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Pagan's Progress

Labor your Days away at the annual Burning Man instant art nation at Black Rock City Aug. 26-Sept. 3 in the Nevada desert.

BLACK ROCK DESERT DESSERTS
By Rob Brezsny
See photos of Rob at Burning Man 2001 both in the top shot and as eighth-to-last on the sideways scroll of images!


Every year around Labor Day, the temporary city of Burning Man sprouts up for a week in the middle of the Nevada desert. A mix of festival, survivalist challenge, giant outdoor museum, and performance art venue, it is populated by the world's largest concentration of freaks. During my seven-day sojourn there between Aug. 27 and Sept. 3 2001, I got sunburned in 100-degree heat, rarely slept for more than five hours a night, ate mostly canned tuna and crackers, collected sand in my ears, nose, and eyes -- and had the best time of my life. Forget Maui, the south of France, and Florence, Italy: Burning Man is the closest I've come to living in paradise.

Below is my initial report.



It's the early evening of Saturday, Sept. 1, a few hours before the 60-foot-tall wooden and neon effigy known as the Burning Man will be consumed in flames. I'm at the Plastic Chapel, not too far from the Man, where priests and priestesses of every variety have presided over weddings all week. A few of the ceremonies have been legal in the eyes of the state. But most are temporary, or are little more than ironic fucking licenses, or have joined together conclaves of polyamorous experimentalists for whom a two-person union is not inclusive enough.

Rising up starkly from the flat gray-brown desert, teased by short-lived miniature dust tornadoes, the two-story-high Plastic Chapel is made of brightly colored pieces of plastic salvaged from dumps and junkyards all over Nevada. It's a vision of wacky loveliness. On the south wall, for instance, there's a green toy shovel and red jelly sandal and shards of a pink Barbie car melted together and jutting out of the orange and purple facade like a bas-relief.

What genius conjured this garishly beautiful temple of holiness? I am in awe. And this is just one of a thousand works of art, much of it interactive and all of it temporary, erected throughout the seven square miles of Playa. The spectacle is sublime, dense, and arresting. Its impact on me outstrips every other aesthetic epiphany I've ever enjoyed -- even my joyful breakdowns at the William Blake Museum in London and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam many years ago.

Among the creations that have provoked the most cathartic release are the "Bone Tree," a life-sized tree made of real animal skulls and bones, and the "Mausoleum: Temple of Memory," an exquisite filigree temple surmounted by a ziggurat, made entirely of recycled wood. The latter welcomes a steady flow of visitors who come to write messages on the walls, commemorating, mourning, or honoring their departed friends and loved ones.

Coffee and ice are for sale at Burning Man, but nothing else is, not even all of this fantastic art. Money is virtually invisible. Since corporate demons are banned from the premises, Time-Warner and its evil brethren have not been able to steal the juice and market the empty shell back to us.


ASTROLOGER Richard Geer, a wise maniac I met in Toronto, once asked me, "What are your minimum requirements for living in paradise right here on Earth?" At the time I wasn't sure. Now that I've been at Burning Man, I know. Here's my first answer, Richard: a lush profusion of exuberant art spawned in the spirit of love and generosity, unmediated by the distortions of commerce.


As a crowd gathers below, I'm puttering around a stage carved out of the second-story of the Plastic Chapel. Along with my three fellow musicians -- George Earth, Diana Trimble, and Jessica Rice -- I'm preparing to perform a pagan revival show that will culminate in an ecstatic wedding ceremony. The rite will be unique: In a benevolent inversion of the bizarre mass marriages conducted by cult leader Sun Myung Moon back in America, we will sanctify the conjugal union of every audience member to himself or herself: a mass self-wedding.

After five outdoor performances in six days all over Black Rock City, our once-black amplifiers and microphones and musical instruments have turned the color of beige desert dust. Incredibly, they're still working fine. I tinker with the Plastic Chapel's generator, coaxing it to provide the electricity we'll need to project our sounds across the beautiful wasteland. (There's no power grid to hook up to way out here in the middle of nowhere.)

