Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Burning Man 2009: anyone going?
Hat:
--- Quote from: onewheelwizzard on 20 Jul 2009, 02:17 ---
--- Quote from: Hat on 19 Jul 2009, 20:31 ---I am inherently suspicious of any collection of fringe people that appears to be officially sanctioned or ritualised
--- End quote ---
There is no "official sanctioning" at Burning Man. There are no corporate sponsors (in fact it is requested that logos appearing on clothing, equipment, or vehicles be removed or covered up, and nobody drives around in any cars that haven't also been turned into works of art), it has never advertised itself in any way other than the word of mouth of participants, and it is encouraged (many would say to a point, while many would not) that any tradition be challenged (you'd be amazed at how many people reacted positively when a guy lit the Man on fire 5 days early in 2007, despite how clearly unsafe and poorly advised of a decision that had been ... a LOT of people were pissed as hell, but a lot of people were saying that it was about time someone did that. A new Man went up within those 5 days and the regularly scheduled burn happened anyway.)
There IS a LOT of ritualization at Burning Man, but it's got such a diverse population that you could literally interpret anything you wanted out of it. The whole week is a ritual for a lot of people (I would consider myself one of them at this point), but at the same time nothing about it is standardized (except maybe the climate). There are a couple festival-wide shared rituals, like the Burning of the Man on Saturday night, and the Temple Burn the following night, and there are also just a few things that happen every year, like the Wednesday night Temple of the Breaks party. But the whole thing is so freeform from day to day that honestly there's not much to be concerned about.
--- End quote ---
Really I am just basically more suss on the fact that if you get a lot of people on hallucinogens together performing (admittedly fucking cool) ritualistic displays of the spirit, there is a certain sort of mindset that tends towards a kind of gentrification of said rituals, robbing them of the spontaneity that makes them worthwhile in the first place.
I would admittedly love to check out a Burning Man if I was ever in the US, but I would probably be that guy, and I am not ashamed to admit I would mostly be in it for the drugs and having my body painted and just getting loose as hell (probably basically everything else once I got enough drugs into me tho)
It's not that I think Burning Man isn't a cool fucking idea, its just that I have had a long personal history of seeing cool ideas being institutionalised by "free thinkers" into less cool ideas, and so I usually enter any kind of counter cultural event with a certain degree of cynicism. (sorry!)
Hat:
--- Quote from: Johnny C on 19 Jul 2009, 01:12 ---things to do at burning man:
* get high as hell
* get sacrificed to bee god(?)
--- End quote ---
Also I think if I made a list of "reasons why it might be a bad idea for me to go to burning man" the fact that I would be totally down with this would probably make it somewhere near the top
but then again when has my list of things it might be a bad idea to participate in ever really paid off, is what I am asking.
Zingoleb:
I must be some kind of freak, I don't look forward to Burning Man for the drugs involved.
benji:
I don't know. If I ever went to burning man, it definately wouldn't be for the drugs. But then again, I'm not going to burning man.
KvP:
If I were to go to Burning Man I would go so that I could see all the places where Malcolm in the Middle filmed their Burning Man episode. Frankie Muniz was standing right there!
Also Tania >:c
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