Why We Burn

Some 60,000 people, give or take. Humans abuzz with excitement, curiosity, anticipation.

If we'd focused our energy all together, perhaps that alone would have lit the fire.

This mysterious effigy, lined in blue neon, towering above our heads, arms raised. In surrender? In triumph? In joy or fear? Buoyed by the rising tide of pure human energy?

A structure rooted in what we imagine, materialized and actuated, a week of pure manifestation with 70,000 people out on a blank slate, smooth and pale, ringed by mountains as if held in gigantic palms.

Ephemeral, present, and eternal.


I went to return to fire. Hot and fierce, warm and glowing, life bringing, life destroying, energy released in its most basic, visible, and palpable form. You can feel heat. No one denies that. You can watch matter transform. You can smell it.

Only gas can burn. What is fire?


The fire dances begin. A circle gathers around the blue neon man, first protectors, then the dancers, then the perimeter. Then the spectators, seated ten feet deep, standing beyond, and the transformed vehicles in a ring around it all, pulsing light and noise in a discordant cacophony as the rest of us sparkle and twinkle in multicolored, unchoreographed exuberance. All faces turned inward, to the center, to what brings us here from all over the world. All energy focused on one mysterious, constant, ephemeral structure, built in our image.

The dancers play with fire. It circles them above and below, intricate designs, beautiful and dangerous, trailing an image like a banner of light. The Fire Conclave. Do they feel safe, ringed in flames, fire on a spinning tether, barely controlled? Or is it the danger they love, their edge and that of their audience? Tension, tight as a bowstring, played like a fiddle, dancing with the devil.


Fireworks suddenly fountain out of the sides of the man, unexpected brilliant white sparks outline his form, a corona, radiant. The man begins to burn. A roar from the crowd, our focused energy now verbalized and echoed and the flames begin to rise, almost timid at first, then sensual, twining around every timber, ebbing back and returning stronger, brighter, hotter than before.

The man is aflame, a torch in which the darkness within is matter, and that darkness is the shape of our effigy. The framing like a skeleton, we need not look too far to see ourselves in that form, creatures of light framed by matter, pulsing heat and energy into the world.



Some of us burn too hot. Last year, a man ran into these flames and thus, the perimeter is tighter, the excitement restrained. We stay seated. This energy, this power, still important, tempered by respect. No one will run around the flames three times this year. One man's death, the trauma of thousands, and the grief and suffering of those who loved him. All humans understand pain.

We are united by our brokenness. That is what the priest said, offering us blessings of love, smudging ash on our foreheads and kissing our feet. Ash from the temple, and for others, grieving the year before, ash from the man. We come with open hearts, begging for love, begging for comfort.



So what unites us here? Why, thirty years ago, when Larry Harvey and Jerry James lit their first man on a beach in San Francisco, why did people gather? Drawn to the flames, year after year, swelling in size so rapidly that it became a city, not an event, not a festival. Like humans of our ancient past, gathering around the fire, the source of food and light, safety and comfort. Fire that defined us, and allowed us to shape our destiny.


The flames rise higher, the man begins to fall apart. Flames drip to the surface below, slowly catching on the open walkway, the steps we climbed just yesterday and descended with grandeur. That place we stood and saw the desert through a lens of heat; humans and mountains brilliant red in the darkness of the night.

A burst of flame, a ball of exploding gas. Another, and another. The fireballs engulf the structure and it begins to burn in earnest. The man falls and we cheer: 60,000 voices howling in the desert. We can feel the heat now. The flames grow, the structure glows from within and smoke pours into the night sky. Everyone knows there is an inferno inside. Everyone is waiting.

The flames emerge, stretch upward and outward, fill our vision until we have to look away, half-blinded, to see each face around us turned inward, lit with brilliant orange light, transfixed. The fire turns white-hot and we are lit as if it is day, this fire our star, the center of our system. We have orbited around it all week, we were drawn in by it, and now we watch it burn. Our core, our center, our communal power and soul.



Eventually, the light dims to yellow, the structure begins to collapse. We watch as every beam falls, still cheering, until all that remains are low flames dancing among the rubble.

And then, we disperse.

Learning How to Fly

My brother believes I have a superpower- manifestation. What I imagine, I can create.

I have a pretty impressive imagination- I can't actually manifest everything. I tried to. When I was a kid, I tried every time I had an opportunity to make a wish. I concentrated all my energy on it. I would grow wings. I would fly. I WOULD. I flexed my back, my shoulders, my scapula shifting, rippling under my skin. I felt a twinge between my shoulder blades. Any day now, any day...

Wings are what you make of them. Flying can be many things.

I told this story to a dreamy deckhand, sailing South to Mexico.

"I guess you can't always have what you wish for."

She smiled at me and looked around; at the billowing sails, the shining sea, our boat, skimming across the water. "It came true."

Be careful what you wish for. Especially if you happen to be a manifestor.

Everyone is a manifestor.