Burned Out - reflections of one hour of Burning Man, by Katweasel.

Friday evening… So there I am, having just been abducted by aliens with the messiah (trust me, you don't want to know) and I'm wandering around in a post-abduction daze (the aliens probed my mind with all kinds of strange instruments that emitted weird light, did strange things, emitted fodd noises). All kinds of freaks loom out of the darkness in the most bizarre costumes and creations. A motorised picnic table flies past, naked people hurry to and fro, there is a carnival atmosphere in the air. I see a lounge drive by and hop on. It is a huge motorised platform with zebra carpeting, comfy sofas at one end and a bar at the other. I wander over to the bar and sit on a bar stool as the lounge heads out from camp and towards the man. The situation reminds me somewhat of a situation Douglas Adams would create. Or was that sofas you could only see out of the corner of your eyes? Lemon Curry? I'm dressed in a long floral dress and a huge hairy yeti hat, carrying two marine distress strobes. I look at my neighbours at the bar, a topless woman with eyes painted on her breasts who looks like she should be in a porno flick and a guy with a big cape with thousands of flashing LEDs on it and a spangled top hat. As the lounge picks up speed I see the driver, a guy in a leather thong, leather vest and leather cap, he must be in his 60s, he is guiding the lounge with a weird stick like contraption (I later discover he is Pepper Mousser, crazy allround nice guy). Towards the man we go, a huge 40-foot high effigy with glowing purple and red neon tubes as his veins and arteries. The music gets turned up, it is The Aquavelvets (surf rock music, like the theme from pulp fiction) and people start getting up off the couches and dancing. We all start to get into it, and before long I'm stood on top of the bar, waving my strobes around and hollering like crazy as we rove across the desert, picking up an entourage of cyclists alongside as we hurtle towards the man. The lounge is now packed with people, all going completely mental and we start to circle the man, everyone staring out at us, wondering if we are part of their bad trip (if you were tripping anywhere else but burning man, you'd start to wonder if a lounge came past you with people dancing to surf rock). We're screaming and yelling, totally living for the pure ecstatic moment of the fact that we are doing something unique and utterly ridiculous. Round and round we go, gathering a large crowd of people running with the lounge and dancing like there's no tomorrow.

Finally we break off from our orbiting and head out into the desert, away from the camp and into oblivion (there are a few hundred miles of nothingness before us, this is no small desert). The wind starts to kick up dust and we can see nothing but the moon above us and our own little lounge, an island of insanity and craziness in the vast, unending wilderness. People shine their lasers into the dust and create patterns, it all gets frenzied, I realise I'm having the time of my life - we're all horsemen of the apocalypse now, heading for Armageddon and living it to the max.

Eventually the crazy driver realises we're lost in the desert and turns around, headed back for home. Eventually we see light in the distance, and head for a gathering of people out on the playa clustered around a strange effigy. Upon nearing the gathering, the music is turned down and we begin to watch the scene before us. There is a huge wooden goat in the middle, and people on stilts and scary goat head masks are performing a ritual. It is the Scapegoat, and throughout the week, people have been placing pieces of paper with their sins written on into the belly of the goat. It is time for the goat to be sacrificed. The chief goat priest performs the final rite, throws a flaming torch at the goat and retires a safe distance. Suddenly there is a light as bright as the sun, fireworks go off, the goat is going up in huge flames with a core of molten magnesium at its heart. The crowd screams and yells like demented banshees. Burn, baby, burn, the crowd cries, feeling absolved of their sins. As the goat collapses and the fireworks die down the crowd surges forward and the drums start drumming, naked people write to the primeval rhythms and start to celebrate the fire. Nearby someone with a flamethrower sets light to a large tower construction and there's more frenzied celebration. I jump off the bar, and off the lounge, and watch it disappear off with the music still blasting, people still going crazy, someone else having already taken my place at the bar, and head off to the huge tesla coil where 30 foot claws of purple plasma are scything into the air, crating an unholy noise as they tear open the fabric of matter. And I think to myself, life IS good.

This was one hour of Burning Man. I was there for 8 days, and to write about every hour would take a decade. I lived more in those 8 days than most people do in a lifetime. I learned so much, felt so much, saw so much, did so much, created so much, destroyed so much. Words never can be enough to even scratch the surface of trying to describe Burning Man, it assails all senses and emotions with a jackhammer and leaves no doubt that it is the ultimate event on the planet. And now I must rest to assimilate and prepare to FUCK SHIT UP on an even more hardcore level in everyday life. You ain't seen nothing yet. K@wzl