EP 54 The Assless Chaplain

Episode 54 with The Assless Chaplain is out now! Meet the Assless Chaplain, who reflects on his twenty-year evolution within the Burning Man community. The conversation transitions from his reckless, unprepared origins in 2005 to his modern role organizing a themecamp that operates a wedding chapel on the playa. He discusses the concept of radical self-reliance and the shift from "weird people trying to feel normal" to a more structured, communal environment. The Chaplain emphasizes the transformative power of ritual, explaining how officiating ceremonies allows him to process personal grief and foster human connection through the ten principles. Ultimately, his story a testament to how the culture of Black Rock City provides a "stabilizing anchor" that informs a person’s identity and values long after the festival ends.

https://www.theasslesschapel.com/

weddings@burningman.org (Armadillo)

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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 Podcast 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 am your host, Andy. Oh, spank me. It's that Andy. Today our guest is the assless chaplain. Welcome. Um,

well, thanks for having me. For those uh guests who don't know, there's a whole little bit of rigma roll beforehand. So, I've been I've been waiting to just say first of all, I I literally didn't hear about this podcast till you reached out to me. Uh, but one thing I feel incredibly honored because I am not a person who is involved with like pays attention to pop culture. I don't give a s*** about celebrities, but I do have a soft spot for my Burning Man celebrities. And you're list of people you've interviewed before me makes me feel really honored to be here because you've interviewed some really amazing people and um I

Oh yeah

am just so amazed that I'm getting the chance to like have my name on a website with them to be honest. So

by the time this airs this I think this is going to actually we're recording this in September 15th. Uh I think that your show is going to be like in April. It's going to be I'm a little ahead. So um Yeah, we had Danger Ranger on uh Mon'nique Sheis from Africa Burn, right? Uh just yesterday dropped um Diva Marica from

Diva Marissa. That's a big one.

Yeah. Uh next week, our next one's going to be Metric, if you know him, from DPW.

I I I don't know Metric. I got to tell you mine like to be on a website with Adriana.

Adriana. Yeah. Um I'm going to be interviewing See, by the time this comes out, you will have heard um Harley Harley Dubois, she's going to be on.

Cool. Cool. Wow. See, like I don't know what the what I am doing on this list. I have like I have no idea. This is like if you know Burning Man had like the time 100 most influential people and somehow they were like this guy, you know, it's amazing for me

to kind of Oh, you're welcome. But I I had heard you on um the Accuracy third podcast and uh we we're not going to go into any politics, but um I don't know. I I just I I heard story and you've you've been around a while. So like Yeah, let's start in the beginning. So So I heard on there like you you first heard about Burning Man when you were like a teenager. What was it like?

Yeah, I was uh so uh I had I had a best friend named Danny and amazing amazing human and he and I knew each other since we were three. And when we were coming up in boring ass Indianapolis uh we found ways to make our own fun

as teenagers too. Yeah.

You know, and uh I started uh you know, it was sort of a bit of a golden age of the internet before social media ruined it, but there was still information there. So, like if you were a kid who, you know, was into psychedelic experiences back before that became cool and it was just a thing that bad kids did. Uh you could find information on the internet and on like a bulletin board to be honest.

And so, what year was this? Like,

uh so I was born in '82. who I think I was about 15, so we're talking 97. I read something on a bulletin board about somebody made some comment about this thing called Burning Man where people run around naked in the desert on acid. And I remember telling Daniel, I was like, "We should go to this one day because that's so much more fun than running around in your parents' backyard naked on acid. Plus, there'll be grown women. Like, how great would it be if there's an actual naked woman, too?" You know, we were young. We were looking for, you know, we we thought ourselves like little Hunter S. Thompson's. We were looking looking for crazy stuff to do and um whatever. That was it. Like we were 15 in Indiana. It's not like we're going to Burning Man right after that. Like we got high school and we you know we didn't even have a car at the time. And then maybe around 8 years later we were both passing through Indianapolis at the same time and we had um we we we both happened to be like in a place in our lives we didn't have anything else on our schedule really and he was like hey let's go to Burning Man. And I was like, "Bernie, man." He's like, "Remember?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah." And so this is how it was back then. We drove to like an independent record store, bought two tickets.

What, 2005 or something like that?

2005. Yeah. He brought like his little tiny tent, no shade, some basic camping stuff. He put me in charge of food. I came, you know, I bought like a bag of wasabi peas, like 12 cans of green beans, and like 17 gallons of liquor, you know, and we drove out. We took like two weeks to get there. We stopped basically at the house of any woman we knew along the way

and we got the Burning Man.

We basically set up camp like in the middle of somebody else's camp on Outer Rim. This was this was open camping. This is back when almost everybody did open camping.

Yeah. Like 90% of Britain was open camping. And

and you know, according to So my my good friend Curtis, who I think is genuinely the greatest male human I know, uh, uh he was part of that camp then. He still camps with me. This uh you know 2025 was his 21st burn. And he he describes like Danny and I were at each other's throats by then. We were basically brothers who were on the road for 2 weeks just getting hammered every night and then as soon as we get to burning in it's like a dust storm. We don't realize it's a dust storm. We're trying to we're super aggravated. We get lost from each other. And so we're just yelling at each other into the night like, "Hey dude, where have you been? You don't know what I've been through. you don't know what I've been through. Stop puking in my shoe. These are quotes that Curtis remembers. I don't remember any of this. And and the morning they come to see like, who are these f****** Yahoos that like showed up in the middle of our camp? And and our tent is just a tent, a tiny tent with no shades, so it's super hot. So he and I are just passed out naked on the bare pla with just f****** bottles of like empty bottles just littered around us like like we're about to leave a national park in worse shape than we found it. You know, we were the worst burners. We were the worst burners. But the overwhelming goodness of our camp, they were like, "I guess we'll show them the way." Like, they fed us. They like taught us. And we fell in love with Burning Man. And it was our thing. It was clearly like right then and there we realized it was like the thing that needed to be a part of us forever that like we'd never run into. It was like kind of the thing we were looking for that we never knew we needed to find, you know?

So, so a quick question. Um, I know like when I here's a show and knows my story, but like you know I we read a bit of the survival guide. I think it was like enough to get like the directions of how to get there and there was like

you did not read the survival guide.

Yeah, it was like one gallon of water per day like whatever, you know. And then, you know, we we dug a hole, filled it with like wood, made like a fire pit, you know, like we do when you go camping, you know, and then at the end we, you know, we just like, oh, you go camping, you cover it up, you know, and you walk away, you know. So, did you guys actually read the survival because nowadays people just like so well prepared they do all this stuff but

Danny read a bit on the website and he tried very hard to tell me like I wasn't prepared but like I've been hitchhiking around India for 5 months like you know so Danny and I always had these different ways of of looking at things like he was always super prepared for everything and I was always like I don't need all that like his joke with me was you don't have to live like a refugee gave me my real name is Gabriel. So he you know and I was like nah but it's fine. I don't mind the you know you know when I was hitchhiking around India like I went not like to the Taj Mahal. I didn't see the Taj Mahal at all. I like hitchhiked around little villages and stuff and so like I just sleep on the ground somewhere unless somebody was like you can stay in my house which generally happened. It was the little villages in India. There's lots of really you know people who are just like hey why would you know come here. Um but so I thought I was preped prepared for everything. I'll I'll tell you this, the only thing I feel like I really was prepared for from my experience in India was um one thing I learned in India is opium will stop your digestive system from doing anything. And so I still had a bunch of opium left over from India and because so like but you know the the portaotties at 4 p.m. are genuinely Dante's hell, right?

