Burning Man Thoughts

Burning Man is one of those cool ideas that gets just a little less cool every year that goes by. Still, who doesn’t want to get naked in the desert and set stuff ablaze?

Last year the big news out of Burning Man was that someone set the man on fire before he was scheduled to go up in flames. This year’s Burning Man was pounded with dust storms. There also seems to be a feeling that it is has moved too far away from it’s Outsiders roots and is becoming too organized for it’s own good. The whole trouble with being Alternative is that once enough people, even the really uncool ones like me, find out about it-it’s not all that Alternative anymore.

Burning Man’s Ten Principals seem sound enough, but then, it is only for a week or so. Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-reliance, Radical Self-expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation, and Immediacy. Sounds interesting, in a wtf does that mean kind of way.

With Burning Man drawing in tens of thousands of people, you have to wonder when someone is going to start a real city that will be open 24/7/365. Of course, you can’t ride make-shift bikes wearing nothing but body paint all the time, can you? You have to whip out some funky art and music once in a while as well. I like the idea of Burning Man being a modern artist’s colony, but that’s seldom the image you get from the media. A city can’t live on weirdos alone, or can it? Venice, California seems to be doing ok.

Burning Man is on my list of things to do before I die, just not very high on the list.

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