DAY 159

ARTISTIC ODDITIES

Burning Man

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BLACK ROCK DESERT STAYS IN THE BLACK ROCK DESERT...

“Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.”

—http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman¹⁶

Burning Man was started spontaneously in San Francisco in 1986 by Larry Harvey and Jerry James as an act of what they have come to call “radical self-expression.” The first Burning Man was just that—a group of people gathering around an effigy of a man, which was subsequently burned on the beach.

The annual event gradually morphed into what it is today: a chance to live, breathe, and be art. More than 48,000 people converge on “The Playa,” a 400-square-mile expanse of the Black Rock Desert north of Reno, Nevada. The temporary city, which exists for about a week, becomes an outlet for creative expression of all types.

The Man burns near the end of the event, although the festival has come to involve much more than simply watching a wooden statue burn. People describe the experience as life changing and a continual natural high. There is even a term for the discomfort you feel upon coming back to “real life” after the festival: The Reality Bends. —GRG