Yeah.

So like that was my thing. In the morning, I'd wake up, I'd use the porta potty, and then I'd eat this Indian opium I have, which doesn't have as strong of mental effect as people think, but it would stop me from having bowel movements for, you know, until the next morning. So, that was but like we were so unprepared for we were just assholes. We were just idiot kids who had no idea what we were doing. We didn't read. We didn't do the basic things of reading the We brought enough water, but we also brought far more boo. lose than the amount of water we had could counteract, you know. Um, but you know, we were young, your body is able to deal with it. And we had these more experienced people around us. Uh, shout out to my camp mom. Uh, her ply name is Mona. She encountered Burning Man sometime in the mid or late 90s. She would always go camping in the Black Art Desert. She's from Reno. Ran into them. Helped them truck out trash actually. And then uh she act so we get two tickets every year that she sells us that helps us make sure everybody gets tickets. It's not as big of a deal now, but it used to be because she came up with the camp with the Burning Man logo and gave it to them as a gift. And they were like, "You'll get two tickets forever." Now, this is when like tickets were like 40 bucks and nobody even checked to see if you have tickets.

Yeah.

Nowadays, she gets, you know,

whatever it is, $1,500 worth of tickets every year that she just sells us at face value and we know we have those two tickets on top of anything else we get from the org.

Wow.

Or uh you know the the lottery sales.

So does Mona still camp with you guys nowadays?

No. Um she I really want her to come back. She says maybe if we build her a nice enough art car she will. But she's you know Mona Mona in her heart is younger than I. But you know your body breaks down over time and you you know the ply dust ain't good for you you know. So um So, we always stop when we're when we're on when we are on our way, we always stop at her place and hang out with her for a bit. Um, she she loves seeing us. She has a particular liking for my campmate, stupid.

Stupid, contrary to the name, has a certain charm that gold

no woman can resist. Unfortunately for those women, stupid is happily married, but uh they always love to see them. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I've always like since I started going in 96, you know, it's like I back then my girlfriend now my my wife and so and she people always like, "Oh, have you ever brought her?" I'm like, "No, no." Her

So, you've gone as much as you have and you've never brought your lady.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No,

because her whole thing is like, "Okay, if it's hot, there has to be water, right?" And then she doesn't like crowds and you know, like we live out in the country. and she's like, "It has to be quiet." So, like if she hears a dog barking like 2 miles away, she's just like, "I'm going to shoot it."

So, so, so that's an interesting thing you bring up because to be honest, I'm kind of that way. Like, I live in the country and like I love to visit say New York or LA or Paris, but like I get really really anxious after a bit. But I I don't get that at Burning Man. Even though Burning Man is pretty dense, like it's very different. You like walk out, you walk,

what's that? Like maybe because you know it's temporary like it's just you're just visiting.

No, that's not it. I think it's this like you walk out and you of a hotel in Paris and you walk the streets of Paris and there are a few things going on. Number one is it is more people actually than Black Rockck City as much as we think Black Rock City is dense like a builtup city is more dense. We don't have highrises in Black Rockck City. The second thing is those aren't your people. They aren't. They look away. They don't look you in the eyes, right? So So these are people who they're not adversarial, but they're also not comfortable to you. And the the third is you're not home. Unless unless you grew up in a big city, you're not home. Now, I didn't grow up in a big city and I'm uncomfortable in big cities, but Black Rock City is one of my homes. It's not my only home, but it's one of my homes. I know I'm okay. You know, like if I get overwhelmed, I go back to my camp. I go back to my tent. I'm fine. Or for that matter, I walk to the nearest camp and just be like, "Oh, I'm kind of freaking out." And people will be like, "Oh, it's okay." You know what I mean? Like it's it So that I guess is number four. There is a different vibe. Like you you can't do that in New York. You can't like go knock on the nearest door and be like, "I'm having a tough time with all the people around and then people take care of you. They'll be like, "Get the f*** away from my door." In Black Rock City, you can go to like your nearest camp and just be like, "I'm having a really tough time, guys." And immediately the people's first re action will be, how do we take care of this person? Make sure they're okay. They might have in the back of their head, I hope this isn't a crazy person, right?

Especially now if there was a freaking murder, you know, like I wonder how that's going to change things.

Yeah.

Have you ever combined your two loves? Like uh gone to a a city or foreign or place you haven't been to, but then you meet up with burners there?

Yeah. Yeah. Paris. Uh for sure. It does. It doesn't change the level of anxiety. Uh it certainly is a big pull to the place, right? Like cuz you know, one of first of all, you get to see your people.

Second, um you know, if you meet up in a big city with burners, you know, they're going to take you to do the cool stuff that isn't in the travel guide, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like you So, so yeah, for sure. I mean, that that's one of the you know, one of the things I know you're kind of big on is what's uh Uh what does Burning Man do for you outside of Burning Man? And and uh you know I think I could genuinely list a hundred things that are all

we'll get to that

but like one of them is you know you can go places and find cool people like I'll say like going to Paris uh I love the French I love French culture but the French are um a little bit like say a little bit of a wall around their hearts. They're a little bit of like

about themselves emotionally. like keep a level of emotional distance that is hard for me. But when I but French burners are not that way. So I can go to Paris and I can find burners and they don't do that to me at all. Like I don't have to play this guessing game of like what's the French etiquette here? How do they really feel about me that your typical French person I do that with? Right? Like Burning Man is a cultural overlay that is often stronger than the culture the people came from. And so it creates this kind of culture we can tap into that goes across all these other cultures that frankly in a certain way are in inferior cultures both in terms of quality and in terms of strength.

Mhm. Oh, definitely. So, getting back to like your Burning Man experience. So, 2005 you and your friend Danny go completely unprepared. You just you go to open camping and you you meet some people like uh so I take it like you were hooked, right? So, like uh what got you to Yeah. So like what got you to come back and what did you do after when he came back?

Um so Dan Danny actually the reason we were in between things is he he decided to move to Israel and um join the Israel Defense Forces. So he couldn't come back the next year. So my second year I came with my best friend from college, a guy named Eli. Like a Brooklyn New Yorker with honestly like he and I we ended up rooming together. In college, we were like the total odd couple. We were like Bernie and Ernie and Bert, right? And um you know, the college we were at was outside of Baltimore. So, he helped me a lot to figure out as some little Indiana boy like how to navigate urban life and and just life in general. You know, I grew up in a a very Jewish bubble in a place that wasn't Jewish at all. Uh like social skills weren't my strong suit necessarily in every way. Uh But he was also he being like a kid from Brooklyn was just incompetent with any sort of physical skills, right? So I invited him to Burning Man. We figured our s*** out. I mean literally my uh I like built like a shade for us to have that I think broke down pretty quickly. Like I slept in like our sleeping situation was I had a piece of carpet taken out of a dumpster that we put next to the rented minivan so we had a little shade in the morning and we just slept in sleeping bags on that. that and just were covered in ply at dusk by sunrise every day and it was no problem.

Yeah.

