This was, at long last, my first Burn (sometime relatively soon I will impart to you dear Sandwich eaters my struggles with the power establishment and how I was thwarted three years in a row from attending the Festival) and I say this with total conviction, and accordant humility: The premature burning of The Man was the least exciting event of the week.

Ironically, the next least exciting event was the actual Burn itself, Saturday night. I found myself underwhelmed, thinking it was about as anti-climactic as, well, bad first-time sex after three years of an incendiary long-distance courtship (and how could it possibly compete with the mushroom cloud incineration of the "Crude Awakening" art installation).

Of course, this last statement speaks to the larger issues of the mythology that has evolved around Burning Man. You probably can relate; before you first went, were you regaled for years with tales of the bedlam that erupts as the fires climb higher, the Man seemingly stretching to the heavens, the fires so large they throw off heat vortexes the size of a Midwestern tornado, etc etc. It was the stuff of Paul Bunyan-esque folklore. But yet that night, I sat there in the front row at six o'clock with two of my tribal brothers, Louie and David, and watched the Burn thinking, "I wish they would get this over with, I wanna go out to the Sapphire Portal." I felt obligated to watch "my first Burn." I watched it. Yawn.

So, in that vein, the premature Burning of the Man was a double-yawn. I remember when I was first told about it at about 7am (I went to bed just after the moon ducked behind the earth's shadow and went blood red) when I was summoned to go to Media Mecca where I worked as a volunteer, and I remarked that it was probably "premature ejaculation" because the first night of this year's Festival, according to many veterans, was vastly more intense than later days in previous years. And even at Media Mecca, where you expected bedlam, it was more like bemusement. Chicago Burner Tom LaPorte (Lost Tom), a long-time news man who headed up Media Mecca, whipped out an official statement that went out on the wires in the morning. There was an impromptu press conference held in the commissary with maybe 20 reporters who were already participating in the festival, and Andie Grace (ActionGrrl), who works for the Burning Man organization, made a brief statement to the effect of, "no big deal, we'll rebuild", and that was that. We ate bagels and I went back to bed. As I said, yawn...

So later that day I was hanging out with my good friend Neva Welton, who works on Bainbridge Island with David Korten (When Corporation's Rule the World, The Great Turning), and we were talking about the incident and ultimately decided that, considering our purview as green activists in the "default world," and considering the "Green Man" theme of the year, that this was a fairly decent metaphor for our global condition: Here we are, on a planet that is "burning down early" because of human action (or lack thereof), and it is we who need to come together in a unified community to rebuild, to save this splendid festival we call Earth. Pithy, succinct, lovely. And, cue the music, fade to black.

No one really discussed the early burn during the Festival except a few people suggested it was an inside job by BM co-founder Larry Harvey. "This was our 9/11!," one cat said. Well, at least in the case of Harvey, he was wrong.

It was only afterwards, back in Chicago, that I began to track the discussions that were erupting on regional Burning Man listservs, Tribe, and in the comments sections of all the major news stories like the New York Times and Wired. And that's when things really began to get strange.

People were calling Paul Addis, at best, an arsonist, and unbelievably, (they can't be serious!) a terrorist. What kind of palaver was that? How do you charge someone with arson at Burning Man? It's like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. Reckless endangerment? People, read the back of your tickets, it's a litany of non-liability. People die every year at Burning Man, it's a precarious, ne, dangerous place. And I'm not even going to dignify the "terrorism" comments with a response.

This issue purportedly "polarized" the Burning Man community. I don't know, I don't see it. I think that history will frame this, if it frames it at all, as a peculiar aberration that happened one year at this crazy Festival in Nevada that the Federal Govt. shut down in 2010 when they finally woke up and realized that the Burning Man community was one of the most brilliant and powerful creative forces in the world, and Chelsea Clinton, having just returned from her first Burn ostensibly to resume advising her beleaguered mother's presidency, instead informs her that she has changed her name to "Mystique" and is going to become a tribal fire spinner with her new lover, "Clitoria" (although, inside sources will claim it was really when she dosed the White House water supply that she ran afoul of the NSA and something had to be done).

Charles Shaw

Editor, Evolver/Reality Sandwich

I've never been to Burning Man, although it's been a constant desire and events are conspiring to send me next year.

 

My first reaction to the news of the early burn was incredible sadness. I saw it as a willful disruption of a sacred ritual, a desecration of the most iconic figure and activity that Burning Man has to offer.

 

Then I heard that it had occurred during the eclipse. I've been researching Dreamspell et al lately, and I realized that in a way, "burn the Man at the lunar eclipse" made more sense than "burn the Man on this day that holds no portent other than 'the day we always burn the Man'."

 

I too have no interest in addressing whatever Addis's actual motivation might have been. I think it's far more interesting to look into the hearts and minds of those affected by the act and their wide spectrum of feelings about it.

