The Chaplain’s Screed
The Participation ethos at Burning Man is inherited from the Cacophony Society and, before that, the Suicide Club. I got a little too drunk with Stupid Seamus yesterday (we spruced up the chapel pieces and started on the eTrike. So, I don’t have it in me to write something creative right now. But, you should totally click that link above and learn about the Suicide Club. And also check out the Wikipedia article.
Group News
Burning My Crêpe reached out to ask if we had room for friends of theirs with a camper van. We do. So, they’ll be camping with us from Monday to Friday. The dude’s name is Clayton.
Current camp roster (get me your travel plans when you can):
[redacted]
Camp Planning
Wedding Planning
I continue to work on the logistics of this. The French wedding of Elodie and Neil has been rescheduled to Tuesday at sunset and it’s going to be a double wedding, with another couple joining. I’ve written down my “sermons” for all the pre-planned weddings so far and have scheduled a call with the new couple. I still need to ready templates for impromptu weddings.
Other Camp Planning
In addition to working on the chapel, I sanded down the bar and put a light seal on it – it’s got, say, a weathered, vintage look, but it looks nice enough for one more year before a resurfacing. Curtis, please bring whatever paints we need to replace the podium’s religious symbol stickers and the address on our circular sign. Cassidy, health permit applications are due by Aug 9th. Seamus has turned a banner I had made into a sign and taken a mirror I gave him to turn into a useable mirror for the costume dome.
I revised the camp layout. It’s attached. Feel free to send me your feedback.
Red Folder Video: Where to Get Help
No new Red Folder video or podcast. So, maybe check out the one from last week, if you haven’t yet:
Here’s your Red Folder assignment for the week (I’m putting them on YouTube now to save my own cloud space). If you want a podcast, download it here. This installment is long, but it’s important.
Black Rock City News and Acculturation
· Here’s an article from Burning Man about how great of an arts organization Burning Man is. It features the artist who was our neighbor last year (from the camp that fell apart right away.)
Placement / Ticket News
Placement News
Found out who our neighbors are. Of course, we know about Burning My Crêpe. The Dusty Mules are on our block, but not neighbors. Here’s info on the other 2:
What Would You Do For A Pickle?
Come join us and play the Pickle Game and find out what YOU would do for a pickle! Spankings sold separately.
Hometown: San Francisco
LOVE PLUMBERS
The Love Plumbers (Formerly: SexyAF) are a collection of silly, sex-positive sweeties who are here to unclog whatever has you backed up, so that love can flow again!
Clad in overalls, work gloves, mustaches, and carrying our trusted love plungers, and with our fowl-yet-friendly chicken mayor, Mr. Cluckzalot, in charge, we deploy interactive workshops, 24-7 intimate space, in-street mini-schticks, and elaborate evening experiences to flush out shame, scarcity, and insecurity, seal the seams where your love’s leaking out, to help weld your emotional valves together. The Love Plumbers are a FULL SERVICE emotional repair shop.
Hometown: Oakland
I also got the lowdown on some other camps on our block. Some pretty cool ones:
Astropups
Fun, Frisky, and Fabulous! Exploring the Playaverse one Open Heart at a time.
NOTE: These guys were really close to us in 2022. They’re bears who do a “shower happy hour.”
URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/76339652066 Hometown: San Francisco
NOT a CAMP
This is NOT a CAMP. If you dig the art piece titled “1986”, come to talk to us. We also like presents. And people who are present. We might even have presents.
Hometown: Pacific Northwest
Nyurmok
we are an art support camp for the playa installation “Nyurmok 2024”. We bring the gift of art, through visual and microtonal music expression. Watch out for our frontage art pieces.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtMugynDTzw Contact: nathanielhalegarnon@gmail.com Hometown: girard
The Outpost: GGA
Ever been to Golden Guy Alley? Golden Guy East is on the other side of The Playa. If you’re at Golden Guy Alley, start walking east til you reach the man, and then keep walking. If you reach the airport, you’ve gone too far. We recommend the buddy system to avoid getting lost.
NOTE: I’ve heard great things about these folks. Great place for food and drinks.
URL: http://goldenguyalley.com/ Contact: goldenguyalley@gmail.com Hometown: San Diego
Apotheosis
4′ x 8′ APOTHEOSIS SIGN IN FRONT OF A 25′ WIDE BY 12′ TALL ARCHED TENT OPEN ON BOTH ENDS.