And and it was open camping. We met our neighbors, fell in love with those we needed to fall in love with,

were having a decent time with the ones we didn't need to fall in love with. Um but what what so so I didn't do much more. Uh you know, as time went on, as I kept doing open camping, we'd come up with our our little bits of uh kind of ply magic. You know, back back in the day, people didn't all come with theme camps, so you just came up with your little bit of performance art. Uh maybe run up on people and pretend they're celebrities and take a lot of pictures. I remember one year, this is when I realized I was going to be a weird that like Burning Man was the place I was going to bring my weirdness out is I had a whole group of people with me and we were like the party EMTs, right? If like people looked like they weren't like having a great party, we were going to come and get it going,

which honestly sounds super annoying to me now, but whatever. It's what we did. And I remember this one guy, he clearly ate too many mushrooms. And I was like, "Hey man, I'm like, you know, a medical person. You should let me give you a prostate exam."

And he was like, "What?" And I was like, "Dude, are did you come here to spectate or participate?" So me and this dude are having this talk and he's just like having so much trouble wrapping his head around it. It's his first year. He wasn't ready for Burning Man, honestly. Like I was being an a******. Um, Uh, like when I look back on it, it was a little too much to drop on it, dude. Finally, luckily, his like friend who's clearly also tripping out and is just like basically standing like 20 ft back cuz he wants no part of this like runs up and is like, "Dude, just run with me right now." And I look at Eli and I'm like, "Dude, I don't know what I would have done if you called my bluff." And he's like, "I know what you would have done." And I was like, "f***,

get the glove, though."

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Uh, so um I I don't know, man. Like it was just you know there's you've heard the saying nowadays that um Burning Man used to be a place weird people go to feel normal. Now it's a place normal people go to feel weird.

Yeah.

Uh it's not binary. I think I would say it's shifted to more normal people trying to feel weird who aren't really necessarily cut out. You know, tourists, yahoos as we used to call them.

Uh I would say like one thing like when I showed up at Burning Man, I definitely was like I don't don't feel weird here. This is the kind of place where like how I am is okay.

It makes sense. That's what I felt my first time along with a lot of other things.

Uh and but I think that was maybe the big hook that caught me in the cheek

was like so I I was a bad kid growing up and I uh my parents rewarded me for my bad behavior with three years of military c academy in a very rural part of Indiana full of big ass s*** kickers. It was not easy being small and Jewish and weird. And I realized how weird I was and and I learned to like celebrate it. I was like, "Okay, I'm the weird kid." And you know, by my senior year, people were like, "Ah, he's he's who he is. He's cool." You know,

um went away to college at a small liberal arts school that was like the opposite of military academy on, you know, it wasn't mostly male. It was 70% women. Actually, it had it used to be a a women's college, very lesbian, very feminist. It was wonderful. Goucher College, shout out to Goucher College. Uh, and it was a place you could be pretty weird to be honest, but like you get out of college and now you're an adult. There isn't a like, you know, a small liberal arts school is like a safe place to be a person who can it used to be a place you could be a person who's just going to be himself without worrying about about the repercussions of the real world.

Yeah.

You get out of college and you have to deal with the real world. You go to Burning Man and it's still the real world, maybe the real realer world. And like you're you are what you are. And and back then, what was great about it, what I loved, what I actually missed is people still give you s*** for being weird, but you know they're weird in their way. You know, like like back then people weren't Burning Man people weren't nice when I first got to Burning Man. Like my camp. The people were kind. They took care of us. They knew like as burners they wanted to bring us along as burners, but they weren't nice. They told us shut the f****** and stop being assholes, you know? Like, and I loved that. I missed that a bit. Like that hard edge of I remember going to my first bar there, like just a little innocent idiot from Indiana in Baltimore and being like, "Hey, is this a gay bar?" And they're like, "Every bar at Burning Man is a gay bar." And I was like, "Can I get a drink?" And they're like, "What are you going to do? do for me? And I was like, "Oh, I'll tell you your name in Hindi. What's your name?" And the woman luckily said saffron. I knew how to say saffron in Hindi cuz I'd been in India for a while. And they're like, "All right, we don't know if that's actually it. Bend over. We're going to paddle. We're going to we're going to beat your like we're going to you're going to be red and then you can have some drinks." And awesome. Like if if I'm bartering my little tiny ass for drinks, like that's that's the best deal I've gotten on drinks in a while, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. No, but it's something interesting what you said like about it because years ago like my brother and I like we had this camp book it was called the cult of distraction right and so we we had a a bar and it I don't know I think it was just like the the nature like it was a beautiful bar and it was it was a wonderful setting and we brought only enough alcohol for like one night but then it's like you know it's it's it's like the the the oil in the the temple you know it but it miraculously lasted

last yeah Yeah. Because because other people gave you drinks in the meantime. Yeah.

Yeah. People would like people be like, "You know what? I I brought this booze, but I'm having more fun hanging out here with you, you know."

Wait, wait. What year was this?

Oh, this was from 97 through like 2006.

No, but but the year you brought like one night worth of booze, a lot of your listeners don't understand that you probably showed up on like Wednesday or something, right? Like nowadays, Burning Man is very long, but we used to shorter time. Burning Men used to be shorter.

Yeah. But no, I mean I remember we would get there Saturday and then by Sunday we would be like, "Okay, we're opening the bar." And then by then by Saturday it's just like we have three times the amount of liquor that we came with. Even though like the first night we ran out of all our booze, you know? It was like But anyway,

yeah. So So this is I I want you to continue, but I just want to interject really quickly. I used to always go to the Golden Cafe because my then wife loved the Golden Cafe. And nowadays, the Golden Cafe has a little bit of trouble having enough booze in stock. It used to to be it was no problem because people would be like this is a great place and everybody would bring booze knowing they were going to give it to the Golden Cafe. Now it's like an afterthought. So there has been a change. Sorry. Go ahead.

Okay. Well, so now I mean that was that was back then when we were kind of younger and you know the our whole camp was like operating this bar and something we came to realize like years later when my brother discovered he was an alcoholic. You know we're like hm maybe not getting s******** drunk like every single night for like a week straight and then like you know and we were this whole act between the two of us and we were like irreverent and we were crazy and we talked over people and like you're saying like back then it was like had this kind of edge and it was just kind of like oh yeah it's like people kind of like that nowadays it's like if like if we even like one night on the play it's like we actually this is the first year we went it's like I think we had like a couple of drinks like one night you know, like, and we actually got good night's sleep and everything and and it was like we had a really awesome night, but there's one night where it's like my brother had like a little bit to drink, you know, and then all a sudden everyone's just like,

"Oh, he's that drunk guy." You know, we're like, "This used to be the thing." Like, everybody came for it, you know? Now,

this brings up three things for me. First,

in uh 2012, that was my last year before I very mistakenly took 10 years off Burning Man thinking like I needed some on other things to my life. It was a horrible idea. Uh really bad idea. But I I didn't go back for 10 years. So it was kind of my last year for quite a while. And I remember no one was rushing the man like a man burn night. And this was before the dude died. So it was before the dude died. And I was really like what the f*** is happening? Like I always thought like these people who rush the man are assholes. But I was like but this is part of our culture. We're supposed to have assholes.

