Living the Romantic Comedy: Virgin Burns 2

[The continued adventures of a first-time Burner at Burning Man 2007, 2nd of 3 posts]

The Ever-Present Glow

One thing I learn from serving food to 250 people: no matter who someone may be -- fire-eater, acrobat, clown, rope-rigger or ringmaster -- they all want more mashed potatoes.

Tiring as it is, it's an uplift to be a giver. And I get the necessary second wind (third or fourth winds are par for the Playa) so I can get to the meat of the Burn day: the night life, which kicks in after sunset and isn't over at sunrise. And for all the rumor and expectation of mind-altering substance abuse, I find I don't need great doses of anything to get with the program, because the night itself is psychedelic. Everyone traversing the Playa at night wears things that glow in the dark, so as not to be run over by a bike or mutant vehicle. The whole plain is dotted with rainbow fluorescence -- people decked out in El-wire bling, LED displays, glo-stickery. It's like being inside a vast animated three-dimensional black light painting.

We're walking across the Playa towards 2 a.m. when headlights find us and I hear an amplified yowling. A giant velveteen cat some ten feet high is chasing after me, its front claws opening and closing like pincers. We run, shrieking, and then admire the big cat as it motors by.

Art cars (mutant vehicles), the only autos allowed to roam the grounds at will, are cars or bigger buses and flatbed vehicles that have been transformed for the event. There's one in the shape of a giant glowing head, another that replicates a cruising shark, but this is just small stuff. The big art cars are motoring parties on wheels, like the full-fledged two-masted pirate clipper ship that sails slowly across the desert, half-naked nubiles dancing from the second story rigging as a DJ spins techno.

You can climb aboard such vehicles when they park and befriend a group of strangers, or bike alongside them like minnows in the wake of a whale. Just be aware that jumping out of one in motion is a dangerous proposition. Better to wait for your ship, UFO or monster bunny-mobile to dock at the Temple of Forgiveness,the Diva Boot Camp, the Devil's Workshop, the Dancing Trees...

Heavy Weather

The sky is clear, the sun is shining, and suddenly the wind rises. About three minutes later, we're surrounded by a mini-tornado whirling dervish of dust so intense that, holding my arm out in front of me, I can barely see the ends of my fingers. Everything is white. Hence the goggles, the scarves, the ubiquitous face masks. As every veteran Burner knows, these "white-outs" can come upon you at any time, and they last anywhere from ten minutes to ten hours.

The first one catches us in camp. Tater and Lisa and I dash between our tents and our geodesic dome, covering and battening down everything that could blow away. Then Tater, seeing that I'm more exhilarated than alarmed, leads me out into the thick of the storm. I'm Laurence in Arabia, or Admiral Byrd amidst a warm polar snow blitz. We cling to each other, stumbling onto the circus grounds while figures emerge and float off into the grey-white fog: a Goth girl on her studded bike, an antlered mountain man with walking staff. Then things are flying through the air, people yelling. There's a loud scary clatter very close by and we huddle for protection beside an RV, laughing. After the storm, the twisted metal carcass of a decimated car port lies only yards from where we were, lifted and thrown clear across half of the campground by the wailing wind.

Ooohs and Art

The artworks and exhibitions, too numerous to be seen in toto, are scattered over nearly five square miles of Party Town. There's grandiose: a towering sculpture built out of two twisted oil tankers, welded together like a great metal lazy-eight infinity figure for tiny humans to climb and swarm over. There's small and canny: a human skeleton leaning casually against a lamppost with a da-glo cigarette dangling from its teeth, the lamppost actually formed by the long legs of a dark female figure holding a bronze earth globe, poised to drop upon the blissfully unaware skeleton's head -- a perfect metaphor for the human condition, 2007.

Two of the most popular pieces deserve return trips. One is a large metal zoetrope raised high above the ground featuring a ring of static monkey figures which, when people man the ten bicycles encircling it on the ground below, begins to spin; when the peddling tipping point of energy is reached, a strobe light hits the revolving monkeys and they animate, seeming to jump and climb from vine to vine. The second is the breathtaking Cubatron, made of 6,720 lights powered by solar panels, which blink into dazzling computer-controlled eruptions and waves of color. People sit around it, welcoming each new shift like The International Choir of Stoners. Ooooooooh, we go as the lights appear to revolve at rocket speed. Suddenly they explode and rain down like lava. Ohhhhhhhh! cries the choir. The lights shimmer, dance, abruptly fade. Wow, intones a solo voice, and everybody laughs.

The Kids These Days

A certain knowing self-consciousness permeates the festivities, an extra-arch awareness that redefines one's sense of contemporary camp. A parody of the Black Rock daily newspaper that's like Burning Man's version of The Onion (called The Shroom) makes the rounds only a few days in, with a typical headline reading, "Update: Couple That Fell in Love at Last Year's Burn Sadly No Longer Together."

Inside the Shady Acres camp, a large tent pyramid has its floor entirely carpeted by astro-turf, this in itself a kind of meta-gag about the Playa. A young couple lounges in the center of the fake grass like punkish fairies, she lithe and neon-lavender haired, he short-cropped and piratical. I overhear her telling him about her favorite joke; she tells it six times a day and it cracks her up every time. "What's the joke?" I ask.

"A man walks into a bar," she says. "And he's an alcoholic and he's destroying himself and his family."

It takes me a moment to understand, and all I can do is nod. I realize I've just heard my first genuine post-post-modern joke. It's the irony beyond irony, a gag about gags: the sound of a younger generation thinking That's... funny?

Go Naked

By Day 4 my jeans are trashed and I'm wearing my girlfriend's mini-skirt. It's so comfortable! Why don't more men wear skirts? I discover as well the joys of carrying a purse, slung over my shoulder with the requisite water bottle. It's another impressively utilitarian device, though I comprehend why a purse with compartments is way preferable. How do you women find anything in there?

Going half-naked is the norm, and one sees the occasional beauteous full Godiva peddle by. It's not just the heat, the dust storms, the lack of showers, but a general air of anything-goes innocence. Some men strut full commando; women routinely go bare-breasted but with decoration: pin-wheeled nipples, trompe l'oeil lily pads, mini-propellered boobs. I see more piercings in a week than I have in a lifetime.

The climax of all such female exhibitionsim is the annual Critical Tits bike ride, which zooms through camp on Friday afternoon. Women bare their bosoms and bike down the center of the Playa, delighted men with mouths agape lining the way, cheering them on and spraying them with water. The women ride like benign Valkyrie, grinning and yelling and celebrating themselves, the glory of wizened pendulosities, the perk of young itty bitty titties. This joy-wheeled parade is anything but obscene. It's another part of our utopian dream.

[Tomorrow: the Man burns]