A few weeks ago some folks cruising the Venice boardwalk on fuzzy bikes encountered a group of people spinning flow toys on the Venice grassy knoll. Talk about two great tastes that taste great together!
The following discussions lead to a gathering last weekend of “Hug Nation & Flow Temple” in Venice Beach.
The day was AMAZING and we hope to do them every 2nd Sunday from now until the Burn.
Huge thanks to Marvin, Tea Faerie, Dmitry, and all the Flow Temple folks. If you could use some Flow & Hugs, join us next 2nd Sunday! (March 13)
It may not have been THE Playa, but there was definitely a Playa vibe in the air. In fact, one of the themes of my Hug Nation talk was cultivating a Playa mindset, year round:
Craft nights? Burner brunches? Playa bike parades? How do you cultivate a Playa mindset year-round?
**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.” **
photo by Halcyon
In some cultures, a rite-of-passage involves having your foreskin ritualistically removed with a dull stone. Suddenly the rite-of passage required to get a Burning Man ticket doesn’t seem so harsh, does it? Was it smooth & effortless? HECK NO. (I’m referring to the online ticketing…not the ritualistic circumcision.) Of course, getting to Burning Man isn’t smooth & effortless, either. Almost nothing about surviving in the desert is smooth and effortless…UNLESS you can let go of your expectations and forget your plans. The truth is that the best things about Burning Man usually happen when things don’t go according to plan. So consider the ticket process as a many-hour (or all-day) crash course in “Non-Attachment.” If you can master that skill *before* the Burn, you’ll be in great shape when your trailer breaks an axle, your tent collapses, the dust storm lasts a forth straight day, your camp mate drama melts down, or any of the zillion other “adventures” that are simply a part of the Burning Man experience.
During this chapter of ticket frustration, I was reminded of some of the powerful “Lessons of Surrender” that the Playa has given me. In this video I tell the story of “The Fall of Xara” from Burning Man 2000, speak to the ticket sales frustration, & share “Burning Man & The Art Of Non-Attachment.”
** Ticketing suggestions are merely brainstorming ideas, concocted without due diligence of the challenges at hand. **
[Christa Sperry has been involved in the Burning Man community since 2005. She is a mentor and Youth Minister at FreedomHill in Maryland, always trying to encourage the beautiful and absurd in the future leaders of the world. During the summer months, she throws locally grown produce at the urbanites for a fair price. When in Black Rock City, you can find her at BMIR 94.5 coordinating events, talking smack, and spilling drinks.]
This past March at FreedomHill, the Sudbury model school where I work, some of the kids were asking me about Burning Man:
What is it?
Where is it?
Can kids go?
What do you do there?
I attempted to answer these questions as best I could with a little help from one of the 9 year old boys who went for his first time in 2009. We told them about the interactive art aspect, how everything there happens because people want it to happen (not because someone is telling them to do it), community building, self-reliance, and burning things to the ground. This idea was really not very foreign to them as it is pretty much how they spend their days at FreedomHill (well, minus burning things to the ground) so they were immediately intrigued. At that point the conversation naturally led to the question, “Wouldn’t that be cool if there was a Burning Man just for kids?”. Wouldn’t it? Why not?
[MachineGun Lily (aka Lily Rasel) works on Burning Man's Government Relations, Legal Affairs and External Relations Teams, and (because Burners are nothing if not versatile) lays out the Black Rock City plan in CAD. An accomplished fire performer, she publishes Kindle Magazine, and will attend UC Berkeley's Boalt Law School in the Fall of 2010. This post is part of the Metropol Blog Series.]
With the ability to control and harness its energy, both physical and spiritual, humans see fire differently than the rest of the animal kingdom. We do not run away from it, but often gravitate towards and congregate around it. We use it as a tool, and some of us like to use it as a toy. We see it as both dangerous and comforting, painful and powerful. But what is it that draws us to flames like moths to a lantern? What is it that makes us, as Burners, surround ourselves with it, play with it, and revere it as we do in Black Rock City?
The truth is, humans have had a close relationship with fire for many hundreds of thousands of years, over a million years by the count of some scientists. Some even speculate that harnessing fire and using it to cook food may have been key to our evolution. Not only were we able to eat a wider variety of foods made softer and safer after cooking and potentially gain more rich protein from cooked meat, we had more time to spend together as people, preparing meals and eating them around the warm fire.
As our earlier selves sat around the protective flames in the dark night, we began to share ideas, stories, and art. We drew on caves and invented language to communicate the burning complex ideas trapped in our brains, all while enjoying the warmth of what we once feared and fled from like the rest of the animal kingdom. We began to ritualize the use of fire, like the forests around us, in cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Fire is a primal element of our nature as humans, and perhaps that is one of the reasons it is so celebrated in Black Rock City.
So I always thought that Mardi Gras equaled Girls Gone Wild. Period.
I was so, so wrong.
I would get mad, working at the Burning Man festival, when others more wet behind the ears than I and my dusty cranky faction would say, “Yeah, Burning Man’s great! It reminds me of Mardi Gras!”
You don’t know what you’re talking about, my subconscious would scream. Have you any idea what it takes to live in a van for 2 months out of the year, in one of the harshest environments on Earth, laboring like a hard-time prisoner and eating nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon and bacon? … Do you have any inkling as to the effort involved in building a fantastical city out of THIN AIR for FIFTY THOUSAND PEOPLE, and that we have to TEAR IT ALL BACK DOWN TO NOTHING?
(The subconscious, you see, can become quite the Bill Hicks-level righteous aggravationist when faced with 10-hour days under the hot sun in hangovery dust storms.)
But you know what? On Friday and Saturday nights? When we’ve built the city infrastructure and every-thousand ticketholders have come and added the bells and whistles and finally put down the tools to suit up in their finery and go out on the town and look at what other people have been working on all year in their spare time? It DOES remind me of Mardi Gras. Now that I’ve been to Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident, I get it.
dear Pan, please bless the proceedings and continue scaring the little children. Amen