So like I was like I'm going to rush the man. I'm like telling my cousin, I'm like, "We're going to like we're going to run slowly so it's easy for them to catch us. We're it's going to be symbolic." And I just remember this adorable woman who was tiny. I'm not a big guy. She was tiny like God. My face was like, "No." And I was like, "f***, dude. Everyone's way too serious now." I walked I like stepped around her and ran and let him tackle me. And you know, I didn't get far. I didn't mean to get far. So, like, I do kind of miss the mal behavior, but We also, you know, the city's bigger, make some sense. Uh, I know I said I was going to talk about three things, but there was that was a foreign hope. I'll I'll leave it at that. I just uh clearly at some point burners became better behaved. The org wanted him to become better behaved

for better and worse. Um,

another thing that um I remember talking about with somebody like like Bernie man used to be like a place where it's like you could say or or express yourself however you want, but watch out because it's like physically like kind of dangerous. Right now that's kind of flipped where you know it's like the physical danger like they were kind of sanding off the rough edges, you know? So it's like it's it's a lot like a bit safer. It's a bit safer. It's a bit safer. But then like you know in terms of like the radical expression, you know, it's like now it's just like oh you can't say that or oh you can't do that.

So part of it I think is and you were talking about when And I I think it was uh the opera woman from Death Guild, Div.A.

D.Va Marissa. Yeah. Yeah.

D.Va Marica that um you know I I think Burning Man has a very strong contingent that comes back every year that's pretty gray-haired, you know.

But we do have these people we cycle through. Some stick, a lot of them don't who are quite a bit younger. And I remember so like Mudburn year, you know, I'll give I'll give a pretty raw and rough example, we got we got bored and uh we were coming up with things to make us not bored. So, we set up like a blinking arrow to actually our neighbors camp we went to visit. And these neighbors had a lot of young people. And these people were the most boring people ever. They just sat around and vaped their weed and didn't want to do anything. And we set up a game, let's call it, is it pee or is it lemonade? And they were like, "No, but you can't use actual pee." And I was like, "f*** you. I'll use whatever I want." You know, like this is going to be awesome. people will come here. They're going to consent. We're not going to trick anybody and this game's going to be f***** up because what what else are we going to do? Everything is mud, you know? And uh they were they were like shocked. And I and I had this realization. I was like, what? It's really odd to me that at Burning Man, like if you want to go out and get wild, you look for people with gray hair, not the young people. And you know, we can talk about what made society like this, but it is a thing where these are people who, you know, came up in a they're coming up in a world where everything is recorded. And those of us who've been burning a long time, never worried about anything being recorded at Burning Man. You could do whatever you wanted and it's fine. And you know, unless you're some idiot who, despite having a couple kids and living in a small town as a local leader, mentions that you set up a game called is it peer? Is it lemonade? Nobody ever nobody ever f****** knows. Uh, and you know, it is so I mean I think in a certain way it creates a demarcation like which which of us are actually going to take who we are to that extent to outside of it and which of us are going to take who we are outside of it and bring it to Burning Man. And I think there's a pretty strong predictor in terms of age with that

and and I think it's great we have the young people coming. I'm glad we are. None of it look I don't know how old you are but I'm a lot older than when I first started burning. We don't want Burning Man to just be a thing for old people. Anything that's just for old people sucks. But at Burning Man, for the most part, the young people suck more to be honest. But like, but not all of them. I've met so many amazing young people who like came out their first year, camped on their own, like when you ask them to do something for your theme camp cuz they decide to join your theme camp, come up with the best ideas, you know, like we need those people for the creativity, the energy, but a huge proportion of them are just people sitting around taking up space in my opinion.

Yeah. No, I mean I think it's it's definitely I mean like if if this is not going to just be like a multi-deadal flash in the pan. It's like Yeah, you definitely got to like, you know, introduce like

Okay, Andy, I'm sorry. I'm getting I'm hearing Coyote House. Hopefully, it's actually not a big deal. Hopefully, I'll be back in just a couple minutes.

Okay.

Um

listeners, uh we have to we have a little coyote situation.

I know you don't like to edit, but you might have to edit out of a couple minutes of dead time. I apologize.

Well, how about this? We'll uh we'll we'll put the show.

Sure.

You can explain to listeners while I'm gone. It shouldn't take long.

Come back after the word from these sponsors.

Okay, here we are.

And now we're back after the words from our sponsors.

Sorry about that.

That's That was actually one of the things I loved hearing Adriana talk about where the fake because I've always loved her fake ads that somebody

Oh, see we had that kernel

of pains in the ass. who can't take a joke already then who were bothering Adriana about her fake ads. I let me on that note I'd like to share like a little story in

what year was it? I can't remember the year they had the Occupy Wall Street

like on the on the PIA. So somebody built this amazing Wall Street. It was like Bank of America Mel Lynch and they're going to burn it and there was a huge Occupy protest. Now to me this was hilarious because like who are you protesting like what are you you know like go to Wall Street and do it that makes some sense but you're at Burning Man like what is the thing you're doing? So I always really admired the protest to save the man you know I don't know if they

yeah like don't burn the man

like don't burn the man right so I got my campmates together and we wrote all these signs that were like greed is good f*** the 99% you know

whatever clearly b******* and we showed up and had a counterprotest and I got to tell you it like broke my heart that not a single person realized this was a joke. We got so many like everybody like shot us daggers. This was before things in politics got more um beyond free spee, you know what I mean? So

yeah, like confronted us.

The only person I ran into who didn't

like seem to hate us was a guy who came up and was like, "Hey man, I think you got a lot of balls because I would never be able to do this, but I agree with you 100%." Like That's also not that's not the f*** like does nobody understand this is hilarious like that up who was just like that's really funny.

Yeah. Nobody was like this is hilarious like except for us. I mean we had a good laugh. I'm glad we did it. We had a good laugh in the camp but like so so there is this uh I think there is some more seriousness that's crafted.

Yeah. So I think that I was just looking up like um Occupy. So I think Occupy was 2011. So this must have been 2012 I think

2012. Yeah, it was it was my last burn. Yeah,

but I don't know and I think this is also was kind of brought up um on accuracy theory something which I completely agree with is that Burning Man is inherently political. It's like I get that you know it's like all art is like political but I think what what is should be foreign at Bernie man is partisanship. You know where it's just like Is this like my team, your team? Like I got anywhere.

I I So this gets back to like what does Burning Man do for you off Playa?

I think one of the things it certainly has done for me is to take

a worldview-based view of politics and not a like politics view based view of politics. So I remember when I first started coming, every now and then you'd see like the weirdo tech guy from San Jose who' like have the Ron Paul sign up randomly. It was saying that a few times. And no, of course, Burning Man, you know, when I was talking to Accuracy Third, I was like, I don't get why the art is political. And they were like, what are you talking about? I'm like, you're right. You're right. What am I talking about? Of course it is. Look at um I'm fine. One of the greatest pieces of Burning Man art I've ever seen. You know,

uh, of course it is. I just I just think like the way that politics are practiced off Playa really don't fit into the 10 principles. And so when I see it being practice that way on the playa. I'm like I I don't think this is necessarily the place for that being said radical inclusion means radical inclusion. I I saw I never I didn't see this happening at the temple but I saw you know hundreds of comments debate on uh there were some Christians trying to convert people at the temple.

Oh really?

And it's like should we include them? Should we not? And I'm like it's not for us to decide you know like you don't want them included. Give them a little bit of s*** within limits. You know you do want them included like you think it's fine. Fine, whatever. Then don't. Who cares? Like, it's burning, man.

Let whatever is going to I I genuinely you what I love is you can go to the temple and you can see that somebody writes something like uh free Palestine or a picture of uh an Israeli hostage. And for the most part, I've heard this has gone otherwise, but for the most part, you don't see somebody cross it out or tear it down. You see somebody put something else next to it.

Mh. That's a great thing for people to take off the playa. You can express your grief or your anger or whatever it is and not treat somebody else's like it's not legitimate.

