EP 45 Nicholas Powers

Episode 45 with Nicholas Powers is out now! Meet Nicholas Powers, a professor and reporter who details his decades-long journey through Burning Man. His story follows Powers’ evolution from a "lone wolf" seeker to the founder of a people of color camp, highlighting how the festival acts as a catalyst for human solidarity and deep psychological healing. Central to their discussion is the idea that the harsh desert environment—particularly during the recent "mud burn"—strips away superficial "sparkle pony" personas to reveal a raw, authentic human connection and "anarchic empathy." Powers elegantly bridges his academic life with the festival culture, explaining how both literature and the playa serve as mirrors that allow individuals to confront their internal shadows and recreate themselves. His story serves as a testament to the power of communal survival and the enduring need for face-to-face vulnerability in an increasingly digital world.

Black Psychedelic Revolution (one of his books)

https://truthout.org/authors/nicholas-powers/

https://www.instagram.com/thepoccamp/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064328516069

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Email shadowofthemanpodcast@gmail.com if you want to be a guest or if you have any concerns about the show.

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Transcript

Before we start, I would like to ask your help to do two things. First, tell a friend or two who you think might like the show. And second, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The more reviews the show gets, the more likely it will even appear in search results. Thank you, and now on to the show. 

They make the trek out to Burning Man for a week and a day. After a lot of work, oh, there's a lot of play. Party party drama, drama, drama. b****, b****, b****. Year after year, they come back to scratch that itch. They all say their lives have been changed. After many years, lives have been rearranged. That changes what this show is all about. You'll see the impact. of burning up and out. So sit back, relax, and cancel all your plans. These are the stories about the shadow of the man. 

Hello and welcome to the Shadow of the Man Show. I'm your host, Andy. Wait a minute, it's that Andy. Today our guest is Nicholas Powers. Or or should you go like doctor powers or only when I'm being naughty.

So, let's see how naughty we get and then I'll be like I'll switch into my doctor persona.

Okay. Um, so how does it all begin? Like uh where when did you like first hear about Burning Man? Like how did you first go?

God, it's like four score and seven years ago. It's like Abraham Lincoln of the desert. I heard these stories of wildness and uh people shooting guns in the desert and big explosions and a big effigy and people were dancing around it like demons on LSD and someone described to me like the scene of uh the night on Bald Mountain from Disney's Fantasia and

and there was just this beautiful dancing fire and uh people were just kind of peeling off their mask and dancing with freedom and abandon and it was wild and then after a couple of days everyone just led back into their regular lives and there was nothing there to prove that it had happened. So I just heard these stories of like the burn. Did you hear about the burn? I was like wow. And I think more than the stories of the burn were the way that their face lit up. Their eyes look like someone turned found two flashlights in their skull. Like they lit up and whatever caused a person to light up like that, I wanted to be around. So it was the classic moth to a flame theme where when you see this light in people's eyes, you just like a moth, you want to go to it and you're curious what is it that's causing people to just talk without even taking a breath about this event. So that happened in around like 2000, 1999, 2000. I began hearing, you know, stories of the burn. Uh, and it would be at a party, it would be, you know, with my underground friends, with activists and artists that, you know, hey, did you hear about the burn? And, you know, the internet wasn't very big then, so it was very word of mouth, you know, you know, so it's, you know, in a kind of red lit corner of some party, people telling me about their experience in the desert. And then it really hit when I had a a mentor and he was a literature professor and who was from the Bay Area and he had a couple of friends also in the Bay Area and they were telling him about Burning Man. And so they said, "Would you like to go?" And I was kind of at this point revved and ready to go. I was like, "Yes, whatever this thing is, I want to go." And so there was this caravan leaving from Oakland. Uh a big truck, van, cars, and we all got in. And on the way there, you know, because it's like what uh around like six, five hour trip from Oakland.

Yeah. and that and during that ride the it was it wasn't not only an introduction to the burn but then a lot of the fantasies of the burn actually kind of dissipated because while we're in the car uh you know with the the two founders of this camp that we were a part of didn't really have an official name that they were telling me about their years at the burn and how they met at the burn and fell in love at the burn and kind of created this camp at the burn. and they they were there when it was very small, very raw. Um maybe maybe 10 5,000 people. Um there was no LED lights. There was still people shooting guns. Um lots of leather, lots of fire, lots of SNM, and it was very pagan. Um and that because the lights weren't so big yet, the stars actually dominated the light. So the big source of light actually was the stars and the moon cuz there wasn't even any LED lights really there

and that when they went there they you know they met and they fell in love and over the years they built this camp and that their experiences at the burn spilled into their regular life and so she was inspired to get a PhD in philosophy in eastern and western philosophy and she actually is uh one of the premier uh philosophers on the west coast um who's able to mix in Chinese and western philosophy on a really high level. Um he was an interior designer and he winds up creating some of the most beautiful art fire sculptures in Oakland and then my mentor he was already a professor but it just sent him on a whole new way of looking at literature and he's Caribbean American and so the burn liberated him and kind of gave him some distance and so that sent him off in this intellectual trajectory and so you know I'm hearing these stories and this trip out to the to the desert and then as we're going in the car, you know, the city gets in the rearview mirror and then the highway, it's, you know, it's at night and you just see the pulsing of the white lights. It almost looks like a heartbeat and then you start smelling the dry air. You could just start smelling the air gets drier and there's whole like long stretches of highway where there's not even a gas station and you're just on this artery as if like a vein leaving the city and going out into this desert. And then so we get there and it's like, you know, in the morning and we pull up in the playa and there was something that just seized me like I felt possessed and I jumped out of the car and it was like, "Hey man, we're here at the burn and again this is 2002. We're here at the burn and I remember taking off my clothes and getting naked and I ran and I did a naked little dust angel

and when I stood up again I I look like someone who'd been rolled in cookie dough. I just look like a little cookie monster.

And so someone went to my belly and they touched my belly and I went, "Whoo!" And so I and I and you know, bless them, they were very open. I came back to the car and I sat with my dusty butt on their beautiful, you know, leather seats and they said, "Wow, I think you're ready for the burn." You know, and I was I was ready for the burn.

Wow. Wow. So you guys drove through the night and you got there like in the morning?

That's one of the most beautiful. If you can time that, that's one of the most beautiful experiences to go to the burn and get there at sunrise and to see, you know, the the almost like the oil painting of the sky growing in front of you.

And this year, not by design, that happened to me.

I got there on Sunday. We hit the line, the end of the line, it was like 2:30 and then I think of the 12 mile road, we got six miles in, but then it started raining.

Mhm.

Then we were stuck. It was roughly about 20 hours.

That's a lot, man. That's painful, bro.

Well, the thing is that like in small little chunks, you know, it I mean, if you told me beforehand you're going to be sitting there for 20 hours, I would have been like, forget it. I'm not going.

Yeah. U reverse Uno.

Wow. But I mean, in the like the number of years we always cuz that's another thing about Bernie man like that the Black Rockck City is a place where like best laid plans go to die, you know. So, we always because I was I lived used to live in San Francisco and that's where I first went with my brother and then you I now live in Hawaii and I I'd fly back there and usually go out of San Francisco and we always have these plans of like, okay, we're going to get up early and we're going to leave by like 8:00 a.m. we're going to be hitting the road and then 8 a.m. comes and it's like, I need to buy some more cigarettes. or I got to go to the store or I want more cheese, you know, and I'm just like like why are we doing this? And we get to the store and like how about this and how about that? I'm like no, no, we should go. And then like what winds up happening is that it winds up being like the middle of the night that we're driving because we take so long to Yes. And your car is heavy with all this stuff and you're like And I don't know about you, but when I do that kind of is it I don't know if it's anxiety. I don't know if I'm scared to go into like the uh you know, the running man game, but like why? It's like I don't use half of the stuff that I buy. And then on the way out, I'm like just giving it away. I was like, could someone take this cake? I don't know. Why did I buy this cake?