Contact: laurawade@hey.com Hometown: Monkey Hut w/ peeps handing out coffee and fruits
Glow Job
Glow Job comes alive at night on playa. Home of psychedelic neon art, sculpture and personal beauty services. Visit our glowing blacklight art and beauty salon after sunset while you get ready for late night playa adventures. Blow your mind while you get your nails done. Get your face painted then melt it off. We are LGBTQ+. NOTE: These guys have a cool set up. Happy to hear they're near us again.
Hometown: Oakland
Ticketing News
Support Access Passes
If you are on the SAP list, please email me and let me know if (a) you’ve gotten your SAP; (b) you haven’t gotten your SAP, but you got an email saying it’s on the way; or (c) you’ve gotten neither. If you’ve gotten your SAP, please print it out to pack for Burning Man and put a digital copy on your phone. The QR code is not enough to get in early! You must have the actual SAP!
[redacted]
Adding New Camp Members
Seeing as it’s a reasonably easy ticket year, we can add campers right now. If you have someone you’d like to add to our camp, let me know. Just think long and hard whether this person is a good fit for Burning Man and The Assless Chapel. S/he must read and sign the agreements and get them to me. I also need to do a Zoom with any additions to the camp but am mostly relying on you to bring someone who is going to be a good campmate. We have a couple people interested in joining our camp. I’ll let you all know more as I find out. Katie, let me know if it’s time to post on Facebook to find someone for Mona’s ticket.
Ticketing Calendar
Here is the ticketing calendar this year (these events usually occur at noon PST):
· July 24th: OMG registration opens.
· July 26th: OMG registration closes.
· July 30th: OMG Sale.
· August 12th (est.): WAPS, tickets and vehicle pass distribution finalized within camp.
Current Pre-Build, Build Week, Burn Week and Exodus Schedule
Here is our current schedule for pre-build, build week, burn week, Exodus and post-Exodus (keep in mind there will be many changes and additions):
You may have noticed that I added color-coding to show the expected brightness of the sky (assuming no clouds), based on the moon, for the period we might be on-Playa. Gray days are Build Week and red days are Burn Week.
Upcoming Tasks
To Do in the Next 10 Days
Everybody
Let me know if you got your SAPs or any notice about them.
Let me know if you haven’t gotten your paper tickets yet.
Send me any updates on your plans to join us or bring friends.
Buy / sell your Burning Man tickets to one another! Then let me know.
Make sure you have whatever you need to deal with wastewater.
Send me your travel plans.
If you haven’t yet, please look through the spreadsheet, so you know where to find essential information.
Let me know if you have any news you want to share.
Let me know if you are not able to make the all-campers Zoom meeting on August 10th at 4p.
Let Mo know what you can do to help with Mojito Mondays.
Read / re-read the Survival Guide.
Here’s your Red Folder assignment for the week. If you prefer a podcast, download it here.
TAC
Schedule 2nd meeting with Jolanda and Marcel.
TAC and Stupid Seamus
Add wheels to the Dusty Altar Bar.
Katie
Let me know if you want me to put the full court press on finding someone for Mona’s second ticket.
To Do in the Next 30 Days
TAC
Tune up truck.
Print wedding certificates.
TAC and Seamus
Go over shade structures
Tune up bikes (replace chains.)
Create new nighttime signage
Cassidy
Get food permit by August 9th.
To Do in the Next 60 Days
TAC
Template for impromptu weddings and another for Deep Playa weddings.
Buy carbon offsets.
Buy a hanging work light
Peaches
Buy actual bubbles
Get champagne flutes
Curtis
Inventory EMT and shade cloth
Gather paints and materials needed for updating podium and hanging sign
TAC and Curtis
Get tarps for ground cover
TAC, Stupid Seamus and Curtis
Get earth anchors and/or spreaders
Everybody
Buy booze and mixers for the bar
Make sure you have tickets, SAPs, VPs, wallet and IDs
Pack a backpack with toiletries, clothes, water, food, medications, phone and charger.
Get muck boots.
Get all your personal stuff squared away
Closing Thoughts
I’m not on Instagram, but I end up seeing plenty of Instagram influencers’ pictures of Burning Man. They show the amazing art; the incredible dance parties; the spectacular vistas of the Playa or the Esplanade; and, more than anything, tanned, usually white and thin, beautiful women in unbelievably sexy outfits. What they don’t show are the scenes behind the scenes.