Yeah. Well, especially as we're recording this, the Charlie Kirk assassination was what, like three, four days ago or something, you know? Like people can express different opinions and not f****** kill each other. or dehumanize other people. It's like yeah, you know, it's like express your opinion. Like I have like oh I mean you can engage in debate, right? I mean you can

we do a great job of that on the play. How much f****** crazy s*** that you're like this person is detached from reality. Have you heard talking to someone on the play?

Do you ostracize them? No. You might you might be like I'm gonna go get another drink because you don't want to have the conversation. But that happens to me all the time out there. You know

less nowadays but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Well, going back to your Burning Man experience, so 2005 you first came and then you came back another year. So, have you been with like the same people? Like, cuz you said or year was kind of different.

No, it's um so 05 we were with like the camp we just dropped in on. Uh then Danny went away to the IDF. I uh had a couple other camps in the meantime that was rotating people. was always open camping, but kept in touch with my old campmates. Uh, it's morphed in different ways. It wasn't until 2022 when I started my own theme camp that I had a more kind of consistent crew because that's kind of the way Burning Man went

and kind of way I wanted to go with things. Um,

so that was the first theme camp you started because you went through 2005 to 2012 just open camping and then 10 years off and come back and like

Yeah. So, so, so Danny uh I lost in a very very difficult way.

Oh.

Out of privacy. teach his family. I won't discuss it more than that, but it was very hard for me. I went into a bit of a tail spin for a few years. Uh kind of figured out how to move on. Was still, you know, thinking I'm just doing the, you know, mortgage job, kids thing. My marriage fell apart. Um and it was time for a midlife crisis. Now, I could have spent my money on, I don't know, you know, sports cars and hookers or something, but I wanted to to actually take good advantage of a midlife crisis. So, I was like, well, I mean, the biggest thing that's gone wrong in my life is that I'm not being a burner. Now, I wasn't being a burner in two ways. I wasn't going to Burning Man. That's actually the lesser way, though I thought at the time. Nowadays, I realize it was the lesser way. But, I wasn't being a burner in my day-to-day life. So, I decided to go back to Burning Man. I told my wife, she was supportive. Uh, and I said, though, like, I want to bring something back this time. Like I don't want to just do a little perform like I want to give something to the playa and I loved officiating marriages. It's a thing I did a little bit outside of Burning Man that you know marriages are so happy and beautiful. And so I told her I was like I I want to do a wedding camp. And for me it was kind of two things. Number one, I get to kind of feed off other people's love when I'm in a dead marriage. And number two, Danny had actually in 2010 I had gotten le legally married and then two weeks later went with some of our wedding guests to the playa and he planned a surprise wedding on the USS Nevada. He found a in quotation marks rabbi. So basically a guy who happened to have a yarmaka

string quartet. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It was the greatest thing anyone like greatest gift anyone gave me. It was just an amazing night. So like for me it was two things. A I get to kind of feel that love from other people's love and b I always had trouble celebrating D who definitely somebody to be celebrated, not mourned. And this way I could take the fire he lit for me and pass it on to other people. And it was literally one of, if not the greatest decision I've ever made. You know, other than like having my kids or whatever, but like in terms of not normal life decisions, it was definitely the greatest one I I ever made. Uh has been incredibly healing and heartfilling and helped me do a lot of work on myself. But when I told my uh then wife She just out of nowhere, it just came to her. She said, "It should be called the assless chapel and you should marry people while wearing assless chaps." Genius. And she she made for me these red sequin assless chaps. They've fallen apart by now, but I still like took a cutting to put on the bottom of my custommade chaps like as some, you know, her and I are still friends. We were actually next door neighbors, you know, just life changed. Uh, and so So yeah, that's how I started Asus Chapel and I got to tell you it is one of the very most important things in my life and uh something like this year we did a dozen weddings and it like fills my heart up for the year. Uh I know that sounds cliche and cheesy but it's 100% like that.

Oh that's wonderful. Yeah. So couple things just mechanically. So so askless chapel is everyone in the camp ass No, we would never require that anybody uh do any sort of nudity, right? Like it's encouraged. It's not required. We definitely give out chaps and uh because of the nature of chaps. If you don't want to go, you know, full monty, we also have thongs and whatnot for both genders. Um the chaps you give back, thongs you keep obvious reason. Um you know, people who plan the weddings ahead of time time do tend to bring chaps. Um, other people, you know, a lot of times people just want a Burning Man wedding. They don't really need to have their ass out while they do it.

I was thinking more of just like with your your camp mates. And how big a camp you guys have?

So, uh, 22, we were eight.

Oh, that's a nice size.

Uh, then we were 15 for the next two years. And then this last year, we have um, so we camp. We try to camp next to two camps, Kelly's and Burning My Craig. Uh, but those camps lately, they're not coming every year. So, we take in people who would have gone to that camp.

Okay.

This year we took in a lot of people from Burning My Crepe and people who weren't necessarily there before, but are French people. Burning my crepe is a French camp who are looking for a camp. So, this year we had 25, I think. So, it was a big jump for me. It was a big thing as a camp lead to make that jump. It was not easy, but it was great. We actually had a wonderful camp dynamic.

Um, I was very worried in terms of gray water from showers, all the things. When your camp grows, the people were wonderful. Despite the really bad conditions, we got

everything that was not destroyed built by Monday night for the first round of weddings. And the weddings went great. Honestly, I I think it was my best year in terms of quality of weddings, but it was my lowest year in terms of quantity, which there's probably some correlation there.

Wait, how many You said you had 12.

So we did 12. Our our heaviest year was Mud Apocalypse. We did 30 and it's just too much. Like I need to let my campmates burn. I want to burn.

How many weddings a day do you do?

So now nowadays I'm better at setting boundaries around that which is really tough because when people come and they want to get married, you don't want to turn them down, right?

But this year I was like I'm turning people down. Like we're, you know, they can plan ahead of time. They can come during our open hours if a lot of people come before them. We're not going to fit them in. They just need to know that. So, so I've been trying to work on it because there's there are two there are a lot of people want to get married at Burning Man. There are not a lot of people to marry them. And to be honest, um, a lot of those who do, it's kind of like uh they take it very lightly into it, and that's fine. We take it very seriously. Like, you can bet money that at any wedding we're doing, people are going to cry. Like, I I do like a 10-minute interview ahead of time. I'm pretty good at this by now of like how do you get to the core of their love? I actually started a practice where uh when I interview them, when I do the wedding, I use uh a nasal spray of pure oxytocin, which is like the hormone that causes feelings of love to create bonding. It helps a lot to it helps me do a good job, you know, and so um so next year I want to a do a mass wedding at center camp on Friday so anybody who couldn't get fit in, we'll at least do something for them. Uh B, I want to start doing workshops on like here's how you plan and officiate a wedding. We need more officients. We need more venues. We need a lot more for weddings. We really do. Uh if anybody out there is interested, uh the askises.com has a nine-page guide to officiating and planning weddings. And you can also uh email armadillo at weddingsman.org. And and get yourself into it. Put yourself out there. Let Armadillo know you're willing to do a wedding if people reach out. ahead of time and armadillo will find you somebody and you'll get to have this amazing experience. And if you want any advice, the askises.com I have the the the guide to it and you can also just email me because people want to get married at Burning Man and I want to have more people who can do it and do a good job of it.

So, do people I mean do you work with them like before they hit the plan because like all these weddings do your camp?