I have like five chargers, but one phone and it's dusty and I haven't taken it out in three days. Like, what am I doing?

I think it's one of those things. I know we kind of play this game, you know, with it like, okay, if if we actually pack the stuff that we actually use and we show people, this is what I'm bringing to Burning Man. This is how I'm going to survive for like a week or 10 days. People would think you're insane.

You know, because the survival guide says like two gallons of water per person per day. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cut that down to like, I don't know, half

one gallon of water a day is fine hours like, yeah, you know, you

baby nap.

Yeah. Yeah. What all those the little the wipes? I mean, yeah.

Like just the right areas, you know? It's like I mean, this year we went I actually went from it was like Sunday to Saturday. I we've my brother and I fulfilled our long-standing dream of um leaving on Saturday morning.

God bless you, brother. God bless you. Yeah, that's rough.

Yeah. I mean, it was it was actually pretty nice. And we got back to San Francisco and it's like the just leaving like we just got we packed up his truck and got out and was just like just just

Yeah. How was Exodus for you when you went there? Because I think I left Not long after

Saturday. I mean, it was like Saturday morning at like 8 7 8 a.m. I mean, there was nobody.

No one. Right.

Yeah.

Wow. And do you ever do you feel like you won the Willy Wonka golden ticket when you get out that fast?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice. Just kind of just We stopped in Gerlac. We p you know, we just down the 447, you know, we stopped in Reno and got a hamburger, you know.

Yeah.

I was like Yeah, we got all day.

Yeah,

we're not in traffic, you know.

Yeah. You're not like 9 hours in Exodus.

Yeah. Yeah.

What is the music you usually listen to when when you have been like stuck in Exodus and you're like, "Okay, we're going to be here for a minute." Do you listen to anything?

Uh, well, honestly, all of these years Well, cuz I Okay, I first went in 96 and then I and then I went this year and last year I went 24 and 25. But before that, like I took 13 years off. So like so 2011 was the last time I went and that was the first year it sold out and then it went 24 was the first year it didn't sell out. So I was like

I just miss these like you know uneventful years in between.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember there was a there was a ticket stampede panic around 2011 and I think uh you know my little antenna uh were picking up the signals that you know Burning Man had hit this kind of intense cultural peak and everyone wanted to It was like on a bucket list and people were like grabbing tickets the way that like when people are in those air tubes and they're grabbing money,

you know,

and yeah, and then now I think especially after co and then a lot of cultural changes, it it seems as if like the passion for Burning Man's kind of cooled off a little bit outside the burner world. I'm talking about the the citizens, the the default

detens. Yeah. I mean, I think there's multiple factors, right? I mean, the Was it 202 was like a really hot year and then

Yeah.

23 was a really like the the rain year and yeah

that scared a lot of people away.

Yeah. I Yeah. A lot of people who came there who thought it was going to be an Instagram trip and I remember that when it was really hot and all of us were looking at each other like what the is going on? Why is And someone asked me like is the sun closer? Why is it so hot? And we were just And you know when the heat rides you, it's like someone put like a 50 pound bag on your shoulders. You just like you just feel hopeless and you're just like walking around dragging yourself. And then the other year, yeah, when it rained, but that was so festive. I I have to say like as hard as that was,

something about the mudburn was so magical cuz it felt like a big brillow pad just scraped away like a lot of the glitter and kind of left this raw burn. And people just loved it because there was nothing really to do. to really connect with people on a survival tip. You needed, hey, I got some meat. I don't want it to go bad. Just take the meat. Someone else is like, hey, you know, you're cold. You know, we still have a functioning sauna. And so here you are with big clumps of mud on your feet and you're cold and you're shivering and you get to the sauna and it's muddy on the outside and it's muddy on the inside, but then the mud starts trickling off of your body as you're inside this baking hot sauna

and you feel clean again and you emerge like this. butterfly from a cocoon and you're just sparkling again and you're like, "Wow, this is like all these transformations in the space of an hour." And it reaffirmed for me anyway, a lot of faith. Not even faith, I would say it reaffirmed who the burner community really is at the core, which is a lot of really smart people. I don't mean tech smart, I'm talking about like engineer smart and people smart.

They know how to build things. Yeah. They know how to build things. They know how to keep like

keep the focus together, keep the group from going Lord of the Flies and and there's a generosity of spirit there. People really help each other out. I was like, "Wow." Like, you know, we could have descended into total like cannibalism here and instead everyone's having a great party and even some ways more of a party than if the burn was the burn, you know? So, yeah, those years were rough, but I think you're right, they scared away, I think, a lot of the fluff,

right?

Yeah. It's really hard to be a sparkle pony when your feet are caked in mud and you look like a like you're about to get killed by the mafia. Like just bricks on your feet. Like it's kind of hard, you know?

Yeah. Well, I don't know cuz one thing that Bernie man's always been about for me is something I call the connection, right? You know, it's like Bernie man kind of strips away these like boundaries that separate people. So, we get to the play. It's just kind of like raw. It's just it's just human on human contact and I don't know, maybe that's what the the rainy year kind of was what we needed, you know, to kind of to kind of get back to, you know, people like instead of people just like like racing around on the play like going from like, you know, large music to large music and just like on like ebikes just like just cold and impersonal, you know? It's like I got to go to this DJ set over here and I got to go to that DJ set over there. It's like people would like slow down and actually connect with each other.

It was I think you're 100% Right. And that there was I can say it when I experienced and when I saw other people walking up to strangers talking, sharing food, sharing water, sharing a blanket that the way their the the temperature of their eyes kind of changed and they weren't looking for the wildness anymore.

Mhm.

Right. There's a certain kind of giddy

Yeah.

kind of like young puppy kind of like I want to go out. I want to go out, you know, and kind of like jumping up like a golden retriever energy like I want to go out. I want to go out. And then but during the rain, during the mudburn, the eyes kind of didn't have that jumpy jumpy. It was more like steady, you know, hey man, we're all in this together. How are you doing? And it was like people's eyes were looking not just for the the next big wild thing, but they were looking at each other and their eyes almost like almost like transformed into hands and they were the eyes were holding each other,

right? And the eyes and the faces were holding each other. other and they're like, "Hey, what's it's all good." And that feeling of being held by another human being with in care in the middle of all this slightly dangerous mother nature just stampeding through that it it gave people a taste of something that they were missing and they didn't even know they were missing.

They're like, "Oh, f***. This is what it means to be a human being.

Holy s***. I didn't know that my heart needed this." You know, like my heart was like a flower that's just been like waiting for the rain. And then when the rain came, like your heart just like opened up like was thirsty for face to face, eye to eye, hey, are you okay? Yeah, we're going to get through this. Hey, everything's fine. Like that vibe.

And it was really, really beautiful. And I think for the larger community, the larger burner community, it reaffirmed that, you know, the burn is now maybe changing as the environment changes and the weather and the ply gets more predictable that maybe people need to start expecting that burn is not going to be the leed party, but that the burn is actually shifting to a survival burn and you're actually going to have to expect rain, hurricane dust storms, and that what you're going to get out of that is human solidarity.

Yeah. Yeah.

Not not the fun Instagram party, but the human solidarity. And that be prepared that that's really what you're going for now. You're not going for the party anymore.

And I could definitely like separate like the wheat from the chaff, too. people which party,

you know, maybe that's what it needed. It needed a little mud to kind of slow everyone down,

you know, kind of.

