform, Burning Man as a culture values eccentricity enough that people who genuinely choose to do something unique and different are given far more support than they are in the default world.

Still with me?  Then let’s start from the beginning.  Nevermind what the Sparkles are doing … yes, I know, their sound camp has a flamethrower.  But, trust me, you’ll see that again.

Ecstatic rituals have been a basic part of most cultures.  They get us out of our skin, take us away from our lives,  ground us in the moment, connect us to the divine – and modern culture doesn’t have any. Especially multi-tasking screen jockeys.  There is, perhaps, a need … every bit as authentic as hunger and thirst … to experience the ecstatic and be focused in the moment.  For some people Burning Man fills that need – and hallelujah.

Any ecstatic experience will feel authentic in the moment, precisely because you are in the moment.  Isaac Bashevis Singer once said that people are at their most honest when they orgasm.  This is true, but it’s also trivial.  Dancing all night doesn’t mean your true self is a dancer any more than running for your life makes you a runner or getting sunburned makes you a piece of toast.  Ecstatic experiences may be as important to us as eating and drinking, but simply meeting those needs doesn’t make you an authentic person in any meaningful sense.

It can’t, because the whole point of having an ecstatic experience is that it gets us out of our “selves,” taking our identity away and merging us with something larger.  Ecstatic experiences are *transpersonal* – and while they may be essential to life, they also have very little to say about who we are as individuals.

Besides, ecstatic experiences are also just one part of Burning Man … and often just a small part.  Equally crucial to the sense of “authenticity” that so many associate with Burning Man is the fact that Burning Man has an extraordinary psychological acuity.  For oh so many of us, going to Burning Man is like sitting on Freud’s couch with a geisha.  The intensity, the sexuality, the art, the closeness to this natural yet alien landscape … these ingredients are a potent alchemy.  Whatever your issues are, Burning Man brings them up.

This is an authentically personal psychological process.  I mean, if it isn’t nothing is.  They’re your issues, made manifest.  Confronting them will always feel authentic.

But much in the same way that watching An Inconvenient Truth doesn’t necessarily make you an environmentalist, going to Burning Man and being confronted with your issues doesn’t necessarily make you any more authentic.  It only creates the possibility of authenticity.

And this is the key factor:  more than anything else, Burning Man creates possibility.  Anything can happen – and you’re part of that.

If anything can happen, of course, you can become in touch with your authentic self … but you can also leave it behind.  In an atmosphere of near infinite possibility, you can try on new selves the way people build new theme camps.  Then leave at the end of the week.

And why wouldn’t you?

Because in the “default world” such possibility is even harder to come by than authenticity.  It’s rare.  You have a life to live:  deviation has serious consequences.  You don’t have time to confront your issues head on (many of us wouldn’t know how anyway), and you don’t have the freedom to experiment with answers.  And then you come to Burning Man, and suddenly everything’s on the table.

Everything.  Authenticity is just the appetizer.

In that sense, Burning Man is as inauthentic a community – in the best possible sense – as you’ll find anywhere.  Our experiences of authenticity are overwhelmed by the experience of possibility.  The desert is an open space.  Authenticity co-exists with illusion, play, and false faces.

What’s authentic at Burning Man is what you’re confronted with, not necessarily what you do with it.

What we are is incredibly supportive to what our various fellows choose to do with that freedom.  While there is an obnoxious strain of “more burner than thou” that persists on the playa, in most cases most people are not only tolerant of the choices other burners make, they’d like to help.

Whatever direction you’re going, people at Burning Man would like to give you a push.   Want to dance all night and sleep all day with complete strangers?  Right on!  Here are some vitamins.  Want to dedicate yourself to helping a performance artist distribute chocolate to people in animal costumes?  What a great cause – feel free to crash in my van.  Want to erect a 50 foot phallus entirely out of duct tape?  Hey, listen, if you need more duct tape …

This can lead to some incredibly stupid life choices made to the cheers of a topless Greek chorus, but you can’t say we weren’t there with you.  Burners celebrate most of the choices people make, the more eccentric and creative the better.

But what we’re celebrating is eccentricity and creativity.  While we support authenticity in principle, in practice we don’t really care if the things people do on the playa are authentic expressions of their inner selves:  we just like it that they’re being creative eccentrics.  I’ve honstely never thought:  “Yes, his art car is a panoply of festive lights and fine alcohol, but is this appropriately representative of the way he lives at home?”

