By Katweasel
01.11.05
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 and odd 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 is one Douglas Adams might have created.
I'm dressed in a long floral dress and a huge hairy yeti hat, carrying two
marine distress strobes. I look at my neighbors 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 spangled top hat and a big cape with thousands of
flashing LEDs. 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 sixties. He is guiding the lounge
with a weird stick like-contraption. I later discover he is Pepper Mousser, crazy all-around nice
guy.
Towards the Man we go, a huge 40-foot effigy with glowing purple and red neon tubes for veins and arteries. The music gets turned up. It is The Aquavelvets (surf rock, like the
theme from pulp fiction), and people start getting off the couches and dancing. We all get
into it, and before long I'm standing on top of the bar, waving my strobes around and hollering like
crazy as we rove the desert, picking up an entourage of cyclists alongside and hurtling
towards the Man. The lounge is now packed with people, all going completely mental, and we start to
circle the Man, everyone staring at us. We're screaming and yelling, totally living for the pure ecstatic
moment, reveling in 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 to 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 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 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 clustered around a strange effigy. Upon nearing the gathering, we turn down the music and 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. Throughout the week,
people have been placing pieces of paper with their sins written on it 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 to a safe distance. Suddenly there is a light as bright as the sun. Fireworks go off, and the goat goes up in huge flames, with a blaze of molten magnesium at its
heart.
The crowd screams and yells like 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, the drums start drumming, and naked people writhe to the primeval rhythms and celebrate the
fire. Nearby someone with a flamethrower lights up a large tower construction and there's
more frenzied celebration. I jump off the bar and off the lounge and watch it disappear with
the music still blasting, people still going crazy, and someone else already taking my place at
the bar. I head off to the huge tesla coil where 30-foot claws of purple plasma are scything into
the air, creating 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 eight days, and to write about every hour would take
a decade. I lived more in those eight 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 can never be enough
to even scratch the surface of Burning Man. It assails the 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
Tales from the Playa - full index 