I think so. I think so. I I you know, in some ways, this is an odd analogy. Maybe this is just coming up cuz our conversation is so beautiful and free flowing, but I feel like CO did that for society at large.

I think CO slowed us down and I think a lot of people's lives changed for the better. We lost a lot of people, but we also a lot of people's lives changed for the better cuz they had a moment to slow down and ask like, "Okay, I'm not at my 9 to5 anymore. I'm not stuck in commuter traffic. Um, what do I want to do with my life?" And for a moment, we were all getting those government checks. And we were asking ourselves like, "Okay, all right, I can't go to work. You know, work has been scaled back. Um, my rent's kind of paid with the government check, but what do I really want to do with my life?" And a lot of people came out of COVID and they quit their jobs. They either got divorces or they got married. They had kids, they got pets, they started hobby, they started arts, and some of that obviously cuz people are people fell off and people kind of got plugged back into the machine. But a lot of people never went back to the machine.

A lot of people never went back. They're like, "No, I you know what? I had a moment of what it feels like to be in a different world and I'm never going to go back to that default world."

Yeah. I think also I mean a lot of people it was pretty like negative for them too, you know, just olated and

hit the bottle in and

oh yeah we lost there were some people who are hermits

or introverts and introvert introverts part of the human personality spectrum that's fine but some introverts I think fell into hermitism and they never got out so I think we definitely lost some people

yeah well hopefully can be coming back out to the play cuz

I know come on back to the light people come to the light I feel like that movie polterise when the when the 6. Come to the light. Come to the light.

Oh man. That should be a for Bernie man one of these years, you know, like the other side.

The other side. They're going to stumble into Bernie man like this is what I I didn't know this was here.

So So when you first went in 2002, is that you So you because you live in New York City now, right? So you you've always lived in New York.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm a I'm a creature of this s***** city. I know. I love the city. It's like if anyone really really has been in New York for a while, you love New York, you know, and you hate New York and you know, you have a weird relationship with the city. But yeah, I was born here.

Yeah, cuz I I went to high school. I think I told you about that. We were texting like I

Yeah.

Like so I went to high school like in the late 80s.

Oh, you got a you got a good one.

Well, it's funny because like a couple decades later, I was watching one of those like H1 was like, "This is the '8s kind of thing." And they were like, "New York City, 1980s, the worst crime in New York's history." And I was like, "Wait, what now?"

Yeah. Yeah.

And then I was like thinking back and I was like,

"Oh, yeah."

Yeah.

And it was kind of f***** up.

It really was. The graffiti was good. The cocaine and the graffiti were really good quality, but Yeah. It was a messed up city.

Yeah. I mean, I remember like being my friend And like we'd be kind of crazy. We was like, "Let's walk through Central Park like in at night," you know, and everyone's like, "You want to die?" Like it's actually kind of beautiful, you know?

No, it's good. There's moments of just like emerald experiences in the city. Uh but yeah, I live in New York. Um and I have West Coast friends. Um again, cuz the the mentor who I knew, um he was from the Bay Area and and he introduced me to a bunch of other people who've stayed now my friends. for like 20ome years. And so that's how I got introduced to the to the Bay Area, Oakland specific burner community. And um so then 2002 that was my first burn. And I've been going pretty much consistently. I took two years off like I think 200 five cuz I did a trip to Europe with a partner at the time and then I also reported from hurricane hit Katrina, New Orleans, right?

And so and working with the activist called common ground at at New Orleans cleaning out

homes and interviewing people and then the following year um went back to the burn

and I think my relationship to the burn changed was like basically in three stages because the camp that I went with the couple that I was with you know the they were the two pillars the of the camp like they held a camp together and then when they broke up the camp kind of imploded

and like so you know and it wasn't acrimonious But, you know, it was just they broke up. And so, I went for a couple of years lone wolf. And at that point, I knew enough about the burn that I just had enough food. I had enough water. I had my tent and I would just kind of find places. And I would say during the lone wolf years, there were just incredible experiences of self-reflection and also loneliness. Going to the burn by yourself

can be an incredibly lonely experience because it's almost like being on the other outside of a plate glass window of a restaurant and looking at people eating,

you know,

and and you know, so I'm looking at everyone who was already in like these camps and relationships and couples and everyone just having connection and I was on the outside of it, you know, cuz I was just I mean, I made connections, but they were very ephemeral like here, hey, hey, what's up? And it was very passing in the dark.

Weird like going into some place new where people didn't know you and you're like, hey, how's it going? And they're just like, uh, hi, you know.

Well, burners are generally, you know, everyone was very friendly and open. I would have great conversations. I mean, sometimes like soulmoving conversations, you know, by the man um or it's a beautiful art installation in deep play and have these great conversations, but then, you know, we'd go back into the darkness or back into a dust cloud and I wouldn't see them again. So, for 3 to four years, my experience of the burn was intense passionate connections and then separation and never seeing each other again. Wow.

Yeah. And that was for three or four years. Lone wolf, right? And that was needed. But then I did this workshop and there was a South um Korean sister and she was doing this workshop and it was about like, "Hey people of color, what's your experience at Burning Man?" And I've never heard anyone do a workshop about that. I was like, "Oh, interesting."

What was this? When was that?

This must have been like 2011 or 2012.

Oh, okay.

Um, but it was really early. And and I remember she asked a question. It's like, "Well, how do you feel as a person of color at the burn?" And I thought about it and, you know, there's a few experiences you have. Some are really funny, you know, and then some are a little bit awkward and then some are just racist and you know, you kind of like, you know, all right, you just kind of like flow with those experiences. But I didn't have a container for them. And when she asked that question, I remember thinking, you know, here at the burn, I feel weightless. because a lot of the kind of subliminal I guess what we call microaggressions, but just kind of like the subtle racism that you experience as a person of color in the default world.

Again, I don't I don't want to like cry wolf and I don't want to play the world's smallest violin, but you know, it's just the b******* that you get to, right? And that here at the burn that was mostly absent and you really could feel free and and this And so this an experience I've had like I remember being at this one art exhibit about that looked like swimmers. There was a strobe light and there were swimmers.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And it was this one sister, black woman, this one sister and she was like staring at it and we were both micro doing and so our brains were kind of floating in this kind of bubbling rainbow of feelings. I said, "How do you feel about this burn?" And she's like, "You know, it's really nice cuz I can just be seen for me, right?" And it was interesting cuz it was really dark and all you could see really was our eyes in the strobe light of our face. And so like as we're talking, it was like you could just see like these portraits of our face and different feelings. And so then again, you know, we separated and we went our separate ways. And so as I sat there at the workshop, I thought, I wonder how other people of color feel and would there be, you know, do we need a camp so that we could talk to each other about this? And so my second stage of Burning Man was when I created the people of color camp. And if First, it was just like a rug and a cantaloupe. And eventually people started to come and as they came they asked me like, "Hey, you know, it's just you here. Would you like for us to help build this camp?" And I said, "Please." And so from about 2014 to 2024, the camp just scaled up. And so over the years, I would say about 2 to 300 people of color, I'm talking like Latinos from Venezuela and Colombia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, people of African descent, black Americans, recent West African migrants, Caribbean Americans, Jamaicans, Haitians, um, Asians, speaking Mandarin, Asian-Americans, Chinese Americans, been, you know, Vietnamese, um, everyone was coming to this, you know, and so it became like this little UN in the desert. And the people of color camp has grown now to like one of the, you know, it's not like it's it's not like costume cult. It's not like a huge huge camp, but it's become a node, like a hub for a lot of people of color to come. room.

How big is he? He said like 300. That's

Well, no, not at one time. I would say like at the most it's about like 50

50 people at one time, but 300 people over the course of years.