 

Despite my initial mourning, I wound up wondering about my attachment to that "ritual," and whether it bore any resemblance to my attachment to this "ritual" of the ordinary world. Was it perhaps inevitable that a festival designed to subvert normalcy might, as it grew larger and more normalized, by definition be required to subvert itself?

 

I remain moved by photographs of the reconstruction of the Man subtitled with words like "corpse." I appreciate and understand that depth of devotion. I'm only now coming to seriously question whether the act of setting the man ablaze in an unscheduled, unsanctioned fashion might imply that same devotion to the principles of the Man.

I posted else where on this site that I thought the pre Burning Man was the best thing I read about this current state of affair with the current Burning Man.

Expectation has ruined many great events and ideas. I will mention just two I am familiar with.

The first was the Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering. It was started by a folklorist, Hal Cannon, in ’85 and he was unsure if even anyone would show up. People did show up including many working buckaroos and cowboys throughout the west. Everything was free and its timing in late January made it possible for a working buckaroo and cowboy to attend.

The 25th Cowboy Poetry Gathering is anything but free. You need pre paid motel reservations and events cost hundreds of dollars. Working buckaroos and cowboys do not use credit cards and they certainly could not afford the 25th event as compared to the first one or two.

My second example is the recent 40th anniversary of San Francisco’s ‘Summer of love’ in the same part of Golden Gate park that the first was. The ‘Summer of Love’ was at its beginning more a marketing scheme than anything else. Most of what San Francisco provided happened in ’65 & ’66; by ’67 expectation of a ‘Summer of Love’ was a curse and the beginning of the end of a truly magical time.

To live you must constantly breathe in and breathe out; if the air is not fresh you will expire.

Well, as another first time Burner, I'd have to say that yes the scheduled Burn was anti-climactic. In fact, if there isn't something spectacularly different about the Man next year, I will urge newbies who aren't there just to party not to go to the Burn. Even the Temple Burn (for me anyways) did not have much impact. This is disappointing, as I was told there should be a huge impact. A wave/cheer didn't seem appropriate for reverantly putting the past behind us and saying goodbye to passed on loved ones.

As for the unscheduled Burn, all the conversations went through my head in a five minute span. I already knew, as I stood there watching the Man burn while water trucks hit it from multiple sides, that: people would gossip, there would be conspiracy theories, he would be called a terrorist (arson on federal land), would a new one be built?, what about the people's stuff inside?, and most importantly, should I be cheering?

Well let's just say I smiled quizzically as I watched the premature Burn, every once in a while looking back at the lunar eclipse that was eclipsed by the unscheduled Burn. Then when they put out the Man, I cheered with many others. How did/do I feel about it?

For a large part, it had little impact on me personally. I imagine if I had some of my art and hard work damaged, I would be very upset (unless I wasn't attached to my artwork as some artists are, for both good and bad reasons/excuses).

Then again, if I was a "veteran Burner" (note that many who protest most online have not been to a Burn in a very long time), I would probably agree with some of the sentiments, being all too attached to past times of great revelry on "the playa."

For me, as a newbie with little interest or investment in the Man, I have little personal emotional (and no physical) attachment to this incident. As a concerned Burnizen of Black Rock City, I do not support the unauthorized Burning of other peoples' artwork, and I encourage the Burning Man organization to provide participants with a more active role not just in the creation of Black Rock City, but in its policies and themes.

Regardless of your opinion or station in the Burning community: keep up the good work and have fun.

Personally, I did not feel that the early burning of the Man eclipsed the lunar eclipse, perhaps because I had not seen one for many years, and had never paid such close attention under such a magnificent starry sky. One hour before Addis made his fateful gesture, the earth’s shadow revealed the most familiar of all stellar bodies as what it is without the usual bright reflective glare: An orb of rock, like a grape hanging up there, not even too far away from us. Symbolically, the moon represents projections and illusions. The lunar eclipse seemed like a chance to withdraw all projections, an opportunity to see beyond the veil of our usual concepts and illusory dreams.

Watching the Man get reduced to a charred, carbonized skeleton with the extinguished moon above his shoulder was doubly surreal. The event seemed rife with symbolism. The lunar eclipse suggested a cosmic unveiling or withdrawal of projection. The Man’s sudden reduction to a burnt husk reinforced that idea. Any construct we might want to hold onto, any concept in which we might seek solace or meaning, seemed equally insubstantial and untenable. There was an uneasiness in the crowd that night, and this uncertainty inflected the remainder of the festival in subtle ways. 

