Moose works for Gate, and she’s chatting with D-Day & Rex about goddamn near everything insider-Burning Man. You’ll hear all about the bullshit that goes down behind the scenes of Black Rock City, and then you’ll hear why Gate can’t have nice things. All that, a whole lot more, plus we’ll tell you how to volunteer for The Man.
Photo credit: Neil Girling
someone had dosed me. now, that isn't good, that isn't cool. kids listening at home: do not slip substances into people's drinks! ok? ok! but it happened that i really *needed* my first acid trip in twenty years, and so... fucking wow. what an amazing, difficult-then-wonderful, cathartic, classic lysergic experience.
a big part of it happened on the coming-down side, you know how it is: pre-dawn, making my way to the trash fence. there was no thumpa-thumpa or shiny-giant thing to dissuade me from my walk. i was about halfway between the Temple and whatever ravey stuff was going on at 2:00.
and there was a little light, and in front of the little light, a little desk with a little chair. i pulled a tiny Tiger Food Press notebook and pen out of my pack and, waiting for the sun, wrote my partner a letter, my partner back home who had almost died in an accident a couple years before, who had been in a coma, who'd had to rebuild himself from scratch.
i wasn't on Playa to process all that; i was there to commemorate the loss of two of my Burner friends, collaborators on our art project. but the dawn and the acid and that unremarkable art project came together and showed me what i really needed to deal with: nearly losing my husband, becoming infused with a kind of primal loss-fear that sometimes made me feel distant from him, rather than moving closer to him. i wept and wrote and wept and felt wonderful and awful and raw and naked and alive (and got a sunburn once the sun really did its thing). i came home and looked at my husband and our marriage in a new way. i worked harder. i understood better.
so, i'm gonna say that the artists of 2015 did a great thing for one acid-tripping mourner, even if they did disappoint your trash-fence, deep-Playa, shiny colorful hopes.
the moral of the story is: uhhh, i dunno. The Playa gives what we need, when we need it, even if it looks like a big nothing on a vast plain of dust? something like that.
loved this podcast. you're making me miss Burning Man, damn it!