Oh,

and so that was my third stage or I'm sorry, second stage of the burn was to build this camp and and be like a daddy, right, to the camp. And in the past two or three years, the camp has grown big enough and people have been part of it that it was actually during the uh summer that Joe Biden dropped out of the race. And Kla Harris had that one brat summer.

Oh yeah.

And then so I remember, you know, having like a call and I said, "Hey folks, you know, you are already really taking control of the camp and you're the ones doing all the hard work. Let me just make it official and you are now the lead of the camp, right?" And so I kind of gave the leadership up and they just made it so much better. Like the camp is really doing better. Um, and so now I'm at my third phase of Burning Man where I'm still part of the people of color camp and I help build and do all the stuff. But now I've also been working with BMIR and and because my job is I was a literature professor but I've also been a reporter for about 20 years and I've done interviews. Yeah. I've you know written probably at this point a thousand different articles

um in different you know actual newspapers, print magazines, websites. So I've been a reporter for about 20 years and I've covered you know the Darur genocide. I covered uh the Haitian earthquake. I covered uh anti- police brutality protest. in New York City, the anti-Iraq war protest in New York City. I've covered just lots of stuff. And so now this past burn, I worked with BMIR and I just interviewed people at the burn and those stories got you know onto the radio and you know I had a microphone and me and there was this one British lady who was just such a technological wizard. She was so good and we were just interviewing people.

Do you like around on the play?

They go around in the play interview you like interview them like at your like studio.

Yeah. No, no, we go to the ply and I would hold uh this little kind of recording device that they gave and I would interview people and and within, you know, and the PE the team at the BMIR is really topnotch, you know, cuz they're working in the desert. They got to keep the equipment clean. They go into the sound studio and they clean it up. They edit it and within two or three hours it's on the loop on the radio. All these voices are on the loop on the radio. And so it's there's this beautiful experience where if you pass a If you pass a camp or if you pass a car and BMIR is on and you hear the voice of someone you interviewed and you hear their voices echoing across the desert mixing in with the the house music beat and for this one magical moment it sounds like a song like they're singing along with the house beat. They're talking along with the house beat.

Oh yeah.

And then and then eventually you know the car or the you leave and and the beat and the voice separate again. And that's just one of these beautiful moments that happen um at the burn. And so like now I'm kind of feeling like, oh, I'm chronicling the burn now.

So what uh what prompts would you use for people or was it just I mean what would you talk to them about? Was any kind of like

excuse me

question or anything or are you just like just

Well, because we had a really hard burn this past one because it was a hurricane dust storm that happened. And it really tore down people's camps. A lot of camps were just torn down. Then after that it rained and then after that we had like another not the same size but a pretty sizable dust storm. And so it was only and so people had to rebuild the camp and so we are asking people how are you feeling about this burn? How are you feeling about having to rebuild your camp? And the stories would come out and like tell us tell us what happened you know and people were just ready to you know they brought it to church. They were taking it to the professional booth and they were saying like, "Yeah, you know, I I I really was in a dark place. I lost it and then I got everything back again and the camp rebuilt and when I rebuilt the camp and we re rebuilt the camp, I felt that we rebuilt ourselves and the burn and so there was so much, you know, emotion coming out because people had been on this emotional roller coaster, you know, D going all the way up and then going down and then going up again and then going going down and then Finally by Wednesday it was like the ride was over. The weather ride was over.

Yeah.

And that's a lot of emotions and people just needed to express that ride.

Yeah. I mean that's something cuz I was doing some like recording out there this year too and uh I mean some people they're just like not not interested, you know, but like the people who like once you get them talking

Mhm.

they want to talk.

Oh my god. Yeah. They they were spilling my guts and I was just like calling Dr. Freud, pull out a couch and get me a

Yeah. So, what I was doing so I I came up with this whole because you know the whole concept of my show is uh it's like the impact and influence of Bernie man on people's lives, right? And so the standard show is like

you know anywhere from like 45 to 75 minutes. It's it's basically it's however long like my guest wants to go for, you know.

Um so I came with this other this thing on the for the playa where I called it the the shadow shorts challenge. where I'm like, "Okay, I put five minutes on the clock." Like, "Uh, what's Bernie man's influence on your life? Go."

Nice.

And people were just like, "Uh, uh, uh, you know, and I got like I mean, like like I said, like it was kind of interesting cuz like the original concept of it was like I wanted to go out like by the man cuz the show is called the shadow of the man. So, I'm going to be like on the 12:00 side of the man between like the man and the temple." And I realize I'm Like that's not really a very good idea. Like one because like the equipment I have is like is a lot of like wind noise, you know?

Half of the recordings just like

yeah like I I can't use that. And then uh the other part of it was um you kind of have to profile people cuz like there's all these people kind of going by and the whole concept of like how is Bernie man impacted or influenced on you? It basically can't be the first time you're going to Burning Man. You have to have at least gone once, right?

Yeah. 100%.

And so fairly quickly it was like me and my brother and we kind of got to we could kind of pick out like from all the different people like walking by. We're like, "How about that? No, that one. No, that. No." And so then after like the first day or so, we were just like, "Okay, like what are the criteria for like just visually looking at someone and telling like if they've been to Burning Man? before. It's like number one, uh, they're too clean. Anyone who's like who's just kind of nice and like it's too clean, which is like no no

first year.

Another one was um

they're wearing what we call the uniform, you know.

Yeah. Bring it home. Yeah.

Captain's hat or the furry jacket, you know? It's like we all I mean

you kind of know it when you see it, you know, but like anyone who's like anything like like unique kind of outfit which just kind of like oh you know and then obviously it's like anyone who looks like they like they work for Burning Man or like they're driving like a golf cart.

Yeah, the golf cart. Oh god, I love those. Yeah,

radio or something that. But you know, but it was it was interesting talking to all these different people and

you know like uh getting all these stories. I mean there's people from like all over the place.

Yeah. And they and they come from so many nooks and crannies of the country and of the world and also where they are with their lives. Some people are at a turning point in their lives. Other people are nomadic and they've always been nomadic and this is one kind of festival among many many that they go to. And other people have very structured lives and this is their steam release for the year.

Um and and then other people wind up discovering something about themselves in the desert and they can't let go of it and now they're whole life has to change because of what they've discovered about themselves.

So, you know, and then other people are starting families, you know, so they bring their kids to the playa and they're passing on the inheritance of chaos and, you know, pleasurable anarchy to their kids and their kids are like, "Oh my god, this is like just a big playground, you know,

and um yeah, so the Burning Man, I think, is it's kind of this ephemeral big mirror. It's like the flat desert is a big mirror and it's a magical mirror because when you look into it you see a little bit more of an honest version of yourself and or who you could be or who you were. So you see these alternate images of yourself or reflections in the mirror and when you're when you're faced with that sometimes the image in that desert mirror actually comes out from the from this burn and actually grabs you and it's like this is this is who we have to be right now. and you learn a lot and then the mirror vanishes and you know people go home and you have to kind of reckon it's like okay well now I know this what do I do with that knowledge.

Yeah. Well maybe kind of like what we're talking about before with that 2023 with the the mud year and just people just kind of slowing down like I don't know maybe that's just kind of another sort of a analog or something for a Burning Man like it just sort of slows you down like it takes you out of that screen you know.