Yeah, because I mean I imagine it would be kind of hard for people to just kind of

move on up and just be like, "Let me get married."

So, it's split. We do a few where people reach out ahead of time. If you want to get legally married, because I'm a California officient, I need time to do the paperwork. Nevada doesn't have a lot of rules, but they protect their local wedding industry. So, if if you want someone like me, a California officient, to marry you, you got to let us know ahead of time. I work closely with the Persian County Clerk. I don't think she's thrilled about dealing with the guy who literally on the wedding certificates legally, it says the assless chaplain at the Assis Chapel, but she does her job very well and she's very polite and nice and I adore her. I send her every year cards of the weddings that she solemnized or whatever certified my solificification, whatever it's called. Um, uh, so we do have people who plan ahead of time. Most of the weddings are people who walk by or were seeking someone out or wanted or knew they wanted to ahead of time but didn't reach out ahead of time. The problem with that is we do fill up really quickly. But like I said, like I I sit down with every couple and I ask them a lot of tough questions actually about their love, like what does love mean to you? Why are you doing this at Burning Man? And try and get to know them and try and, you know, in the 10 minutes I know them, write a few bullet points. And then I like honestly I have uh I always have two people assigned every year to making sure I have the right amount of all the different inputs to keep me, you know, like right amount of whiskey, oxytocin, let's say maybe a couple other things to like not be too messed up to marry them, but like be loose enough to be able to cuz you got to do some improv when you don't know the people, you know, like and um you know, the best thing is with mo the vast majority of the couples, not all, there's like a dynamic up there like on the altar when I'm talking to them that like we have an electricity going between us. I have to say like one of the cool things this year was there was a couple I won't say their names uh because they have conservative family members. But she and he were like, "Hey, let's take a picture together." You know, after the wedding, the wedding went great. It was beautiful. And I'm holding hands between them. And you could feel the electricity between them. I'm I'm not I'm not like a hippie- dippy dude, but I swear to you, I could feel like the love coursing through my body as a connection between the two of them. And it's beautiful and it's wonderful. And I just want us to have more people who can facilitate this. Uh for all the people who want want to have it happen, you know.

So, do you do like the weddings like actually like at your camp or is it you're just like you just kind of help people facilitate weddings just like all over the place?

We we So, we have a chapel, an actual chapel. That's why it's called Asus Chapel. So, most of the weddings happen at the camp. I won't do weddings outside of the camp unless people reach out to me before they get to the pla. It's it it's a lot, right? Like I have times for weddings. So, if you need me to ride out to something on D play to marry you, like that's a that's a big commitment, you know?

Yeah. Uh, and please don't do it at 4 pm, right? You know, like I do have it. Look, it's your wedding. In the end, in all likelihood, I'm going to go along with anything you want because I want you to have you're you're going to Burning Man to have the wedding you want, not the wedding that like your great aunt Rosa wants you to have. So, I'm going to go along with anything. But if you want to make it easy on an officient, don't do it on open pia at 4 or 5:00 p.m. Like that's brutal for us, you know.

Oh, just because of the the heat.

The heat. The heat. You got to write out and then you probably going back to do more weddings, whatever. Like or you just want to not be completely dehydrated. And for me, honestly, like I don't I don't at all get hammered during the weddings, but like I am going to have drinks just I've seen I've had my uh campmates review like there needs for me it benefits the couple if there's some amount of alcohol intake that's fine if I'm at camp and I'm having a few drinks and I you know have unlimited water. If I have to write out 5:00 PM dia like

you're you're really taken it out of me.

Yeah.

But again, if that's what you need, I promise you I'll do it. Like I will. It's your wedding. It's a once in a-lifetime thing. And if that's what you need for it to be like the thing you need, awesome. We're going to do it.

And I take it out there's like other people who do weddings on the planet, too. Do you guys like have like your own like little like wedding like network or Yeah.

So, like I said, there's a person called Armadillo who's a volunteer who answers the weddings at burningman.com email uh inbox and we'll put in touch with people. We certainly let people get married at the chapel. If they bring their own officient, if there's people there to work the bar, we'll open up a bottle of sparkling, whatever. Um, but you know, it depends what the person wants. Like, I mean, I've done all kinds of weddings. People who married themselves, throppples, one got married the streets. One dude showed up and wanted to be married to a puppet he made of himself. Uh, and you know, so like some weddings are like joke weddings and it's easy to do. But like, and I'll do those, but like my thing is people show up and they want a wedding that usually like here's the typical thing. They're like, "It's going to be a Burning Man wedding. It'll be kind of goofy, but there's some meaning to it." And I'm like, "No, m************. Everybody's going to cry. I'm going to get to know you as best as I can in the next 10 minutes, and I'm going to make a speech, and I'm going to call on people, and we are going to make everybody cry. And this is going to be something that strengthens your love that like you don't just remember as some Burning Man thing. But you're going to remember as like it's going to be something from Burning Man you take into the rest of your life. Like that is what I take a lot of pride in doing. It's honestly something that maybe something like being a dad or whatever, like what I'm best at in the world.

And um and and I love I love it. Like I I've had people who are like, "Hey, uh we need you to like fly to another we want you to do our legal wedding in front of our parents." You know, it's because they get the wedding they want and they realize they're going to have another wedding that isn't the wedding they want, but they can control who the offician is if it's not like a religious family.

Yeah.

They know they're going to have to like invite whoever's aunts, uncles, you know, whatever. Uh but they can control who the fish is. And so I've definitely done weddings for people outside of Burning Man who the connection is through Burning Man. Yeah. Wow. I've actually not been to a wedding at Bernie. I I think I've like walked past like people getting married, you know, but uh

it's hard it's hard not to walk past them. I mean, they happen out on the ply in

Can I actually had a lovely experience? Uh I was trying to run down a beautiful woman that I was looking after and I made a decision on the way. I saw this wedding and I was like, I don't see any sparkling. And I was like, look, I know I'm probably going to miss her, but what has to happen right now? I like ran back to my camp and grabbed some bottles of sparkling wine and just like went up to a random wedding guest and was like here and they look looked at me and they're like who's this crazy and they were like oh my god and I was like all right bye and never found the woman but that's fine you know like that wasn't what was meant to happen was meant to happen I was there to

do some little thing as an aicionado of weddings to improve the wedding you know

all right so let's move on so you actually talked a little bit about uh your life before Burning Man right growing up in Uh, Indiana. So, it's like rural Indiana or like actually like not in the city?

Basically suburban.

Yeah.

You know, much of the city of Indianapolis is basically the suburbs.

Yeah. And so, you now you're living in like California or something, right?

I live outside of a small town called Heelsburg in wine country in California.

Um, it's odd. Uh, you know, like this for me is a big thing even to say some of the things I said here because I'm a uh I guess you could say a layer religious leader maybe in the local Jewish community. Like I run the he like I'm I am the teacher for the local Hebrew school. I volunteer various times as like a volunteer financial guy for local schools. Um you know it's it's funny like outside of Burning Man I have this very you know like very like I won't say cookie cutter because it definitely isn't that but kind of like the things when you describe what makes an American, you know, like volunteerism and and I grow my own food and and things like that. Uh but I'm pretty open. Like my kids know what I do at Burning Man. Everybody I volunteer with does like

like the groups I volunteer with when I've had like high leadership roles will be like, "Oh, you we can't have like the retreat or the orientation this week because Gabriel is important to the organization. We'll be at Burning Man." You know, like and I've definitely shown up at stuff like covered in pia dust cuz was like they planned it for the day after I was supposed to get back and it was the mud burn so I got back like 2 minutes before you know um and I love that.

