📸: Abraxas Dragon
5pm
There is a mandatory meeting this afternoon for the camp I was staying at last week... Wait! I mean 2 days ago, goodness the days are so long here. I still have a prepaid meal plan to redeem there. I mean it isn’t my camp exactly. They are mostly lovely people; Not all of course, any group has some folks I have a trickier time being pleasant to. I have a few that I’ve grown distaste for... The type of person who would say “I thought you were supposed to be a yogi” when you express honest feelings. Yeah, that dick. I go and fake some of the interactions while feeling others genuinely and appreciative to feel honest efforts to welcome me into the group. I still feel like an outsider on the periphery accompanying an outsider.
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I manage to slip out early, leaving for the Tool album release party. It was the leading reason I said yes to this trip. I have been a fan of of the band Tool in the way that reminds a person “fan” is an abbreviation for fanatic. If a religion had formed around their music when I was 17 I would have joined. No religious tradition formed: so I built my own, for myself. Similarly to how my father’s political and social philosophy was built by the lyrics of John Lennon, Maynard’s lyricism along with the sonic and rhythmic mysticism produced by Adam, Danny and Justin would instruct me to “pry open my third eye”. When Lateralus was released a few years later, Alex Grey’s art defined what I believed the imagery of that vision would resemble. I would later work on designing the logo to my (now former) Yoga studio insisting and looking for the best way the Fibonacci Spiral (a concept I first became aware of during the release of “Lateralus”) would be incorporated. I read the books that inspired the band members, and the philosophers that inspired those books and the thinkers (peers of Tool) that were moved by those philosophers.
The art we consume fills us and creates us. In my first semester of music therapy, my midterm involved making a playlist that would be used if ever I develop dementia or any other neurological disease. A similar mixtape for you would consist of the music you found most prolific in creating the person that developed between the ages of 16-20. I suspect the art we take in (particularly at this time), is what teaches us how to build meaning into would could be a meaningless existence. As Alan Watts (a Taoist philosopher I discovered via the “Tool” web) would go on to articulate to me: The rationalist informs us that we are an insignificant animal orbiting an insignificant star. The mystic tells us we are on an organic spaceship orbiting a ball of fire.
6pm
My friend and I furiously pedal across the desert on our less than adequate transportation to chase an art car. The mushrooms I decided to eat an hour prior have been kicking in since we began biking about 20 mins ago. Most substances have a price to pay for recovery and in my experience with mushrooms I enjoy their effects while paying the price at the same time. Physically my stomach has immense trouble processing psycilosibin, while I am mentally calm and relaxed, my stomach generally feels quite unsettled for the first hour. I’ve spent the past week fasting from a favorite consciousness altering substance of mine, Cannabis; and I find myself contemplating the differences between these substances. Cannabis helps me get high: Elevated and creative. Mushrooms aid me in getting stoned: Grounded, rooted and stable. On cannabis I wouldn’t find my legs as heavy as I do in this moment and peddling a bike is effort exceeding my capacity. My friend 50 yards ahead catches the art car that Alex Grey (Tool album artist) is riding on, finding we have 45 minutes before the Tool show begins, he returns to me to say he will head back to camp to take care of his own needs and come back. I decide to wait in the temple, where he believes will be an easier place to find me than most other densely populated landmarks on the playa. Upon entering, the temple is the most crowded I have seen it to date. I hug my arms into my body, trying to make myself smaller, hoping to occupy less space. I feel the futility of this effort and see an open stool upon which to cross my legs and sit in meditation. I sit and listen.
I feel connected to everything. The dust, the departed, the words that I have no knowledge of in a neighbor’s notebook. In that moment I am Buddha. I am Christ. I am the savior and the beggar. I feel connected to something that exists beyond my definition of “I”. Beyond my body, beyond this temple, beyond Burning Man or the desert it lives in. I know I am going to die and that everyone and everything I love will become dust. I am not sad from this realization, it means we are all of the same carbon and will in time return to the same place. I am enlightened. Or at least I am experiencing a simulation of what I believe that concept to be. I love everyone here. I love this place that I loathe. I love the people who aren’t here to share it with me and I love those who are. I silently cry with all of them while simultaneously smiling at how beautiful it is to feel grief. I know in that moment grief is only a stage of love. Grief is like being in a tunnel where one feels separated and far from the love that is recognized as having existed. In the darkness we believe love is absent and we feel disconnected. How beautiful to share this grief with everyone around me. We are connected if only in the shared illusion of disconnection.
I think of the friend I’ve traveled here with and feel as though more than 45 mins has passed. I look at my watch to find it has been over an hour. I feel acceptance and love for traits that might be irritating to me at another moment. “He” is playing his role and I love him for it. Perhaps the spirit of the mushrooms and perhaps listening to the intuition that I might typically discount, I raise my eyes for the first time since sitting on this stool and see him biking into view of the entrance. I walk briskly to him, feeling lighter and give him a very genuine hug. I feel so grateful to know his light. He asks if I am ready for Tool. I will reply with “whatever.” He later told me how much that utterance of “whatever” concerned him. I would tell him that in that moment I felt satiated. A situation like being late and not hearing the album in its entirety are things that make me indifferent to going at all, but under the influence of the psychedelic I felt unperturbed by this; Rather it felt like I was already experiencing what I hoped the Tool album would bring: connection and direction. In this moment I have those things.