Mhm. presents you like in face to face with other like human beings like the the the contact which we kind of separate ourselves off from like in everyday life you know and now here all of a sudden it's like no no this is a celebration of you know it's like get get out of your comfort zone like go talk to somebody yeah that's ex and yes and I think when you talk to people it's like your two voices the two stories your story and the other person's story are like these two that you rub together and this little spark and a little fire emerges and you have a little human warmth and you have a little dangerous spark and you don't know what it's going to turn into. It could turn into a lifelong friendship. It could turn into an argument. It could turn into confusion. It could turn into sex or love. It could turn into art. It could turn into mysticism. But, you know, when people are on the ply and they're rubbing their voices together and their stories together, these little sparks kind of started kind of flying out and then you remember, oh yeah, this is the joy of being alive. Like you get to learn more about other people and all of these kind of stories get nodded together and the sparks start flying and then you know the more that you do that you bump into people and you hear the strangeness and the the lewdness and the fascination and the sublime and then you know you're like oh wow and I think it's refreshing because then the world gets larger

you know. Oh

yeah.

And as the world gets larger because that's the thing is like you said earlier um the people from all over come here and they're searching for being anonymous. And yet, even as they're being anonymous, when they meet someone and they really want to talk, they're more than happy to tell you about their real lives. And so, there's this odd

And what do you mean by real life? It's it's not so much like the my life in the default world, but just like the the real real

the real me. Yeah. Who I really either want to be or what I really feel. And as they're telling you about how they really feel, Yeah. you you may hear that like, "Oh, this person's like uh you know, a Russian Instagram princess or this person's an engineer or this other person, you know, had was kicked out of their home at at 9 and they've been basically on their own and they're doing fine and this other person, you know, just got a divorce or someone else just got married or someone else just had a kid and this is how I feel about it, you know, and so the the details of their life may blow into it, but it's not about like what do you do for work conversation. It's more like no, this is what I'm really feeling about all these things. And that's when you just really discover more of the world through these stories. And it's just a beautiful experience. I don't know how many times I've had conversations at bars and people would just open up and tell me so much about their lives. And and I feel that because you're not at the 9 to5, you're not surrounded by people you have to be careful around because they're your work colleagues um or because of politics that you have to be careful and guarded. And you know, I heard so many beautiful and poignant stories about this like one guy, he's like this middle-aged uh man, he was at the this one bar and he was telling me about how he was caring for his partner, you know, and his wife was bedridden. Um had a really severe illness and had it for a few years now. He was exhausted from caring and so that's why he came out to the desert. Um he wanted to feel lust and love again, but he felt guilty because he didn't want to betray his partner, but obviously they haven't been able to be intimate for years. And you know, you could just tell that he was torn and it wasn't that he was searching for an answer, but he just wanted to tell someone. You know, I remember being at center camp and u this one Indian-American, South Asian American woman who I kind of knew. She was like a, you know, just someone who I knew in the circles and she came up and she her she had these tear streaks coming down through her dustcoated face and she was at this one uh workshop kind of like a holding and kissing workshop. Uh it wasn't it wasn't the orgy dome. It was just like this workshop of intimacy and In the middle of it, she had these flashbacks and she recalled memories of being sexually abused by her grandfather.

And all of a sudden, she just kind of broke down and the person and the people around her in true burner fashion, they rearranged everything and they held her. They asked her what she needed and she just needed to be held and to know everything was okay because these memories were blowing through her like a hurricane. I mean, just tossing her all over the place. It's like if you ever seen a kite being held in a high wind and you could just have to you just have to hold on to it

and before it snaps away, So they reeled her back in, you know, and she actually was grateful that the memories came up because she was always wondering why she had so much trouble with intimacy. And so she was telling me this. And so, you know, the beautiful thing about underneath the glitter, underneath the hard crust of glittering LED lights and furry blinky coats and fire belching art cars, there's this river of sorrow and Oh. new memory blowing underneath like an underground river. And if your ears are tapped into that, you hear it because it's there at the burn that people finally have the freedom and the space to be authentic with themselves. And sometimes things come through that they didn't even know were going to come through or that they didn't even want to share. But because they're in this place of freedom, it's not just freedom to be hedonistic. It's not just freedom to have pleasure. M

but it's also the freedom opens up and all these other unexpected sorrows, memories, shame, pain, confusion, ideas that are scary. All of this comes up and it's just like coughing up cats and dogs, coughing up snakes, coughing up spiders, and then they're all out there and then you're like, "Wow, this is also who I am."

No.

Yeah.

And enough people go through that that that's actually a part of the burn. Oh yeah. What's because it just made me think of something because I often heard like when when you sleep the whole purpose of sleep is is for your mind to

your brain is to kind of get rid of like you know like to kind of detoxify or to kind of coordinate your thoughts and and put like you know memories like into place and and to kind of to deal with like the mess and and if you're chronically sleepdeprived you know it's like it's very unhealthy. I think you can actually die from that right. I mean

yeah you can Right.

So perhaps like when people go to Burning Man like we're saying it's like people can slow down and then like and through conversations like it was like oh this person was telling me these things and the whole thought in my head I was like

maybe they're just realizing these things for the first time as they're telling you.

That's ex that's 100%. It's like you were there. It's 100%. The people that's why you can see the honesty

lighting up their face again like two flashlights in their skull

is because they themselves did not know. this is not rehearsed. This is not a theater script. They did not know that they had this inside of them and they're just as shocked as the person hearing it.

But then they say, "Thank you for bringing this out for me." I'm like, "Exactly.

I was just listening."

Yeah. I'm just listening. And you know, and I think the desert is listening. You know, it's I don't It's not me in particular. I think it's just I think the desert is listening and people are just surprised to hear what comes out, you know.

Well, I think that's also just a part of life that I think a lot of people in our modern day world is kind of don't have access to is just is another human being to be physically present with you and to actually listen.

Actually listen,

you know, not just Yeah. have like their phone in front of their hand like hey sure whatever you know.

Yeah. Yeah. That space of um anarchic empathy is I think shrunken because you know the phone is in front of our face and it's it's addictive. I'm you know I'm I'm as phone addicted as anyone else but I know it and I definitely try to turn it off but What it's done is it the proliferation of social media and phones and technology has actually constricted the space where people have anarchic empathy where it's just random empathy. But as a human being, as an animal with consciousness, you're you're driven

to ask what's your life like? What's your story? What what what's going on with you now? You know, talk talk to me sis, talk to me, brother. Like what's happening? You know,

and another thing cuz I I know some younger burners probably like, "Oh, these old crusty people They're like, "Oh, we're going to start talking about, you know, how when there was like no phone or internet on the play again." It's like, "Yeah, that was really nice and really awesome." But now, all these years later, like with Starlink and with like cell signal and stuff, it's really not that bad. I think people I when I came back after 13 years, I thought everyone was just going to be wandering around just kind of like like Wall-E, you know, with the big screen in front of their face, you know? But no, you know, I mean, like Birdie Man's still Bernie man. it it's like it's the human interaction that people come for.

Yeah. I think that there there's such a deep hunger for that that even and this is I think what's interesting is that even with the Starlink and there there are so many places on the burn where you can get a good you know Wi-Fi connection and and to be honest like you know I taught classes um at the burn right because it's the yeah the first week and I would you know have my laptop and I would swivel it around and it would show everyone who, you know, my students who are watching on Zoom, I would show them the burn. I would show them the art car, the desert, the sunrise, and all that. They'd be like, "Wow, that's so great." You know, like, "Yeah, man. It's" and then I'd go back to teaching them, you know, about literature or introducing the class to them because it's beginning of the semester.

Um, but even though we have Wi-Fi for the most part on the Playa, the human connection feeds such a real hunger that most people don't go through the burn with their screen in their face. because they're like, "No, man. Whatever this is, this magic, I need it. And I need it more than whatever the phone." And that's, how can I say it? If the phone gives you an endorphin rush, the burn gives you an endorphin tsunami.

The quality of the kick, you know, the quality of the bang that you get from the burn is so much greater than anything the phone can give you. It It's like it just it just overwhelms it. And So, in some ways, instead of kind of going the monk route, which is like, I'm going to deny myself this kick. I'm going to deny myself this this rush, this dopamine hit. It's almost like, no, why don't you just get a better drug, you know?