So was it Burning Man that got you to move to California out there or

Yes. Yes. but not directly. Um I was at Burning Man. So I traveled for a year after college mostly internationally and I decided I spend the last three months driving around the US and see my own country because I hadn't seen that much of it at all. And after morning, man. Like, I had some friends out in California in the little town I live in. I planned to visit for three nights and I was down by the Russian River is a river that flows through the town and I saw an an osprey catch a salmon in front of me and I was like, if that's not a sign, what am I doing with my life anyways? So, I never left. I was in ' 05, you know, planned to be here three nights and here we are uh 21 years later.

That's so funny. We have a number of parallels like like last year was 20 1 I took 13 years off to like raise my son and do other things with my life. You know, it's like that's the thing people need to realize. It's like Bernie man is not an all-encompassing thing. It's like life intrudes and you need to do other things, you know?

So, let's talk about two things. First of all, do you feel like it was really the right thing to take a full 13 years off uninterrupted?

I mean, I never really thought about it while I was happy.

You can think about it now,

but I mean, was it the right thing? I don't know. It was just the the thing, right? I mean, when I came back, I mean, I started getting involved or or like the local regional contact, you know, is a good friend of mine and and um he started bringing me back into like trying to like fold me back into like help him kind of get things going again because I I started the Hawaii regional group in like 2002 and we did like multi-day festivals like We did like every manner of things, you know, and then when I retired, I I passed it off and and there were it was in good hands, but then like slowly as time went by like and again like I was just kind of like out of it and I just was completely just not involved and you know Hawaii is a very expensive place. It's very transient you know so it just kind of passed from one hand to another hand and and then slowly over times things just kind of just fell off and then now there's just like hardly anything at all happening. So, I was kind of starting to get pulled back into the community maybe around like 2018, 2019, but then it kind of or maybe 2020, but it kind of took until 2024 until I actually like went back to the plan.

So, were you still a burner all of those 13 years?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, just like living my life. I mean, like I don't know. For me, it's like one of the the great if you're saying like of the 10 principles, like which one do you like the best or what? you know, like they're all kind of equal, you know, but like I guess gifting, you know, like for me it was always about like I would just kind of do things for people and they would just be like, why did you do that? You know, just be like because you needed help and that's just here you go. And they just be like, "Oh, let me do something for you." I'm like, "No, no, no."

And also sometimes it's not even you need help. I I definitely remember being in San Francisco and just was like, "I'll buy that guy's bottle of boo." You know, sometimes it's not because they need help, but because I needed to feel in touch with that part of me, right?

Yeah. Another thing I do is like I tell people like like you're at like a a crosswalk, right? And you're waiting and you know, everyone's just like they're just there like looking at their phone, you know, and it's like I I don't know. One of the lessons I learned from Bernie man is just like the immediiacy. I just kind of look over. I'm just kind of like hi like lock eyes and people kind of like h this person's saying hello to me, you know? I'm just like beautiful day, isn't it? Oh, light turns green anyway. See you later. you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

What just happened? Britain said hello to me.

So I the the past even just few days I was thinking about something like Burning Man is not a religion but in some ways it's analogous to a religion. And so I'm going to make an analogy. Burning man for me is to me being a burner like Christianity like Christmas is to a real Christian. So a real Christian Christmas is the thing you hang out with the most of your community of any of the holiday. It's the most fun, but it's also very big and spiritual. It's like when you really think about a lot of who you are, but it isn't what makes you a Christian. You can be Christian without celebrating Christmas, no problem, right?

Mhm.

It's just that's like your big holiday. I very much so think about it that way in terms of like what it means that I'm a burner and what Burning Man is in my life. Burning Man is my Christmas to the extent that being burner is like being a member of a religion in this case Christianity right like and you could whatever transpose that for any religion

I mean every religion I mean I always sort of as like like a fellowship kind of thing you know it's like what do people need is like you know they need this like human connection right and and so like and that's what like any community you know it's just like I mean it could be a temple it could be a mosque you know I mean it could be a church I mean it could be

yeah I mean I mean when you talk about that I mean obviously there's some differences right like if you're a Christian you have one principle which is I accept Christ as my Lord and Savior and that is a prescriptive principle you are told to do that I mean the difference to Burning Man is you have 10 principles and they are other than leave no trace they are all descriptive they they they contradict each other in fact to a great extent

oh yeah

so so it isn't dogmatic in that way but still like what makes you a burner is that you live those not that you go to Burning Man, you know, like going to Burning Man is your festival as a member of this group. It isn't what makes you a member of the group.

So, how has Burning Man impacted and influenced your life?

You you okay with us going another few hours?

You have, let's see, about 13 more minutes.

Oh, man.

Well, anyway, real briefly, like I was doing this thing on the ply this year. I was calling this Shadow Shorts where I was just like I was like, "Okay, I'm putting five minutes on the clock and this is my challenge to you. You tell me how Bernie man has like impacted your life. Go."

13 minutes isn't long enough. I don't know. Let me try and let me try and run through my brain real quickly. Um, first off, I think there's like the kind of material aspect of I I grew up uh as like the intellectual one of two brothers, whereas the other one was one with physical skills. And we both had the other skills, but it was just just kind of as immigrant kids like what we were pigeonholed into to some extent. So I I've always felt not confident with like the physical skills of so this really is a big self-reliance thing. Uh at Burning Man I learned I can I I kind of learned it anyways working on construction sites but like learned it you know at Burning Man I can not just do it for somebody else but do these things for me. I got to say like the 10 principles really do guide my life in a lot of ways. Uh I have to say I have more of an interest in art because of Burning Man, you know, and and I do lots of Burning Man stuff. I love going out to see Burning Man art. I love going to Burning Man parties. So, that's kind of like say call it like the uh bottom tier, the really obvious one. Uh I think there's an intellectual component. And so, a lot of this I don't think is that really relevant to my life and that like I see cityscapes differently, things like that. But like I'm not a city engineer, so it doesn't matter. But like one thing I'll say is there are things I've learned at Burning Man that it takes my life. Like I say, my burn is my burn. If I have camp mates that suck or I run somebody who's an a******, like no problem. That's all right. I'm doing my thing.

I still control my burns. I take that to my life. And I think there probably a lot of kind of concepts like that that people can grab on to. I think there's kind of an emotional component that Burning Man is a real kind of recharge for me and honestly a place where even though everything is so wild and crazy like It's so outside of anything else that I get to do more introspection than anywhere else. And maybe if we have time, I'll give you like an example from this year. But let me just say, I hate when people are like, "Don't make any big decisions for whatever it is, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, six weeks after burning." f*** you. Make your biggest decisions at Burning Man before the stupid voices in your head tell you otherwise. Now, do not just go for it. Make the decision and then come up with a plan to implement. in the real world. Don't just quit your job. If what you learned is you need to quit your job, come up with a f****** plan and at the right time then you're like, "Yeah,

but like don't wait for all the things that like keep you from listening to yourself to keep you from doing the thing you need because Burning Man is a great place to make drastic life decisions. Every drastic life decision I've made at Burning Man has been a good idea." Um, you know, and then when we're talking about the emotional, there's also just the the community, right? Like I I mean, I love going to see my burner friends, keeping even if I don't get to see him, keeping in touch. We have newsletters, we have little calls, whatever. Like, you know, so like this is why I I actually don't like the term default world because no, Burning Man is part of the real world. It's all the same s***. It's just something else we're doing that is in a context that's drastically different. And I'd say like there's even a spiritual component, you know, is Burning Man a cult is I don't know. What I do know is if I want to learn about sacred sexuality, Burning is a really good place to do that. If I want to find ways that like my Judaism intersects with things that are outside of Judaism, but allow me to strengthen the role that has in my life, Burning Man is a good place for inspiration from that, you know. So, so like I said, I I literally could talk for hours about this. You said we have 13 minutes, so so I'm giving like the really quick rundown on that. But I got to tell you, like this year, you know, I I spent over a year doing all the work I could to let go of um I'm just going to go for a Burning Man story. It's going to be a little bit long. I think it's a good way to explain things.