I bet you haven’t either.

Burning Man is a space where great authenticity can happen, because anything can happen.  It’s set up to encourage you to embrace possibility, but remains agnostic on the issue of authenticity.  Be who you want to be, even if it isn’t true:  someone will support you.

Caveat is the Volunteer Coordinator for Media Mecca at Burning Man. Contact him at Caveat (at) Burningman.com

Larry Harvey announced the 2012 Theme at Artumnal on Nov 19. 2011. BurningMan.com posted it on Jan. 22, 2012. Welcome, “Fertility 2.0″

It may not be official, yet.

But while you are brainstorming how to create your 50 foot phallus, here’s some silly theme thoughts:

Recorded live during Hug Nation, Nov 22, 2012. **NOTE: I AM NOT AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF BURNING MAN. I am merely a Participant with a passion for the event, people, and principles of Burning Man. Half-baked ideas & views expressed aren’t necessarily those of the Burning Man organization.” **

We had a little outing to Los Angeles  just after New Year’s, and we were down there in time for the Christmas tree burn on the beach last Sunday.

Zach Fromson organized the outing, and there were maybe a hundred or so people at the height of things. Zach and his crew had spent the weekend gathering trees; they had gone all over the Southland in a rented truck picking them up, and then they hauled them all to the beach.

When we showed up, we saw a big truck loaded with trees, so of course we walked over to help unload them.  But the guy in the back of the truck looked at me kind of funny and asked, “Are you part of the family?” and I said, “uhhhh … Burning Man?” Then the guy said no, this was a private thing, a family thing, and “the other people are over there.”

The “other people” would be the Burners, of course. But it was a smaller group than you’d think for all of L.A., but although it’s a big, big place,  the Burner community seems to be spread hither thither and yon.

Zach, on the left, organized the LA beach burn

Anyway, we found the right bonfire and then we were talking about Michael Michael and the Cacophony Society’s original Christmas tree burns on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, the Post Yule Pyres as they’re known up north. It was a little like passing on some oral history from a faraway land. “Really,” Zach was saying, “that really happens up there?”

Yes it does, and it’s always a cat-and-mouse game with the police to pull it off. The authorities don’t look kindly on hundreds of folks getting all their dried-out trees together for a bonfire. (Really, though, can you think of a safer place for a burn?? The ocean is about 40 yards away, ferchrissakes.)

Anyway, it was a very different vibe down there at Dockweiller State Beach in the Southland, where there’s plenty of parking and fires, even big Christmas tree bonfires, aren’t seen as a problem. There are fires almost every night at this beach.

Dockweiller Beach is different than what you might think of as a Southern California beach. There are some lifeguard stands, and some palm trees, but generally the area has an industrial feel, with a water treatment plant and a big refinery just across Vista Del Mar, the road that runs along the bluff. It’s kind of like the West Oakland of beaches, all industrial and rough around the edges. No million-dollar homes lining the road,  because the beach is also in  the flight path out of LAX. You put all that together — the treatment plant, the refinery, the flight path –  and you get a beach no one wants to live near.

But it’s a great place for a burn.

Dockweiler Beach isn't as pretty as some others in Los Angeles, but it was just fine for a bonfire

There were all the trees that Zach and his crew had gathered, and there were fire spinners and fire whippers, and there was wine being passed around, and there was music … and it was all pretty fine.

You kind of wanted to see some zany breaking out, some over-the-top antics, some  activities that pushed the boundaries, but there was no one like Otto around, so it all stayed pretty mild. Which was just fine.

We saw some folks we knew from the DPW, and made some new friends, and we realized again that we’d rather be outside  at a thing like this  than be stuck inside at any kind of club you could name. The night was mild, the air smelled good, and the fire burned bright.

We’re betting this thing is going to get bigger next year.

Candace and Karl Not Karl came from across town to watch the embers fly

Zach was in a pretty good mood as the fires got going

The night was cool but the fire was warm

Sometimes it takes fire to start a fire -- in this case, from a fire spinner

And just like that, this tree was done

A handy website ... Is the Man Burning? http://t.co/ANY0kRE6

The Border Burners with Their Effigy

Here’s a great story we’d like to pass along … as our global community has grown, we’ve heard about more and more “Orphan Burns”, where Burners who can’t make it to the playa for Burning Man get together to celebrate on Burn night.