But you can also learn to have a better relationship with the phone.

Yeah.

You know, just to realize it's like, oh, no. I mean, it is a useful tool. I mean, like you said, don't be don't be like a monk like, oh, I'm just going to throw it away.

Yeah.

But it's like, no. I mean, It's like a tool like everything else. Um, so what what class do you teach? I I was just imagining like your students just being like, "What? He's at Burning Man. No fair. I want to be there." It was so funny. One time um I came into the classroom and I heard this like really good house music. I was like, "Wow, that's that's that's some good stuff." I like, "What is that?" She's like, "Oh, it's a video of of Burning Man." I was like, "Oh, wow. Well, that's I hope you like it." And I like, "Why are you looking at a video for Burning Man?" They're like, "Well, we're seeing if we can find you naked. So I walked over to the student and I very gently closed the laptop. I was like, none of that, none of that.

Um, and so that was, you know, kids are wild.

They don't give a s***. They will, they will try to find anything. If they think you're an interesting human being, they're like, what's more, how did this person become this person? And I think that's the eternal question of youth. They look at adults and they're like, how did you become you? Because I'm going to be someone someday and I want to know who are the types of people I can be, right? And if you look awesome. I want to see how you got to be that way. And if you look scary or or sad, I don't want to be that way, right?

Yeah.

You know, so that's, you know, and that's that's just young human behavior. And that's fine. Um, but when I teach my CL, I teach literature and this uh this semester, the first class was is black woman writers. Um, and then the second class is creative non-fiction, and then the last class is literature across culture. So, And what I'm doing in the beginning is kind of giving an introduction to the history behind the literature. So they know the genre of the literature, the author's bio, they know what was happening around the time that they wrote this. And then I also introduced literary criticism. So there are different ways of interpreting literature. It's almost like having a different pair of glasses on,

you know. So one pair of glasses is like new criticism, which is that you look at simply the text itself, the images, the conflict, the characters, and only from that without bringing anything else in just how does the text work and then what how do you interpret that and that's very useful but then I say uh another one's reader response so as you're responding to the text you're actually creating a second version of that story or that novel in your mind and the way that you react to it is that you're actually creating a different version for yourself in your head and that's that movie in your head that starts when you read it a really good book. And that's why when you actually see the movie version of the book, you're like, "That's not what it looks like."

You know, they missed the scene because you're becoming a director. You're becoming a Spike Lee or Steven Spielberg in your head and you're making that.

Mhm.

And then um and then what I say is like look, there are, I would say, more apolitical versions of literary criticism and there's more political versions of literary criticism. So there's, excuse me, so there's like feminist criticism, which is look how are women portrayed in the literature? Is it through the male gaze? Is it are they objectified? Is it um is the author a patriarchal author that only sees women as either mothers or or whores like a binary, right? Um critical race theory. How are people of color portrayed in the literature? You know, again, is this following characters like Stein and Fetch or a Latino character or an Asian one? Or is the author seeing them as real human beings? What about um queer interpretation, queer analysis? So like the or Marxist, which is like taking a look at workers. How does class function to either demean or idealize characters in the text? How does what is the role of work in the text? Do they even talk about their jobs? So, there's so many different ways of looking at literature, both apolitical or political um you know that then the students are allowed to really find their own. There's even traditional conservative uh literary interpretation. Does this literature uphold conservative traditional values or does it challenge them? So there's so many different ways. And so I establish that in the beginning and my goal, I tell them very clearly that yes, I'm an activist. I'm that guy. I'm an activist. But I say in the classroom, I'm a scholar first. And what that means is that I'm going to say things and analyze things as a scholar that I don't even want to necessarily or agree with as an activist. But as a scholar, you need to have a space in the classroom where you can think your own thoughts and you have to come up with your own analysis. And I said, I hope it's actually different from what I'm saying and you're challenging what I'm saying and it can be from anywhere in the political spectrum. And I made it very clear. I was just like, look, I've obviously I'm not a conservative. I'm more probably democratic socialist, etc. But I said, if you're conservative, if you're a MAGA and you write a good essay, you're going to come out of this class with an A. But

you have to back up what you're saying. And when I when I say that, what it does is that it allows for the students to not feel pressure from the professor. And then when they come up with their own thoughts, then they can own whatever their their values are because it's coming from the inside out. It's coming from within them out rather than I have to do this to get an A from the professor.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and so whatever viewpoints they wind up uh coming to, then it's an honest one. And so I'm very clear about that. I just like look here in this room, I'm a scholar first. That's my job. Um, and then I also tell them the last thing I tell them is like, you know, like I'm a father and I I started my fatherhood journey a little bit later in life. And so when I look at you, I imagine what would your parents want for you? And I think they would want for you to have a teacher that doesn't tell you what to think, but just tells you these are the different ways of thinking. You choose your own path. Cuz I would that's what I would want for my kid, you know? You know, so when I tell them all the all that stuff and I set that stage, um what it does is it allows for them um to go on a journey. And you know what's interesting is that they actually can confront the reality of their lives in their own way. And generally actually what they what they do then is they begin to ask questions about their lives, about their families, about their jobs. And they actually sometimes on their own come to very interesting and sometimes even more progressive positions than even I have. But because I pushed them there. It's because they're actually interrogating their own lives. But they also come to different positions that are not progressive, not conservative. They're just unique, like their own take on things. And I'm like, you know what? I never thought about it that way. I I actually I need to kind of check myself and actually ask myself about that. So, I think the one thing about literature that I found is that art becomes a mirror and the mirror then grows a doorork knob and you turn that door knob and you walk through And you go through this journey through the art. And as you're reflecting on the characters and the conflict and the symbols, you then ask, well, if I'm a character in my life, what is the conflict in my life? What are the symbols in my life? And they begin to look at themselves as characters in their own lives. And they could reflect on the work of literature and say, I'm a work of literature, too. And if this character is say confronting class and classism, well, how do I confront class and classism in my life. And then when they emerge on the other side of the book, it's like a butterfly effect. They come out as a new person. And that's like that's the role of art. The role of art is not to worship art. The role of art is to rediscover and recreate you. The artist who made this doesn't know you. The artist who made this may be dead for hundreds of years. But the fact that they were a human being who had the same emotions that you have, went through the same struggles that you have, went through the same political turmoils that you're going through, Because of that, you could use this art to make a a map for yourself, but then at the end, you have to start drawing your own path. And so that's the role of art. The role of art is not to worship it, but to use it as kind of a teleportation chamber. You go in and you get zoomed to this other place. And when you come out of the telepot on the other end of the book, you're like, "Wow, I'm in a whole other place now. That's what art is supposed to do." So then they're like, "Oh, I get it. That's what art is supposed to make me do. like, "Yeah, man. It's just human beings talking to human beings across the great expanse of time."

This is so interesting because I just I just see just hearing you like there's so many parallels to Bernie man. And so I'm like like I'm like which which informs which you know you know like which came first Bernie man or or the academic I mean

or does like man inform you academics or does academics like inform?

No, it's a great it's 100%. I think Bernie man is is informed the way that I teach. both literally like I'll rearrange the classroom so that we'll do meditation. We'll bring in um excuse me yoga mats and tea and incense and we'll actually do some meditation and they'll get some writing done and that's stuff that obviously you know you can borrow from so many of yoga camps and incense camps and meditation camps on the playa.