Sure.

I went to the Golden Cafe. There was someone behind the bar. Thought I knew who she was. Golden Cafe doesn't take uh photocopied IDs on the cup. She said, "I need a real world ID, like an actual ID." Said, "Why don't you look at my cup first?" She saw my name. Her and her husband, who is also behind the bar, were supposed to come out with Assas Chapel in 22, our founding year. They were supposed to marry them and they were supposed to be part of the camp. They unfortunately had a tragedy in the family and they literally flew to Chicago and then flew right back. I said, "Looks like this is the year we're going to marry you guys." Really amazing coincidence, right? This these kinds of things happen in Burning.

And you didn't know that they were going to be there?

No idea. Went back to my camp. to tell people and somebody showed up and was like, "Hey, Burning Man or has nominated you guys for best camp name on the Playa." Uh, Friday 6 PM uh awards ceremony at center camp. The wedding was 7:30 on Friday. I was like, "Oh, it's going to be a great Friday evening." Show up in my full assless chapel gear, thong, little lace things on my arms, bows in my hair, chaps, whatever. And Um, it turns out nobody knows what the f*** I'm talking about. This is just some random dude who said some s***, right? So, what do you do in that situation? I host an awards ceremony for ourselves cuz I had people from the camp show up. I'm not going to disappoint them. During that time, this woman takes a look at me. This woman, I saw her walk by while I was performing a wedding, so I couldn't run after her. And she was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Now, this is a big thing for me to have this song because for 18 years, the woman who's now my ex-wife life has been the most beautiful woman. I didn't think I'd ever see anybody who I said that about other than her, other than my ex. And and actually, I'm going to ask, will you bleep her name? I mentioned her name once. I haven't asked her if you name in the editing. I did once. Hopefully, you can bleep that. But anyways, um

not sure where that was.

So, I look at this woman and after the ceremony and like one of my campmates, stupid is like 100% he's crazy about her. I know his type. He's gonna And I I just like jump over whatever is in front of me and I'm like, "Hey, you look bored. We should hang out." She says, "Oh, I'm here for a twerk workshop." So, fast forward five minutes, I'm doing a twerk workshop, and I have as much ass as I have ability to twerk. So, this is going horribly for me. But, I just saw the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. So I I'm like, "Hey, come. I'm doing this wedding tonight. Why don't you come see a Burning Man wedding? It'll be really cool." She She's from Poland and she flies out on her own and camps on her own and open camping. So I am as turned on as possible because that is so self-reliant, right? I do the wedding. I I walk away and I tell stupid. I'm like 1% chance this woman comes start camp. But I had to even go for the 1% chance. Do the wedding. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's lovely. Stupid. comes to me and says, "Someone's waiting for you. It's her." I can't believe it. But here's the thing. The burning man God's given, they take away. They give you what you need, not what you want. There were four wedding guests. One of them was her ex-boyfriend. She saw him and ran away. Apparently, it was bad breakup. Something like that.

Never see her again. By the way, if anybody knows Alexander who camps on her own, is from Poland. Please put her in touch with me. I'd love to do a Zoom call sometime. Uh anyways, like what What did I what what did the Burning Man gods give me from that that I can fall in love with somebody else even though it's a very shallow falling in love and then that person might actually be interested in me too. Great takeaway. Next day I go to the temple because I don't go to the temple until I've done all the weddings because of mindset stuff, right?

I'm going with stupid and on the way to the temple I see a piece art I hadn't seen before and it's a ballerina. This is big to me because my ex I used to watch her dance ballet. I've loved ballet since I was 15. I used to watch her dance ballet before I never even met her. It's a big part of the beauty I have found in her. Uh she was honestly the greatest ballet performance I ever saw her do was at Black Rock City Ballet in 2010.

Spectacular on the Playa. Whole different story, but just heartendingly beautiful, right? Clearly the temple's telling me something right before I even get there. Now, last year I wanted to write something in the temple about her and I breaking up and all all I got was out was the word love. So all that burnt with the temple was me writing the word love. Not a great thing. This year I knew exactly what to write. Burning man told me and it was the first love of my life because that was the thing I had to let go of. It was wonderful but I had to let go of it and prepare myself to be the right person to find the second hopefully last love of my life.

I know I'm very traditional for Burning Man. I don't talk about the second and last ask but um you know so like when we talk about the like that's a huge thing to take away I have to tell you I was in pain and anxiousness every day over this loss in my life and that moment it was like a snap it shows the importance of ceremony and ritual like we can get rid of religion but humans aren't meant to be without ceremony and ritual and like that ceremony and ritual clearly there's something in me but it just needed that catalyst to get there And some people might have church. I don't know how it is for those folks. I've never had anything like Burning Man do that for me.

Wow, that's beautiful.

Were you looking Were you looking for a way to land the plane? Because I feel like

Well, I thought that you were going to like be like, "Oh, yeah. And I'm now with the Polish girl and she's like she's going to come in the frame." It's like, "Hey, Andy."

It would have been the right thing, right? Like if if what I did was just run from one feeling to the next, that wouldn't have been the right thing.

Ah, well, Always hope for the future.

Plenty for sure.

Maybe next year in the planes.

I mean, I go to Burning Man every year. What an incredible place to meet incredible people.

So, do you see yourself uh continuing to go or you think at some point you're just going to be like, "Ah, I've had enough."

I mean, I don't know. Like, if I'm on oxygen at some point and I can't handle plyodust, I'll just be a burner without Burning Man. But yeah, to the extent that I can, you know, things can come up in life, but no, I have every intention to go back every year. It's such an important thing to me. such an it it's crazy because when I my first burn it was so much about the partying and of course Burnman is still this wild place but

for me there's no more stabilizing anchor in my life

other than my kids which are more quotidian anchor but like in terms of like where my soul is uh there's nothing I can imagine like Burning Man to like anchor me bring me to a calm and considered place of who I am which sounds insane even to me because I go pretty hard at Burning Man to be honest. Yeah, I'll put it I'll say this. Adriana, her thing was piss clear.

Mhm.

Literally had people from neighboring camps be like, "You should go to medical because I've never seen green urine." Had people try and keep me from dumping my piss jug out in the portaotti because they're like, "Only pee goes in there." And I'm like, "I I go hard. Don't know what to tell you. It's not supposed to be this. color, but it is.

At least it's not red.

At least it's not red. That's a good point. I would have gone to medical if it was red.

Wow. Well, I think we've gone the full hour and 15. Thank you so so much. This has been a wonderful interview.

Thank Thank you. I honestly feel like you've somehow like carved a little face on the Mount Rushmore of Burning Man luminaries and I appreciate it. Hey,

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