And while we’d rather use a term like “Alterna-Burn”, since “Orphan Burn” implies one is without family, which clearly isn’t the case here, to each their own! It’s quite possible that down the line, as this phenomenon grows, this natural extension of Burning Man will simply be called “The [insert your locale here] Burn”. Time will tell.  Stevil of the Border Burners writes:

Spinning Poi at The Burn

“Representing one of the world’s smallest communities of Burners, the Border Burners from El Paso, TX, Las Cruces, NM, and Juarez Mexico, held their first “Orphan Burn” on Saturday, September 3, 2011; while over 1200 miles away, The Man was burning in Black Rock City. While not a sanctioned/official Burning Man event, it was a time for the few Burners from this area to get together and keep the Burning Man flame lit, even though we couldn’t make it to the Playa this summer.

Representing the far other end of the statistics spectrum, there were about 20 people in attendance … 6 of whom had been to Burning Man before. Our effigy was built out of scrap lumber on the day of the Burn by Border Burners Gordon Howell and Fernie Fernandez.

Fire!

In general, the Border Burners try to keep our tiny community of a handful of Burners (and Burners at heart) connected while we’re waiting for the next Man to burn on the playa. We have a monthly poi/fire arts workshop in Las Cruces, NM. We have a few slide shows and documentary screenings throughout the year. We are starting to have a presence at many local civic art events, and have an active announce list with over 300 subscribers. We also try to establish a Border Burner’s presence when on the playa (semi-famous for our tamales); and we usually have a small group who attend the local regional Burns closer to home, such as Saguaro Man and the Arizona Decompression.

For any more information about the Border Burners, please contact Stevil at : elpaso [Email address: elpaso #AT# burningman.com - replace #AT# with @ ]”

Border Burners 2011 Orphan Burn from Tortilla Productions on Vimeo.

Burning Man: Rites Of Passage is a two-part film from Brooklyn-based photographer Ahmed that shows “a short glimpse” of the 2011 Burning Man festival experience in day and night.

images via Ahmed

We’ve gone viral! Teddy Saunder’s beautiful Dr. Seuss video is the first Burning Man media to truly catch fire. With 800,000 views in just over 3 days, it has been on BoingBoing, The Huffington Post, and the front page of Reddit. It is gorgeous, well done, and makes Burning Man look AWESOME. So…are we screwed? With ticket fears rampant, will our community be able to handle the flood of virgins drawn in by a dust-free depiction of whimsy, smiles and sunshine? I was asked directly in my podcast this week and share my rambling answer (plus my plan to sell tickets for $1,000,000) here:

**NOTE: I AM NOT AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF BURNING MAN. I am merely a Participant with a passion for the event, people, and principles of Burning Man. Half-baked ideas & views expressed aren’t necessarily those of the Burning Man organization.” ** What did you think about “Oh the Places They’ll Go?” What do you think this surge of awareness means for the future of Burning Man?

Photo by Howard Banwell (Creative Commons License)

This is a slightly fictionalized account of true events

The naked man jumped up and down below us.  “This is undemocratic!” he shouted, spittle flying, “and unfair! And not participatory!  And not communal!”  He pointed.  He was electric, jerky, energy coursing through him, high and tweaking and just getting higher.

From the roof of the station, Christa called down:  “If you don’t let us alone, I’m going to have to make you suffer like you’ve never suffered before in your life.”

She was doing it to protect me.  Something dark had been chasing me all week:  I’d come to Burning Man and couldn’t quite figure out why.  No matter how nice people were,  I just wasn’t fitting.  Less than an hour after my arrival I was being driven around on an art boat at sunset to look at sculpture installations while topless girls danced and I opened bottles of champagne … and I was a square peg in the roundest of holes.

It got worse every day.  I smiled, I laughed, and festered.  I was lonely no matter what the size of the crowd.  Intimate conversations were like eating the flesh of my friends.  My limbs turned into dead skin and I dragged them from party to party.  I told a few people about it, old comrades.  “We’re so glad you’re here,” they said.  “It’ll get better.”  It got worse.

Finally, one day, after the desert and my volunteer position had chewed me up and spit me out, I told just a few friends that I needed them.  I was taking my best booze (I only bring the best) and my finest cigars (why smoke any other kind?) and bringing them to the roof of the BMIR studios.  And I wanted them to come, and be with me, and share what I had, and close in around me because without that circle I could not go on. 