So physically it it's informed how I teach and in terms of my experience going to the burn and going to the man and and you know the man is like my Mecca, right? Or the man is like my Vatican,

you know, um that it's a place where I go to and I really think about and I harvest the experiences of the past year and I ask myself,

okay, well, I've been through all these changes, you know, who am I now and what's my responsibility to others? And then of course, the burn is not the burn that you think you're going to have, but it's the burn that you need. And so then the burn says like, no man, you're on this other journey now. And you know, you're fighting the wind and you're repairing your camp and you're laughing with your campmates in the van getting drunk and high and you know, then you're sober up and you get back to work and then you know, and then the wind changes and this beautiful, beautiful blue sky emerges and you're like, "Wow." Or then you go out and you see the stars and you look at the stars, they almost look like far away piano keys and you can hear the music of the spheres and you're there, man. You're there. And so that experience at the burn and when I leave and I take a dip in Pyramid Lake It feels kind of like um a baptism, you know, like a baptism. You go into Pyramid Lake and you're baptized by it and you swim in it and I see the sunrise sometimes at Pyramid Lake or I go there and I see the stars and you can hear the wild dogs howling around the lake

and um and I remember being in Pyramid Lake and it was really late at night and I was floating and you know at that point the water looks pitch black and you know it's floating and then above me are the stars and I feel like I'm floating in space. You know, it's like probably the closest I'll ever be to an astronaut floating on the on the black waters and looking up at the stars and just there. And so because I go through that journey every burn that what I want for the students to treat the books that they're reading like Burning Man. You're going to go through this whole other landscape and you're going to meet weird characters along the way just like at the burn and they're going to have different costumes. They're going to talk in different languages and they're going to have different conflicts and and then you meet them and you're going to go on this on this kind of caravan with them and at the end you have to say goodbye but now you're you're changed.

So when you first went in 2002 were you a professor at that point?

No. No I was 2002 I was at the graduate center in New York City. Um and I was training to be a professor. So I was going to the English department at the graduate center and we were reading intensely like four to five books a week.

Mhm.

And Some of these were like the great novels you know um the Iliad uh Beloved by Tony Morrison German the French novel Bulmer miner so we're reading these intense works of art some of these are experimental and then we're also reading a lot of lit literary theory but my experience at the grad center was a little bit different because uh I came back to New York and I was born in New York raised in and out of New York and I came back in August 2001 to go to graduate center September happens So September 2001 happens

and then you know all of us knew that there was going to be a war. We knew that almost instantly.

Mhm.

So I was at the graduate center and there was an incredible amount of activism like people were out against you know teaching teachings and we had at the graduate center historians, Middle Eastern historians and so they would offer free teachings outside of their classes and people would just gather and we would just learn so much about what the political economic history was

and geopolitical politics and then we would go out and we protest like don't let this war start cuz like a lot of innocent people were going to get killed and I remember this one uh this one uh Muslim brother who after the teaching he got up and he said look I was born in New York I'm raised in New York and you could tell he had this Queens accent and he said but don't replace one pile of rubble at ground zero with another pile of rubble in Afghanistan

or Pakistan he goes those people there the people who are going to get killed by our bombs that had nothing to do with 9/11. Don't punish them for this, right? And you could just his heart was in his in his throat. And so, you know, as New Yorkers, we're like, a lot of us, not all, some people were filled with hatred and they just wanted revenge, but a lot of New Yorkers were like, you know, we don't want anyone to go through what we're going through.

And because New York is such a diverse city, a lot of us know that we're connected by our family to poor countries. We're connected, you know, there's Haitian communities in New York. There's Yemeni communities in New York. There's Polish communities in New York. So, we're all connected to these second or third world countries. So, we know what poverty looks like and we know those what those countries are run by dictatorships or oligarchies. So, when that happened, um I remember coming to Burning Man. It was, you know, it was after 9/11 and it was 2002 and I actually did not want to be at the burn cuz I was so filled with anger um and pain that I didn't I hated the burn. I actually wanted to leave. early and I remember there was this other um New York New Yorker guy named Tony. He was camping just right next to me. His tent was next to me and I was like pulling up stakes and I was like I got to get out of here and he goes hey man are you from New York? And I was like yeah man. And he's like are you okay? You know and I knew what he meant. You know he was talking about 9/11. I was like no I don't think I really need to be here. And he came over and he gave me a tab of acid and ecstasy and he gave me a hug and he said look I'm not going to say that this is not going to cure you. It's not not, but it's going to open some doors. And he gave me a hug and he gave me it and I took him. And I remember just leaving the camp wrapping myself up in a coat and I walked out to the deep plier and I hopped over the trash fence and I kept just walking. I didn't know where I was going. I just kind of followed the stars and the ass and the ecstasy kicked in and the stars started to kind of seem like they were falling from the sky, but they were falling. It felt like the ash and the people from the twin towers. Like it felt like I was watching like it all over again and I remember just crying

and I collapsed on the desert to my knees and I punched the desert and I screamed and my tears were making a mud puddle and finally I just bellowed like a wounded wolf and I just bellowed and then I just arched my neck up and I just howled and then after that last sound where I've reverberated through the desert I just felt clean.

Wow.

I just blinked and I looked around and my my my face was a mask of, you know, dust and tears. And I got up and I just felt clean and I and I looked and I saw there was like this bonfire back at the um deep ply and I went back to the city and I got to the bonfire and I took off all my clothes and I just danced around this bonfire. It wasn't the big man burn, it was just this bonfire and it was beautiful and I just sweated it out and the whole burn after that was magical. And when I flew back to JFK airport, I was still covered with dust and I had my poncho and I had big long dreadlocks at the time and there still had dust in them. And I remember standing at the AirTrain platform and then at the at the railroad platform and I felt my body was open like I could breathe again. And I felt loose like all the tension from 9/11, all the tension from the fear was gone.

Mhm.

It had been burned out by the burn. And I looked around at other New Yorkers. I could tell that they were still tight.

They were still scared. You know, it was like their bodies were an iron coil. Just

people look at you like you were weird.

No, because at that point in New York, everyone was just kind of flinching and looking inward and scared, worried there was going to be a bomb that was going to go off or something else was going to explode or more people were going to die. And so I remember very clearly how different how healing that first burn was. You know, it was partly the psychedelics, it was partly the burn, it was partly the stars in the desert. All of that came together. to this magical moment. And I think that it accelerated my healing from 9/11 by 5 or 6 years.

And I think the rest of New York didn't get there until finally, you know, the first couple of anniversaries had passed and we knew that we weren't going to get at least hit again that in that big way.

Mhm.

So for me, the burn instantly became a place where I had to come back and check in every year because it was a place where I accidentally doesn't wasn't expecting it achieved an incredible amount of healing and and healing in in you know all types of ways through art, through love, through love making, through getting lost in the desert, the getting found again, getting scared on a ride and then surviving and all of the ways that you can pass through fear and get to courage and um and I always came back to the burn because it was a place that became very special to me. Uh and that's why I created the people of color camp and eventually I'll bring my son to the burn.

Yeah.

Um and that's why I hope the burn just goes on and on forever.

Did you ever like before you went in 2002, did you feel like any trepidation? I I know that that some black burners some from burners of colors, you know, like oh, you know, that there's all these like crazy white people in the desert and they're burning s***, you know, like it's like I don't know if I want to go there. I mean, uh

yeah, you know, it's it's odd. I I was I I No, I mean only once. There was one moment when I was around when I was I think I was it was around the burn. It was around the actual man burn and I it and I remember for a moment cuz it was very it felt medieval, right? I was the the the flames were as high, huge high, three to four stories tall and you could feel the the the heat scorching you and all of us were naked and kind of roaming around circling the fire and people were chanting and it was a strange like medieval liturgy and And people were screaming and their eyes were dilated so they almost look like human sharks. And for one moment I thought like it was almost all white. And I thought, "Oh my god, what if they see that I'm not one of them and they turn on me, right?"

