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| vinegar buckets, camelbaks, and jam sessions at burning man |
it's something like the last day of burning man, or the day before. both feel rather similar, and the only striking difference between the two is that one is arranged in a serpentine lineup of cars, and the other sees desert dwellers running amok in the magical, pentagonal lake of dust with a nine mile perimeter. the grounds of burning man, manifested in a dry lake bed in northeastern Nevada, feel infinite and comfortably squished at the same time, so it's a natural haven for fostering many kinds of mind expanding, trust building activities of all flavors and colors.
one of the greatest paradoxes about burning man is that, from the outside, it's easy to expect so many people to be off their rockers; the reality is that it takes a very motivated, proactive, and specific kind of gusto to survive here for a week without dying from debilitating stress. If the apathy of the desert's climate isn't enough to drive people to physical exhaustion, it's still more than likely that navigating and dealing with fifty thousand creative, energetic, and heavily engaged humans will. the place is intense in every possible function and facet, and it catalyzes a uniquely hypersensitive perceptive state wherein the most ephemeral moments carry such unspeakable gravity. heaps choose to remain isolated (or in semi-isolation) with a small group of friends and family, but at any given moment, one can walk in on another's revelation or be interrupted by coconut ice cream amidst dust devils in a dust storm. nonsensery is lauded, and the transcendent human spark that rises from the literal ashes is indeed kindled by the initiative we all take in seeing to it that impossibilities mimic real life. we used to be cavemen, you know.
good company is always welcome in such conditions. burning man is really not a place where you want to quarantine yourself or your experiences, as lonely and aloof as you may choose to be in the default world. for example: normally, when i play guitar, i feel alone and completely desirous of connecting with something outside of my own skin. playing with and for other people is amazing and something i greatly enjoy, but i naturally find myself kicking it in my room, filling the connectivity vial to the point of overflow. what does it mean that some of my richest moments of universal awareness, epic fulfillment, and deep personal consciousness have been experienced alone? i don't know what that means. maybe nothing.
on this lastish day of burning man, i took out my guitar and did the singing and dancing thing. it's always good. one of the fellows at the campsite next to me inevitably heard mein twangz and came on over. his name is dan, and he works as an engineer in berkeley, which means he's a highly skilled engineer. his campmate, sunflower, had shared some tofu jerky with us earlier in the week and lent me his bike pump, though i hadn't had much interaction with dan up until now. he sat down in that there red chair and listened to me play for a bit. when i started feeling like i'd brutalized my noisebox enough, what with sweaty paws and ubiquitous alkaline dust exposure, i handed it to dan. he started playing iron and wine.
anybody who's good at something can make something look easy. after "sodom, south georgia" and "naked as we came," he spun his own yarn and sang through a breezy, ventana blanca of a tune. its melody and structure elude me, but the feeling of wanting to listen to and trust the person singing to you was veritably instilled in me. something about getting lost in the waves of her hair--i don't know. it was easy and familiar, with the citrus twist of knowing you're joining a circle of, maybe, nine people who've ever seen this song.
intimacy and banal familiarity are fundamental legos; guitars are strung out so that they may harmonize under tension, but only at the proper frequencies. i guess that's why i shared a music machine with a stranger, in the desert, over labor day weekend. most of the greatest things in the history and unhistory of the universe are founded on some absurd permutation of events or another, often without the awareness (let alone, consent) of the contributing parties. to be a part and aware of big banging is no small feeling.
in other words, burning man is a microcosm of the universe, but so is everything else imaginable. playing guitar, or doing anything in solitude, is good for creating a world within a world, but there's more to be found beyond that core. it's good to share what you learn with people so you can keep going forward into a new place that you help create, because every day is kind of the last one, and who wants to die having lived by and within someone else's idea of what life is? "days are just drops in the river to be lost, always," says robin pecknold, so when something good happens during one of them, it's a good idea to take note and try your goddamnedest to fill the river with your own sweet drops henceforth.