I admit I loved the early burn, which temporarily robbed the festival of its over-familiarity, and created an anarchic rupture in its usual structure. I felt disappointment when I learned, over the next few days, that the Man would be rebuilt before Saturday. I had already become attached to the idea of his absence, a lacuna or abyss at the center of the city, projecting not power but patriarchal meltdown and the collapse of even the parody of authority. In the end, however, I enjoyed the second burn as well, for its anticlimactic atmosphere.

Addis’ shrewd and desperate lunacy left an indelible imprint, an inescapable meme like the catchiest earworm that plays over and over in the mind. I find I don’t have any interest in him, his motivations or neuroses, or legal destiny. His act suggests some impersonal principle or cosmic directive – once it took place, it seemed inevitable and natural, as if decreed by the pointing finger of fate.

"Will the transformation."-Rilke

I haven't read the other comments, so pardon me if any of this is repetitive. I was surprised as anyone when, while watching the lunar eclipse, a friend tapped me on the shoulder and said "the man's on fire". We rode our bikes out to see it, and the fire hoses had already arrived but I got to watch the man burn a few days early. It was great! We all smiled, ignorant to what had happened but ecstatic that something had brought some spontaneity into what has become a predictable event. Later, I felt sorry for those who felt it necessary to build another man, because they had a Saturday night obligation that thousands had paid for, which I understand. But because I wasn't a burner in 1996, and because I've read books and learned about BM's history, I miss the old days, and am disappointed at the direction the event is taking. Paul Addis spoke for me and many, many others when he made his statement. Was it a crime? Probably, but it was needed.

This was my first Burn, and I am forever changed for it. The night of the eclipse (My first night in Black Rock City) felt as though it would never end. I thought I was under attack. All I could think about were all the things Mom had told me could go wrong out in the big scary world. I was dead set on getting the hell out of there in the morning. And around 3:oo I peeked out my tent flap and saw a dark window in the moon. And miserable, I sunk down into myself and asked for help from anyone out there who might be listening. And I received a message: everything in the dessert (and in reality) is a mirror, if you don't like it, take a hard look at yourself first. The next morning everyone was twittering about the early burning of the Man. I didn't really think much of it at first- honestly I don't do well with dates and didn't remember he was supposed to get burnt on Saturday. I figured I'd just missed it. All I knew was that I felt hollow and alone and assaulted and really dirty. That night I got my first real dose of what it must be like to lucidly play in dreamworlds...to walk through beauty and terror and have some real honest fun. And another day and another night rolled by. And something clicked. In some weird way the Man was me...some part of myself I couldn't trust had died with him. All the fear I had been holding onto...the false constructions about how one should and shouldn't be...were gone. And I was in the desert, this primal Goddess dirty but somehow clean, channeling ancient wisdom and truth- with a touch sending flashes of some otherworldly light through people. I had a grown man collapse to the ground at my feet...he said he had never believed any of "that stuff" until just then, and this was reality... And then the dust storm...and all that new-found glory torn down, just to make sure I wouldn't get any big ideas. First came fire, then air. And then the "tornado like storm" that was supposedly approaching. People in my camp were panicked and all I could think was, my Mother is going to be so mad at me if I die out here. And a fellow camper said that we should just stop the storm and raised his arm to the sky. Taken aback at this real life epic call to action I promptly got distracted and he wandered off. Recovered, I thought about it...if I am a mirror...then I don't need to go "out" to pacify a storm, I need to go in. Inside my tent I centered and grounded myself, I found the storm inside and let it pass through me without resistance and without ever doubting that that night we were all going to party on the playa under a brilliant tent of stars. Now, I don't know if I did anything and personally I don't care. No matter how things turned out I was not going to spin my wheels panicking about what might be, I did what I could and that's all one can ever do. I felt drawn towards the temple, towards the rising moon, as if it's magnetic pull would sweep away all my darkness if I could just give it a running (ok, walking) start. I got there and realized I hadn't even checked out the Man yet, the Temple was where I was comfortable- internal, cavernous, earthy and full of tears. I walked the stretch from the Temple to the Man and I sat there watching him being repaired by little men shining green lights down into his body. And it was me they were repairing. I felt the symmetry of the outside and inside world like a slap in the face. And that night I walked and walked. Just to see how much it could hurt. Because I had never done it before.

I witnessed it? trying to get back to my camp to be around my group to witness the eclipes. (Greenest moment at brc '07.)i only had time to reach the man, so i joined the 15 or so people standing at the man. Yards underneigth and feeling as the last shard of the moon was swallowed, the distance to that blackened pearl was within walking almost. Without its beaming light it seemed doable. getting past the "well this is a first" at seeing the moon go dark & wondering what to do now. I shift my view back to the man and to what appears to be someone doing "work" @ his right foot. the work turns to a flame and i get the picture as the "worker" gets a spray of sparks which makes him jump over the edge of the big top tent and with a glance at "us" below & to shouts of "PUT HIM OUT!" the work became a circus ride down a panel of the tent. as if fleeing a buring plane. People rushing in from all parts, letting go of last years lots, to make room for the new. I watched it burn not finding the act out of place being ready for anything to transpire. he may have been the one to light the fuse but later in one of his statements which struck me to wonder, something about their being others involved. I can't help but feeling on a subconscious level he was talking? was it poetic? only in the idea that i witnessed it. if I were to blow up the whole world, even though i didn't create it, could it still be called art? spelling not app.