And it was a moment of paranoia. And I realized, no, this is these are not that kind of these are not racist. That's not that. But what I realized like, oh, that's a memory that I have from my people's history.

Mhm.

And that it needed to come up for me to realize one, that's not who the burners are.

And then two, it was actually good for me to realize that that was one of the many fears that I have um as a man of color in the United States that has a history of lynching, has a history of, you know, abusing and killing people of color, Native Americans, African people, Latinos, etc., Asians. And so once that fear passed, I could I I could throw that fear into the fire, too. And I just kind of, you know, circled it with everyone else. And then I think the other thing that the burn taught me is that it reaffirms something that I was learning throughout my life was that being born and raised in New York, but then spending time in Pennsylvania and spending time um throughout the country. And I see what it did is that it exploded this idea of like monolithic whiteness. And I think that if if you if I was raised and stayed within a small like my community, if it was just Latinos, it was just black people that it's hard, I think, sometimes to see the with accuracy all the different types of white people that are out there. And because I was able to go out to Pennsylvania and see working-class whites, my friends whose uncles worked at garages and came back, you know, with fingers covered with grease, and then, you know, this other person lived in a wealthy mansion and, you know, always smelled of cologne or perfume and everything was sparkling. knew. And then, you know, going to others and, you know, seeing people constantly anxious about if they're going to, you know, make rent and then seeing other people who were homeless, you know, white people who are homeless and living in tents and interviewing them and that they once had a good life but a couple of bad, you know, shakes of the life and now they're sleeping in a tent underneath a bridge or next to an abandoned building and seeing all these different, you know, and then at and then seeing white colleagues and then seeing them at parties and seeing them take off their mask a little bit and seeing them more open, but then also seeing that on like onto the side of that there was this kind of wild American whiteness of people who actually did not like the system

and there were the nomads, there were the artists, there were the people with pink hair and nose plugs and crazy, you know, shirts and they were leather tramps that were on the road and they were just they were kind of like the 1960s 68, but like that they're like, I don't like this system and I'm not going to buy into it, you know? And they're like, I just want to be free. Like I just I want to be free to do my own thing, even if it means that I'm never going to have security. I'd rather not get a constant paycheck, but I'd rather be able to like make my own life. And I would talk to them late into the night until the sun rose. And they would tell me their story. And it wasn't tragic. It was heroic. Like, oh wow, like they actually chose their life, you know?

And then at Burning Man, And I also got a sense of what I would call like indigenous whiteness. In other words, that when I was there at the at the fire, what I would see was almost like, oh, these are how Europeans acted before Christianity,

this is this is like this is like a flash of paganism.

Mhm.

Right. Like there's a fire, there's drinking, there's psychedelics, there's nudity, there's sex, there's wildness, there's freedom. And you know, I was like, oh, this is like this is who they this is a flash of that pagan European kind of tradition that was smuggled underneath the cross, you know, that kind of had to be hidden, you know,

um, as the church took over. And so I think what it did is it it made it much more human and much more kind of complex. Um, and and so that's why I appreciate that what Burning Man has done because then I get to see it's like actually there's lots of different places of connection that underneath the symbols of race that there's this deeper human need to be free of the mask you wear for others. To throw that mask like a poker card into the fire, to get naked, to hear rhythms that sound like your heart has been uh connected to this large heart made of leather and skin and wood drum. And to feel that everyone is inside this big large heart that's like booming this rhythm and that people need to smell each other. their sweat around the fire. They need to see that dilated pupils that we all look like werewolves and that that's a human need that kind of cuts across race, you know. And when I experienced that, then it it kind of gave me an anthropological like human first view of like, okay, there's like a deep humaness to all of us and then we kind of get divided up into these groups. And and what's powerful is that when I And I then think about getting rid of all those labels and like just kind of going to the human. You look at everyone and like, oh, you know, all of us are kind of mixed anyway. Like if you put our genes underneath a microscope, you would see that we're all kind of mixed with all like if you turn back the dial of time and look at all of our history, all of us would, you know, be disappearing and there would be smaller and smaller bands of humans until you would just see like the first original human beings in Africa, right? Migrating out. And like that's we're all And all of our genetics are basically just been swapping and changing along the way, but we're still we're still all this basic human being that needs these basic connection.

Exactly.

And so I think the burn burned away a certain amount of that tribalism in my head, you know.

So it's almost like by returning to the tribe or returning to the fire, which is in some ways the most tribal thing you can do in the kind of cliche, you almost like burn away tribalism. Or maybe we're all just one big tribe.

We're just one big tribe, man. And we're just all trying to find the big We're all just trying to find the fire, you know?

Exactly. All right. Well, one last question I have for you because we're going about an hour and 15. Um, what would you say to like a person of color who is like interested in going to Burning Man, but they were kind of trepidacious and was like, I don't know. Yeah. Be like, I understand. Take that trepidation, take that fear and and learn from it. Like, what is it actually you're scared about? If you're scared about the surv Well, to be honest, that's as that's easily solved with a checklist, water and food, and you know, make sure you have medical kit.

Um, also make sure you know like who what camp you're going to be with. Like, don't lone wolf it at first. I mean, I I did, but that was after I knew the burn.

Don't lone wolf it. Find a camp and and get to know those people beforehand.

Go to some of their events because you don't want to go to the burn with people you just ran like you just met and then you're going to rely on them for food and water and the whole up and down. Like, get to know them. first.

Yeah, I'm amazed do that. Yeah,

I'm amazed at people that do that. They just kind of meet people over social media like go to Birdie Man for the first time and I'm just going to hook up with these random people. I'm like

like don't Yeah. Don't don't do it. I mean like it it works. It can work. I don't want to take away the the mystery of of you know meeting for the first time. But

yeah,

um so I would say, you know, learn from your anxiety. I think anxiety can be a great teacher. So if you're scared about survival, do the checklist and the checklist is on the Burning Man website. Um Um, find a camp, meet the camp a couple of times beforehand, not just on Zoom, but in person. Um, think about what your intention for the burn is.

You know, ask yourself like, you know, look, you know, this is the party burn, but you know, the burn may be a survival burn.

So, think about what your intention is, but then also think about the bandwidth of adaptability because you may not get the burn that you think you want. If you think you're going to go there to just have a party, you might, but you might be have a mud burn. You might have a hurricane dust storm burn.

Oh yeah.

So I think you know try to think about you know what's the burn that you want but what's the burn that you can deal with

right? That's important.

Um also think about your schedule like make sure that you know can you take the time off. Also you know let know that you if the burn does become a rainburn can you be a little bit late for work? You know make sure you check in. Um and then I I think the I guess the the last thing I would say is read and listen to people's stories about the burn to get a a kind of a spectrum of of experience and then kind of throw it all away and be like, "Okay, good. I've learned, but now I need to kind of just figure this out for myself."

Yeah. Cuz like what we were saying earlier that the the play makes, you know, the the dust bin of of bestlaid plans, you know.

Oh god. Yeah. Yeah. And also I would say bring some thing that goes to the last thing I would say bring

like do your homework but don't expect it to be

don't expect it yeah but then be be ready to contribute because you know if you show up like a sparkle pony and you're like I just I'm a beautiful diva take care of me

like realize that you know part of the burn is survival so just

be generous with your work help the camp clean up the camp rebuild the camp make you know you know volunteer for shifts at the kitchen but Just be helpful. Just be prepared to do a little bit of sweat equity because nothing will make you more liked in the camp than by pitching in.

Mhm. All right. Well, this has been an amazing interview. Uh, thank you so much.

Thank you, man. You're awesome. You're This is a good flow. Thank you, brother.

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