Forty years ago on the solstice, the first Burning Man event took place in San Francisco. Only a handful of people alive today remember that evening on Baker Beach, and I’m pretty sure none of them imagined at the time they were starting a cultural movement, or had any idea of how far and wide it would travel. To all appearances it was just a picnic on the beach with Larry Harvey, featuring an arty beach bonfire.
This was our founding moment: not the birthday of our founder, but of his creation. Not 1990, when the outlines of Black Rock City were first sketched in the dust, or 2011, when the nonprofit was launched, but the day of the very first Burn in 1986. And while it’s folly to anthropomorphize a stack of wood, a birthday is after all a birthday, and for our lumbering Man-child it has the extra specialness of being a birthday that ends in a zero. The Big Four-Oh, known in anniversary-speak as the Ruby Jubilee.
Happy Ruby Jubilee, Burning Man! You’re looking good for a quadragenarian!
For a human, turning 40 is the fulcrum of midlife, the crest of the proverbial hill. It’s a time for looking back, but also for taking stock of where you are, and looking forward to where you might be headed. The child, as they say, is father to the Man, and if this jumble of lumber were self-aware, what would it see in itself?
“Beyond or beneath our desires and ambitions — what every human yearns for — is to be unconditionally real.” – Larry Harvey
I’ve written before about the Man’s origins, and there’s really not much to add to that history. Burning Man’s future story, on the other hand, is writing itself even as we speak. Every time you make a new Burning Man friend, or reconnect with an old one. Every time a dreamer becomes an art maker, or a new participant puts on Ranger khaki or Gate black for the first time. Whenever we pick up someone else’s windblown trash, or delight a stranger with an unexpected gift, or wordlessly share the awesomeness of a sunrise with someone we may or may not ever see again; through all of these small human moments, all of us are making the movement move, and carrying the culture forward.
Larry’s genius was imagining that this could ever happen, believing against the odds that Burning Man could become more than a picnic, that an authentic culture based on generosity and joy could help provide what was missing in so many peoples’ lives and create such fertile ground for community and creativity. In 2004, when he wrote in the 10 Principles that “we make the world real through actions that open the heart,” some of us may have rolled our eyes, but today it has become an undeniable lived experience for millions. While it may not have turned the world completely on its ear, it has shown that by thinking creatively and working collaboratively, together we can do seemingly impossible things. The hope that this creates, in an increasingly fractured and disconnected world, may be Burning Man’s greatest gift to the future.
People ask me how it’s changed, how it’s different today from those impossibly ancient pre-internet days when it started. And I tell them, sure, things have changed. But the better question is: how has it stayed the same, and how is that still relevant today? The standout thing for me is that every time I participate, I come home with more friends and collaborators than I left with. And that’s increasingly rare in this world, and it’s the main reason I keep doing it. I know it’s why Larry did it too. He made no bones about the fact that in 1986 he was lonely and isolated, feeling like a failure in life and in love. He wanted to be a Bohemian and make art, and surround himself with interesting friends, but he didn’t know where to begin. In hindsight, thinking that a little beach bonfire could lead to all that may seem a little sad, perhaps even desperate. But the handful of people who showed up on the beach kept growing, and growing, and eventually all those things happened — all because he took one of those “actions of the heart” that we now know can shape reality.
“We don’t heal division by preaching… we heal it by creating moments where people feel connected again.” – Larry Harvey
Larry liked to imagine reaching a million people some day, and the movement has certainly achieved that, albeit not all at the same time in the same place at the end of a two-lane country road. He also liked to dream of it lasting 100 years, and while that may sound equally grandiose and implausible, who knows? Together we’ve made it this far.
Cover photo: The Man at sunset, 1995 (Photo by George Post)