During these few moments of privacy, I muse on the astounding luck that was necessary to bring me, Diana, Jessica, and George together to create music and mischief here in paradise. The four of us had never performed as a unit until the moment we set foot on the Playa. On Tuesday, Aug. 28, when we pulled off the tender exorcism called "Unhappy Hour" at the Mystic Beat Lounge, we realized our band name: Sacred Uproar. On Wednesday, Aug. 29, during a burst of curative mayhem I dubbed the "Chaos Meditation," we channeled our new stage names: Jessica became the Lush Confuser, Diana the Holy Healing Bitch, George the Maniacal Miracle-Maker, and I the Friendly Shocker.


MORE OF MY minimum requirements for paradise: regular arrivals of new allies, who come together with me to foment a sexy overthrow of whatever status quo most needs to be overthrown; a growing tribe of like-minded creators committed to changing or at least adding on to our names regularly, so that our identities are always in frothy flux; a shared uninhibited longing to carry out playful rituals purged of oh-so-serious subtexts and humorless overtones; a tradition of dreaming up new traditions and messing with the old ones so much that they are not capable of numbing our imaginations.


Our pagan revival show begins. Behind us, to the west, the enormous orange sun is squashing itself down against the horizon. From the east, I drink in the rising full moon as it floats up over the black mountains that ring the ancient lake bed where our Temporary Autonomous Zone throbs.

Lithe and beautiful and Amazonian, Diana, 5'11" in her dusty bare feet, is, as always, a force of nature. Her kinky dark auburn hair swirls beneath a headdress decked with pearls, partially unfurled rolls of children's caps, and small statues of Isis. She strides to the front of the stage and launches a cascade of whirling vocal vamps that send thrilling chills up and down my spine. Back in America, she is a singing priestess of Santo Daime, a syncretist spiritual path that originated in the Brazilian rain forest. In the melodies and prayers she unleashes now, I detect hints of her religion's praise songs. But they are mixed with pagan riffs she has gathered in her earlier years as a witch. Also part of the blend are divine inspirations flowing courtesy of her freelance relationship with a host of other gods and goddesses. The influences of Jesus and Kali and Dionysus and Cerridwen mingle in the revelations pouring from her well-trained throat and mouth.


MORE OF MY minimum requirements for paradise: We who live there continually make up and remake our own idiosyncratic spiritual path by borrowing from all the spiritual paths; we throw our weight behind the righteous cause of nurturing six billion different religions on planet Earth; we burn down the shrines at which we worshiped last month or last year so that we become sufficiently empty and humble to receive the fresh raw blessings coming from divine sources we have never before been able to conceive of, let alone register.


It's my turn to unveil. I dance to the front of the Plastic Chapel's stage, curious about what inspirations will well up in me. As I gaze into the eyes of audience members who agree to gaze back, I find myself in touch with teachings I've never before accessed with such emotional intensity. "As of tonight," I exult, "the Dark Ages are dead. Welcome home, brothers and sisters. You are awakening from all the nasty trances that have ensnared you. You will never again tell yourself a lie. You're ready to realize the truth: that the whole world is crazily in love with you, that even now thousands of secret helpers are conspiring to turn you into the gorgeous curiosity you were born to be."

As Diana and Jessica thread delicious melodies around my invocations, George supports us all with his juicy guitar lines and serpentine loops. I've played music with him off and on for more than 14 years. Though we've created a large body of work that is familiar and invigorating, at Burning Man we have started from scratch. We're improvising with the verve we did when we first began collaborating. I find it amazing that we can be so fresh and innocent, so adept at springing surprises on each other.


MINIMUM REQUIREMENT for paradise: It's a place that encourages us to break habits and escape shticks. Having a long history with a friend or cohort does not interfere with periodic reinventions of our relationship.


There is no vegetation in sight as I peer across the Black Rock Desert's moonscape. Yet I have never in my life felt surrounded by such relaxing fertility, by so much luxuriant conviviality. For many days now I have glided without even a taint of fear through a city of 25,000 people. Unknown allies and I have spotted each other coming from a block away and run to each other like long-lost friends from previous incarnations. Besieged by magnanimous strangers bearing no-strings-attached blessings -- free massages, free absinthe, free rides in a Viking ship on wheels, free spreads of gourmet Greek cuisine, free kisses -- I find myself yearning to give away everything I own. I have been in love with more than a few women in my life, but this is the first time I've plunged into the throes of spiritual infatuation with a time and place.