Following up with Sidecross's comments, Burning Man, like every other aspect of human culture, is approaching a period in it's lifecycle where the ambiguous line between counter-culture and culture starts to fade rapidly. The event no longer conjures only the hard-lined supporters from the days of the gathering's inception, but stands out amongst other gargantuan festivals like Woodstock and Bonoroo as a hedonist paradise for would-be participants looking to shirk authority in the never-ending quest to party without reproach. Still others visit the grounds as simple visitors from another avenue of life, snapping pictures and purchasing merchandise and gathering novel stories to share with their buddies back home. The sheer size of Burning Man, and it's open door policy to the public, lends itself to the potential dilution of the intention behind the event with its ever-expanding popularity. This is bound to occur, and I feel that the early torching of the celebrities effigy, stands as a reminder to all participants dismayed at the direction of the event that change is derivative of the masses, and not the coordinators. I believe wholly in the principles behind Burning Man, but I've experienced burgeoning counter-culture gatherings in other areas of our nation; some burns, others built upon similar ideologies, but no less distinct entities. What may seem distended and adulterated after so many years of growth and alterations, is not the physical event of the gathering, but the bureaucracies and hierarchies inherently tied to the development of an organization. Liabilities and costs explode and command a sense of authoritarian presence amongst the inhabitants of a city cut from the stillness of the desert to be a "temporary autonomous-free zone." It is a paradox seen reflected in past occurrences, and presumably in those to follow. The essence of counter-culture will remain lit within those called to seek a life free of the strife and restrictions our modern societies bound us with. And although I believe the torch still burns bright over the head of The Man, intimately smaller gatherings, lending a fresh brand of genuine tribal appeal, are developing all over the nation and providing alternative venues to explore all of the wonderful ideals Black Rock City engendered.

As another virgin attendee at this year's Festival, I found myself uniquely ushered into the recondite culture of Burning Man as I watched the "Early Burn" under a bloody moon, only a few hours after my arrival to the playa.

Rather like a drastically foreign country, Burning Man takes some getting used to. The long series of hiccups, stress freak-outs, and travel woes that made up the days just before my dusty midnight drive into Black Rock City added a sense of fragile desperation to that strange and somewhat ominous night. As I sat in the deep, dark playa, on the top floor of a geodesic-domed art-car amongst a large group of friendly strangers, I tried to get my bearings on this singularly odd experience. We watched in muted awe as the moon gradually popped into 3-D under a breathtakingly cosmic sky, and as the final sliver of brilliance faded from the ruddy orb -- "Hey, is the Man on fire?"

I wasn't sure what to make of the spectacle that ensued, as fire trucks and pyromaniacs converged on the paradoxical sight of the prematurely burning Man. The irony of the situation was clear, and the symbolic weight obvious (although ambiguous), yet I was made painfully aware of my neophyte status to this whole affair by my inability to register an emotion other than delight in the chaos. Choruses of "Save the Man!" were quickly buffeted by cries of "Let him burn!" and I felt somewhat validated in my ambivalence. We cheered as the last wisp of flame engulfing the incinerated Man's hand succumbed to the fire hose.

In the days that followed, I experienced many more magical, ineffable moments -- from cycling through whiteout dust-storms to primordial sunrises to triumphant double rainbows. The Early Burn under an eclipsed moon was a picture-perfect indoctrination into the madcap flux of Art and Nature that is Burning Man.

Dear Charles Shaw: From the point of view of Hosel Jurme, a past life regression therapist, the Empire Model originates at the beginning of what is commonly referred to as the original War in the Heavens, a.k.a. the Lucifer Rebellion. The need to control others, stems from the need to hide from one's self the original, or first time, fear was experienced by a spiritual being. This original template (hiding fear from self, therefore I'll control the external, if I control the external, I must be powerful, therefore no fear) of denial of fear set into motion all future incarnations leading right up into present time. And that's why you're writing your excellent comments concerning the excellent movie Zeitgeist... The good thing is that what man creates, man can uncreate of course... In la 'kech, Hosel Jurme "This myth structure is nothing new. In The Great Turning, David Korten identifies the origins of the American tripartite myth by explaining the three driving mythologies of what he calls the “Empire model” - the 5,000-year-old system of violent patriarchal domination and exploitation." PS... I would add some Time Charts to make my comments more real but don't know how to do so....