These pictures don’t show hundreds of hours of volunteer work putting together these art pieces before they even get to the Playa, nor the Zoom meetings to coordinate between geographically distant campmates. They don’t show the hundreds of hours of sweaty labor it took to put the dance club together in dust storms and high heat, nor the sleep-starved and dopamine-deprived crew breaking it down at the end of the week, just to then spend 8 hours in a desert traffic jam. They don’t show Black Rock City coming together or BORG employees and volunteers building the infrastructure to support the city. The don’t show the beautiful women dragging themselves out of a billion-degree tent, desperately chugging water to moderate a hangover, picking the Playa boogers out of their noses and rushing to the bathroom, pee jug in hand, to take a dump in a brutally hotboxed, disgusting Port-a-Potty just to wipe their asses with woefully underpowered toilet paper. They don’t show us taking care of each other when we puke too much, take too much, work too much or party too much.
In short, they miss the point. Yes, we’re there for the art, the music, the hot sex with hot people in hot weather, the over-the-top engineering projects from the mind of a half-mad garage gremlin. But we’re there to be a part of it, not to watch it.
Participation is the one of the Ten Principles that is most responsible for making sure that Burning Man is not a festival, but a… burn. We do not just buy our fun, we make it; we do not just pay for an experience, we co-create it; we do not just look at art, we produce it; we do not just show up for a party, we rock the party; and we do all this for ourselves and one another.
This may be the most difficult thing to explain to people about Burning Man. Burning Man is predicated not just on Self-Reliance and Leave No Trace; it goes beyond this. There are no spectators. I have a dear friend who is so excited to come to Burning Man some year, but I don’t overly encourage him to come – I tell him to learn and begin doing the work. He cannot conceive of how different Burning Man is from Tomorrowland and Ibiza – he thinks it’s just in tougher conditions. But it is not the desert or the ethos of taking care of oneself and one’s mess that sets Burning Man apart. It is not free love, or PLUR or other emphases on kindness and openness. It is the undeniable fact that everyone is the show, except there is no show – there is just, just… well, Burning Man.
I want to go back to those hotties I was talking about. I’ve always felt like everyone is just so, so much hotter at Burning Man. Maybe part of the reason is that we do get to see or at least understand what goes on behind the scenes. We know that these people are here to participate, not spectate. We get to see them as real people.
Last year, Kelly’s had a young woman camping with them who was just unbelievably attractive. Yes, she was thin, tanned, fit and wearing sexy outfits. But she was so much hotter because we got to see her pick playa boogers out of her nose, pee in a cup because the Portas were a disaster and suffer through a hangover in the desert heat, like a normal mortal.
For that matter, I think many people who see Cassidy walking down the street would think she can’t get any more beautiful. But, if you’ve seen her build camp, host and sing at karaoke in BRC and cook spectacular food from non-perishable ingredients, you’d realize that’s wrong.
Peaches is as lovely as a Playa afternoon is hot, but she’s that much more beautiful once you’ve seen her sacrifice her diva cup to the principle of participation, break down a shade structure or invent booty boating. Fresh as Fuck has a tush that wows on its own and there’s a reason she’s FAF, but once you’ve seen her dig paint spots out of the Playa with a screwdriver, she just becomes that much sexier. Molly set the fireworks off in my brain when I first met her, before I even saw her lovely underboob, but that just got multiplied during break, build, mouth-to-mouth mezcal, Tiny Bar and various other episodes that shall go unmentioned. Katie might be fit as hell, with the tummy of a goddess, but wait until you see her musculature in action during build. And Sia… so pretty, but nothing compared to that last day we had together to check out art, where you could just see her embrace everything great about the burn – like a fantasy creature sprouted from the recently-dried Playa.
And it’s not just the ladies. Curtis is a naturally-handsome man who takes care of himself, but after a week of seeing him work like a beast and experiencing his beautiful spirit – hard for me to imagine an easier guy to fall for. Stupid Seamus is always magnetic, and he’s got that great mustache, but to see him whirligigging around Burning Man doing ALL the things, with a smile on his face and spreading laughter around him… he not only won Burning Man, but surely a bunch of ladies’ hearts. Red doesn’t let you see him much, with all those clothes he wears, but I can’t tell you how often I heard the ladies in camp talking about his earnest labor, dry wit and comforting kindness.
I’ve gone on quite a tangent and am not sure how to land this plane, but the point is that Participation is sexy. It makes all of us in the city more attractive. I would argue more than any of the other principles.
My charge to all of us is to participate this year like we never have before. Help someone build the thing they’re building. Become part of the performance art you see. Make things happen at that bar. Say yes when you might have usually said no. Throw yourself into things and you’ll learn a new skill, make new friends, adopt a new hobby, find a new way to burn. Be a participant.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
-Hunter S. Thompson
The Man Burns in 44 days!
Comments