Kanizzle coulnd’t make it, and Beast couldn’t make it, but Christa did, and Mao did, and Munney did.  We climbed to the roof of the studio and they looked at me and when they saw my eyes they pulled the ladder up after us.  This was a private party in the middle of a celebration that knows no borders.  I needed boundaries.  I needed to keep these few people in and everything else out.

I passed out cigars.  We started drinking scotch … and other friends started coming by and looking for the ladder.

“Hey!” they called up.  “You’ve got the ladder up there!  Put it back.”

They looked at me, and I shook my head.  This wasn’t selfish, it was self-defense.

More people came, more people called.  “Come on!”

“Sorry, this is a private party.”

“That’s bullshit!”

Occasionally Mao would whisper in my ear, advocating for people below.  “You know,” he said, “Gray is really cool.  He’d get you.  Consider it?”

“Yeah,” said Christa.

I shook my head.  I needed a boundary, a line encircling a space that I could fill and fit securely.  I needed it like I needed water under the sun.

Some people went away, some people sulked below us.  Eventually the naked man appeared, hair wild, bouncing back and forth, jumping up and down.  We didn’t know him.  I have no idea who he was:  but he came as the righteous sword of justice to avenge my private party.

“You can’t do that!” he screamed.  “You’re not sharing!  You’re not letting other people participate!”  He wouldn’t stop.  He wouldn’t go away.  He had no idea that I was as low as he was high, and wouldn’t have cared.  This was an existential knife fight;  a battle underneath the moon between the depths of my suffering and his soaring energy.  Only one of us could live through it.  “You’re poisoning the spirit of Burning Man!  You’re being exclusionary!  You’re being assholes!  You’re being selfish and taking other people with you!”

Mao just laughed at him.  I shouted back:  “This conversation is non-consensual!”

But it was Christa who stood up and looked down at him.

“Walk away,” she said.  “Walk away now, or I’m going to have to hurt you.”

“You need to let everybody participate!” he screamed back.

She looked at me first, to make sure I really needed protection. To make sure she was doing this for the right cause.  We hardly even know each other, but I think she’d kill for me.

“Walk away,” she said.  “If you don’t leave us alone, I’m going to have to make you suffer like you’ve never suffered before in your life.”

“No,” he shouted, “you need to be inclusionary!”

“All right,” she said.  “You asked for it.”

“No, YOU asked for it when you pulled the ladder up and violated the spirit of Burning Man!”

We held our breath.

“Because what you don’t understand,” she shouted, her voice dripping acid, “is that I’m inside your HEAD!  I’m the demon inside your head, and I’m PULLING YOU IN!  I’m grabbing your eyeballs and PULLING YOU IN!  I’m eating your eyeballs from the INSIDE, and you can feel my fingers and my teeth inside your head gnawing on your eyes and your soul and YOU NEED TO RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN BECAUSE THE DEMONS IN YOUR HEAD ARE FOLLOWING YOUR BLOOD TRAIL AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO EAT YOUR EYES!”

He stared.  His face went pale.  He looked inward.

“No!” he screamed  “NO!” and he ran off into the playa, shouting, into the desert.

Mao and I stared.

She shrugged. “You just need to know how to get into their heads, it’s easy when they’re that far gone.”

We laughed.

I’d won.  The fight had been won for me.  I’m not proud, but I was touched that someone had done this.  “Thank you.”

“Well, yeah,” she said.  “Nobody fucks with you.  Hey, are you going sing something or what?”

I took a sip of port.  I puffed a French cigar.  “Sing?  I could do that.”

We started a sing-along.  An even bigger crowd gathered.  Eventually, 12 songs in, someone found another way to climb up to the roof and joined us by force.  “Fuck you,” he said, walking over to put the ladder down.  “Sing another one.”

Mao looked at me.  “I think ‘Caveat time’ is over man.  Are you okay?”

I nodded.  I was.  Now.  We let him lower the ladder.  A dozen more people came up, and some stayed until my voice gave out.

Once, during the singing, we saw the naked guy pass by the studio … running … running … still running.  But not screaming.  His voice had given out too.

I’m sorry, man.  I know it was wrong.  But we tried to warn you.

Caveat is the Volunteer Coordinator for Media Mecca at Burning Man. Contact him at Caveat (at) Burningman.com

Bliss Dance, a photo by Joe Dsilva on Flickr.

Have you seen this fun complilation of Bliss Dance Photos? Thanks to Joe Dsilva for making us smile this morning.