"You are a fucking genius," we sing to everyone in the crowd below us at the Plastic Chapel. "The fullness of your divine charisma is erupting from your uncanny heart. You know the difference between stupid suffering and wise suffering. You are so in tune with your own destiny that you can be yourself even when you are beside yourself." Coated with dust and decorated with paint and glitter, our co-worshipers' faces are open and clear. Tears stream down some cheeks like rain coursing through dry riverbeds. Many of their bodies are naked or barely clad. Others wear gold top hats or silk pantaloons or ancient Egyptian breastplates or velvet frock coats. In the distance, a festive caravan of equally blithe spirits flows steadily towards the as-yet unburned Man, who is enjoying his final hours as an enigmatic icon about two hundred yards from us.

Diana, also known as the Holy Healing Bitch, is suddenly possessed by the raging glory of a sung invocation. I assume she's channeling the Queen of Heaven Herself. "I'm riding to you on the back of a white mule tattooed with primroses and slogans of sacred anarchy," she half-chants, half-croons to the crowd. "You'll know I'm near when you spy the gilded tumbleweeds adorned with tiny bells and bits of broken mirrors." She, too, announces that the profane world outside of our Burning Man community has died. "We no longer need to go to heaven. Heaven has wisely come all the way down to earth."



SINCE I ARRIVED here at Burning Man, a mystery has arisen concerning my voice. Having been a singer for more than 25 years, I have developed a rigorous understanding of what conditions are absolutely necessary for my vocal cords to be consistently strong and supple. First, I need lots of sleep, at the very least eight hours a night. Second, I need to practice singing an hour a day, every day. These have been irrefutable laws in my universe; I have never once been able to get away with breaking them. Until Burning Man, that is: where on many nights I've slept no more than six hours, and usually less; where I have had no time or privacy (the nonstop fun is too irresistible) to do my vocal rehearsals. And yet this is the best shape my voice has ever been in. It's technically perfect, utterly loose, and able to pull off feats that have previously been beyond my limits.

MORE OF MY minimum requirements for paradise: Miraculous breakthroughs and physiological healings bloom regularly from the profound relaxation of being in an extravagantly hospitable environment.


We of the Sacred Uproar spin our prayers, songs, sermons, prophecies, and invocations for more than hour. The full moon's light now shines brighter than the waning sun. We can see the dancers who will ignite the fire beginning to circle around the Man. Soon he'll be in flames. It's time for our denouement here at the Plastic Chapel.

As the Lush Confuser and the Holy Healing Bitch weave hair-raising harmonies that exactly match the color of the spectral light, as the Maniacal Miracle-Maker unleashes a gushing music of the spheres I swear I heard in my dream last night, I lead the devotees through the climax:

"And now I ask you to hold your own hand," I chant. "Close your eyes and imagine gazing into a mirror. And repeat the following sacred vows to yourself.

"'I will never forsake you. I will never betray you.

"'I will forgive you for your imperfections and praise you for your beauty.

"'I will always treat you with reverence and respect.

"'I will love you until the end of time.

"'I will do with you what the spring does to the cherry trees.

"I now pronounce you your own husband and your own wife, married to yourself in the eyes of the Goddess, forever and ever. You may kiss yourself on your own lips."



Burning Man theme camps!
Learn more about life on the Playa through these links:

Zen Pride Sanctuary, Rob's 2001 camp in the Mystic Beat Lounge area

Stick your head in the Goat's anus and learn the Truth!

Thrill to the Visible Orgasm!

Get a peaceful, easy feeling.

Cirque de Flamb burns, baby.

Need a rubdown and a smart drink? HeeBeeGeeBee Healers are here for you.<

"The Last Stand" -- sculptural wisdom on the Playa by Dan Das Mann.

Artist Michael Christian's Nebulous Entity, Orb, and Babel Tree.

The fabulous Safari Social Club.

Labor your Days away at the annual Burning Man instant art nation at Black Rock City Aug. 26-Sept. 3 in the Nevada desert.

You may already be a winner! Consolidated Burning Man Tours -- Vacation 2001

The SOUP Advisory Board wants you to know that Soup Is Love