7:30pm
We thankfully bike to the Tool album release party anyway. I listen and watch the crowd. I watch my friend and though I feel myself returning to a more sober consciousness. Entertaining “typical” interactions at a “listening party” occur. The peripheral fan: “Didn’t you think Tool was actually playing?”
Um, no... ***walks away disappointed and disgusted***
So sad he didn’t realize he had the opportunity to listen to amazing quality sound (one will never get at home), as we hear their first new music in 13 years! With the artist who does their album cover art! Fucking unreal excitement!
More entertaining and unique moments of audience participation will include the excited female bodied listener who touches her genitals in rhythm to the music while mouthing to her friend “I want to get fucked right now.”
I feel myself becoming intoxicated by the sunset and the auditory stimulation that accompanies it while simultaneously feeling the effects of the psychedelic mushrooms further decrease in their influence on my reality. We would later learn what at first appeared to be “the temple” having caught on fire, unplanned and unexpectedly, was actually a gas station that had accidentally caught fire during the show. A third of the crowd would rapidly depart to catch what my friend and I were speculating about. Though he may or may not have had the best judgement at this moment, I recognize that he has seen a temple fire before and his belief that the smoke is too dark and the structure still has more standing than would be by now for it to be the temple, as better than my own impaired and personal reasons for wanting it to be truly on fire.
Though I slowly realized he was probably correct in his judgement I continued to watch the optical illusion caused by the flames one could see silhouetting the temple and framed by its windows. Alex Grey’s art car pumped out the sonic brilliance of Fear Inoculum as I imagined what meaning I could place on this unexpected spectacular event. To begin the day laying my objects in the temple and to close the day while feeling such a sense of peace and growth in this place while taking in music that brought me here and so many places more important than than this one… All of which put me in the circumstance to put me here. And then I remember the other side of synchronicities... sometimes they are winks and sometimes we are looking for a wink rather than just enjoying the ride/the show... pick your metaphor, at the moment none are as beautiful as it is to be here with my friend in this moment and by myself/on my own trip.
9pm
The show ended, as all shows and rides do; The mushroom induced portion of my trip fades to imperceptible by my judgement. The sky now lit by starlight and the neon of the Playa come to life. My friend and I would climb a structure to sit and talk. It felt mundane and profound as we fluidly switched topics from love, meaning and relationships to cars and stereos. I am glad for this. I look forward to sharing this in the comfort of my apartment as we have done many times before and will assuredly do again soon. I am glad in this moment I have gone into “his” environment while feeling grateful for how often he has come into “mine.”
In that state I find it difficult to deny his request to accompany him to a party I do not want to go to. It is approaching my chosen bedtime but I will at least go for the ride. I am reminded of how rare I want to be present for “the thing” but how meaningful it is to be wanted.
He reveals his own anxiety at not really knowing anyone personally. I reluctantly go while realizing how attached I am to being wanted. Not just invited; But genuinely wanted. I recognize this while also feeling caught off guard by it in these types of situations.
10pm
He changes metaphorical hats and puts on that of an extrovert as I feel myself retreat into directionless insecurity.
***Hands in pockets? Oh I don’t have any pockets.
Which direction should I look in. How long should my response be to questions? What is a good follow up question? I want to leave soon and don’t want to get stuck in a conversation. How do I keep my eye on the exits without seeming more aloof than I am feeling?
I find a place to sit and observe people’s body mechanics while they dance. I watch the ways they interact with fellow party goers. I notice the folks who appear very embodied, their direction is both stable and fluidly changing; It is a beautiful thing to observe in any movement setting. I go to my breath since I don’t feel comfortable being in my body with this many people around, specifically engaging with movement and the social dynamics that exist in dance and movement.
10:45pm
I find the moment to make my exit. 3 blocks from the party my bike gives up on life. I feel the peddles moving right and left rather than giving the forward momentum that would take me back to camp. The crank shaft falls off a few miles from camp. It takes 30 mins to walk this heavy and useless form of transportation back to the camp. I don’t leave it behind only for fear of losing my deposit. This is the last time I will use this bike. My time exploring burning man has ended in this moment. Even if a new option arises I don’t want it.
11:30pm
When I reach the RV I feel everything. The love from earlier, the exhaustion from... party/social dynamics, the walk, the many disappointments and discomforts of this week. I decide to stress eat and lie in bed. I remind myself of the beauty of earlier and attempt to accept the reality of the day. 30 mins pass and I feel the heat of agitation and frustration growing. I make a conscious decision.
Opening the windows of the RV, knowing the embarrassment I will feel tomorrow, I need someone else to share this moment with me. I blast a favorite metal band “Lamb of God” as loud as my phone will allow. It pales in comparison to passing art cars. The outside noise, coaxing my yelling to be louder while I perform 100 push-ups and 200 air squats.
I lay down and fall asleep... Not enlightened. Not broken. Still at burning man for 2 more fucking days... 48 more hours.
Cover Photo: Go-scope.com
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