Department of Public Works

Irrationally present, there exists a culture surrounding the American social phenomenon that is Burning Man, a troop of dusty vagabonds, carpenters, sailors, medics, personal trainers, mechanics, artists, musicians, contractors, mothers, fathers, marching band conductors, businessmen, therapists, bikers, roustabouts and outcasts who gather in the empty desert months before the party begins with one purpose: to build the experience. I have been present among these fine and feathered folk for one week now, my presence determined by the consistent pressure of two of my truest friends in the world,  an urging to come and find out for myself exactly how this process works, feels and functions; to experience, firsthand, what it feels like to work with a group of people, toiling together in one of the most extreme environments on American soil to build a festival that is attended by over 70,000 individuals. It is dusty, it is hot, it is bright, it is manual labor, it is complex and vibrant, it is beautiful. 

I come from a background of fringe, of rusty unicorns and gypsy ways. The experience of hard labor in a taxing environment are not unfamiliar to me, I have always known personally the extreme, the hard life. My life, as I have come to realize it, in a shock of self-awareness that stems from experiences of great grief and tumult, is a pursuit of pleasure-oriented masochism, a desire to interact with the raw, the true, and the pure, the type of life that exposes, that cracks, that stupefies you into a sort of enlightenment that leaves ego warbling by the side of the road, behind you, beside you, always altered and evolving. And what I have found in my first week of working for Burning Man’s Department of Public works is an enclave of other humans who share these mad proclivities—this time, I am not alone in my toil, not even in my emotional response. 

There is a great mystique surrounding Burning Man, one that I lay no claims to fully understanding. The stretch of land that we inhabit was once the bottom of the ocean and interacts with us in ways that the vast ocean of blue does as well, and it is She, the great Mother Ocean, that has provided my life with the color that washes the backdrop of my understanding of this festival. I am a sailor, from my nails of my toes to the tips of my hair, and the way of life this experience presents in the desert echoes what is required of me to survive on the sea in so many ways that surreality is the norm. The playa stretches for miles around us in every direction, a vast sea of white, a stark backdrop that exposes each image in high contrast—the whites are blinding, the darks are eclipsing, colors ablaze in the urgency of their own existence. A simple pink survey flag transforms into abstract art, its flourescence nearing garish juxtaposed against the bleached horizon. It is, if nothing else, visually stunning, your eyes awash in beauty, intrigue and surreal geometry and perspective.  

But it is so much else, it truly is. When a person envisions something like the ocean the allure rests in her solitude, in her great waves of emptiness, of isolation. Here at the Department of Public Works we start with an oceanic canvas and transform it, over a series of weeks, into a painting composed of humanity—of interaction, communication, celebration and of tens of thousands of minds and bodies processing to the same place for the same purpose; to gather together in the desert to burn something down. Maybe you’re only here to experience the party, perhaps you don’t even care to know the backstory, the creation, but, either way, you will witness an effigy whose dimensions know no parallel on this continent. Hell, this year the structure of the Man is 125 feet tall. The grandeur of build experience does not stop there; anyone attending Burning Man is stunned by hundreds of structures of varying dimension who scatter the desert and the DPW are the ones responsible for their construction. Three weeks of orchestrated utilization and application of plywood, metal, power tools and the ever constant blood sweat and, not surprisingly, tears, whiskey and bacon, births scores of buildings who erupt from the blank playa unapologetically and with great gusto. We are building circular constructions of high-tensile geometric prowess like the Oculus, we are building ice caves, we are building shade, we are building roads, we are employing scissor lifts and bobcats and augers and hammers and a proverbial metric shit ton of rebar and T-stakes to create a city that is now officially recognized by the state of Nevada as such; Black Rock City appears on GPS units and exists, officially, for only ten days. It is, to say the least, interesting. 

As a first year attendee of the event and a first year volunteer for the DPW, I came aboard leery as all get out. i don’t trust this concept, this vague institution, any more than I trust anything else large sects of humanity are attempting to create, but I came with a mind wide open, eager to be shown something I have never seen before by intentionally going somewhere I have never been before. Coming here, I knew two people. Within three days, I have scores of new friends who I understand I will keep for life. The environment pulls open a page of human existence that I had been missing—and that is the pressing consideration of one another. You can’t ignore your neighbor, here, and the level of communication between people, the willingness to understand, the effort that is placed by these folks in the direction of understanding, has been stunning. The median level of conversation that I have found since joining this wily tribe in the desert puts shame to the one-dimensional way so many of us have taken to speaking to one another in the “real world.” It strikes me as unfortunate that the difference exists. It has been recognized, and spoken to, by those before me of this concept of “festival life,” the human proclivity to interact differently with one another when present at an event they consider outside of their “real life,” a place they are only visiting, a people they are only passing through. This is not the way we should come to know one another. 

I have an idea. I would like to see what it feels like to share space with a group of people for a period of time while dirty, while hungry, while toiling, while human. Is this not the way we are meant to interact—in nature, in spirit and in communal effort? Burning Man, and the DPW, as I see them, are just another social experiment, but one with its head in the stars and its roots in the ground. The people, as I have come to know them, are, as many would visually judge, weirdos. Our language is crass, our presentations rough, but we have hearts of pure ambergris. I have been floored. it hadn’t occurred to me how much I had missed other people giving a fuck about me, about where I am, about what and how and why I am doing. I don’t have to answer to anyone in my “real” life and, you know what? Turns out that doing whatever the fuck you want, whenever you fuck you want to, isn’t actually terrifically fulfilling. What I craved, what I asked for, and what I found, here. strangely, are people who care, a purpose to my work, and a place where you can be whatever the fuck you feel. And that, my dear, is all I was looking for. 

These are the revelers in the temporary, the celebrators of the chaos and the sweet-natured genius hobgoblins of the underworld.  I came to Burning Man because I felt as though I was dying and I’m not the only one. Here I have found many a freak willing to talk to me about absolutely anything at any time; a casual discussion concerning the meaning of life while munching eggs and bacon is not uncommon. You have to understand—the biggest thing DPW builds, DPW sets on fire. It took me a very long time to swing my head into the wind created by the beauty of that concept. It seemed to me a waste, a botch, pointless and trite. But it is not that—it is a momentary expression of the glory that is the meaninglessness of existence. If you can see the edge, you can step toward or away from it. These are the people who thrive there, who go there on purpose, because they want to, because it is the state of heightened awareness, both physically and mentally, and it is the closest we can cradle our own sentience to our chests while challenging everything we’ve ever been told, questioning everything we’ve ever experienced. I understand that I am the most important thing in the world to myself, and that I matter immensely, but that I am supported by an imperfect, cracked world, whose flaws have cut me and, occasionally, left me to die. It is always a choice to get up again, the proverbial bootstraps of life, and the experience that is unceasingly interesting to me is what an individual does after they’ve gone further than they’ve ever gone before in any direction—where they place their next step into uncertainty. And DPW is the one i chose, this time, and I’m pretty fucking pleased about it, so far. If you need me, I’ll be over here, pouring whiskey on my pleasure, pounding my fists on the sides of a dumpster full of seventy five utter weirdos while a lightning storm ignites the super moon, hurling her orb across the desert sands to the tune of an gypsy band, covered in dust, grinning like the kinds of fools who caterwaul all night and work all day, the type of freaks who value each other over any physical object, the strangers who hold you long and hard, accept you when you’re crying, and medicinally scream with you when you’re motherfucking pissed. It’s all just fine. You’re awake and you’re participating. You’re human.