EP 84 Will Roger

Episode 84 with Will Roger is out now! Meet Will Roger, a co-founder of the Burning Man event, who reflects on the gathering's evolution from a small, anarchic camping trip into a global cultural movement. Roger details the early challenges of organizing in the Black Rock Desert, including the legal and logistical hurdles of designing a temporary city and the transition from a chaotic "zone trip" to a structured nonprofit organization. Central to the conversation is the transformative power of the desert landscape, which Roger suggests strips away societal conditioning to foster a state of awe and human harmony. He explores the event's deeper purpose as a metabolic lab for sustainable living, aiming to inspire a shift in human consciousness toward environmental stewardship and communal gifting as an alternative to corporate capitalism.

IG: @willroger1

Photo credit:

https://norfolkpress.com/habitat-annihilation-will-roger/

https://flyranch.burningman.org/

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Transcript

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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 have been rearranged. That changes what this show is all about. You'll see the impact of Burning Man 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. Well, Boy, howdy. It's that Andy. Today our guest is Will Roger. Welcome, Will.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Yeah. So, yeah. So, this is our uh season premiere. Uh my season starts in August. Uh cuz I only started the show in 2024. Um and so, yeah. So, you're going to be this the big the first show of uh season 3, actually.

Wow, what an honor.

Well, thanks for being my guest. So, so where does it all start? for you. So, how did you even first find out about Burning Man and how did you get involved?

Well, I was um uh living in Oakland.

Okay.

I was a photographer um uh and I had an open studio uh at my studio in Oakland and uh Crimson Rose walked in and we immediately hit it off and and she had been to Burning Man and she told me about it and I didn't really want to go, you know, I that first year was 19 uh 93. Yeah. And I I didn't want to go I I was a a very skilled at camping. I I I'd camped all over the the the country. I walked the Sierra Nevada Crest Trail and

wow

the Appalachia Trail and uh did a lot of hiking and climbing in the White Mountains in the New Hampshire. And

uh so I was used to camping where there were trees and streams and and the desert did not interest me at all. It it seemed like a place that I really didn't want to go camping. So I said no. That first year I said no. So she went and she took my 4x5 camera and a tripod and came back with with pictures that I developed in my dark room. And this is all before digital cameras. And um and that's what I was skilled at. So I got to look at some of her pictures and realize that I had missed something that that this was maybe a gathering of the right people, you know, at the right time. And and so the next year, 1994, I I went and um I immediately Uh, I took my shoes off and and uh the playa was not gentle on my feet and I got all cut up and got pa foot and and u ended up in a camp called uh the Lake Lhatan Yacht Club which is one of the first theme camps.

Uhhuh.

These were guys that came out from uh mostly Tahoe Lake Tahoe with their boats and they camped in their boats. If you think about it, a boat on a trailer is actually a pretty cool camp. So, that's what they were doing. And, you know, they

Wow.

they uh they were very um uh smooth about the way they did things and the way they can't. And they set me in a chair and they put horse bomb on my feet. And while I was laying back in the chairs, I looked around and I saw the mountains and I realized that, oh, this is not just a a big flat expanse, which was miraculous in its own right, but

but this place had interest. It had mountains and it had it had valleys and, you know, places that I really wanted to explore.

So, that first year I got a little taste of the harshness of the Black Rock Desert and um I also got a little taste of the wonderment um the the magic that that could happened there and I ended up having a great time. We stayed a few extra days. We drove around a little bit, came back to Oakland and and uh you know continued my my life there kind of dreaming of next the next year like what

I couldn't wait to go out again.

So you just took your shoes off and never put them back on again or just

walking around barefoot.

I don't do that anymore. I

The playa is not kind on some people's feet and I'm one of those people. And

yeah, then try to put your boots back on and you're like, "How come the shoes are small now?"

Yeah. So, so we we ended up um going the next year and I volunteered. I worked for John Law and uh we did uh some trips back and forth uh in his van to to get some supplies out. But back then, we didn't really build a city or anything. We just uh drew a circle in the the desert. the man stood at the center of that and and call it a day, you know. And it was really cool because back then

uh the participants pulled the man up.

Mhm.

The man was laying his feet were on hinges and we we pulled him up with a big tugboat rope

which I think is still around that rope.

Yeah.

And it was kind of like the it was one of the rituals that sort of sat with me as as formative in community building like like when you get a bunch of people together and you have them work on on something. I think Larry would describe it as hardship. When when a a group of people experiences hardship together, they create community. And and I think we did a lot of little things back then that that began to create a community. Um and one of them was pulling the man up and and um back then it was a camping trip. It was just a camping trip and it was the right people, people that were part of the cacophony society and the ziness of of uh living outside of mainstream stream culture and we were um we were stirring the cultural pot and a parody was a lot of who we were.

We made fun of everything and you couldn't escape it, you know. So, one of the first theme camps I remember was uh Christmas camp.

Christmas camp. Yeah.

Everybody dressed up as Santa Claus and getting really drunk and and hurling obscenities at everybody who walked by.

Well, I want to know how did they find eggnog and and this was like what Memorial Day or something back then?

No, back then it was Labor Day. It

still was Labor Day

when the event moved from

from Baker Beach. It was Memorial Day, right? Yeah.

Yes. When it moved to the Black Rock Desert, it moved to Labor Day.

But still finding eggnog Labor Day.

I think maybe people were making it themselves. You know, it's not hard to make. So,

or did they plan ahead like in like December? They're like, I'm going to buy apple and all these eggnogs and throw them in the freezer and keep them for nine months.

But, but there was some, you know, planning ahead. People were beginning to to develop little camps. There was white trash camp and it had like broken down appliances and

and stuff scattered around. You know, there was um it was a military camp, Joe Fenton. He had a army tent and a generator and an air conditioner and it it

the noise of the generator drove everybody crazy.

Um and you know, we we were armed, we had guns, we had drugs, we had you know, we we were dangerous. It was dangerous back then. You know,

the drive by shooting range was part of it. Uh there was um just the edge. There was an edge to it that felt really comfortable for some people and not so comfortable for others. And that edge exists today. It still exists. There's an edge.

Um and it has to do with freedom. People exhibiting freedom. in a way that that is tangible and and uh people really being themselves, their authentic selves and and and I think the Black Rock Desert brings that out.

Um and certainly the intention of Bernie man brings that out. So

so there's an art spirit to it that is part of the fringe of culture which is really important I think to see it burning.

So I think nobody really took themselves too serious. Seriously back then?

Oh, no. We made fun of everybody. Larry was often the target of of a lot of the shenanigans that went on, you know. Uh there were some other good characters back then. Flash uh uh he uh he was there. Uh

was he selling burgers or something?

Guys like Joe

Fenton.

Um these were I there a lot of those people people are long gone and I've forgotten their names and

and I you know I'm I'm getting old so I I have an excuse. So

So but but it was a a remarkable group of people that that were well we we were not mainstream culture. We were we were we made fun of that.

We saw it for the lie that it is. We we we basically uh were authentic, were very real, everybody was very real, and we weren't afraid to take uh paradoxical shots at each other. I mean, it's it's sort of the way we we we lived.

Well, it's kind of the the nature of like who even went out there to begin with, you know, in the cacophony society. I mean, these aren't like, you know, young Republicans or like, you know, the ladies auxiliary.

No. a bunch of like artists from like the Bay Area who like they want to you know the whole like the the the danger ranger Michael Michaels like you know ritual like creating the line and stepping over it is like you know you're going into this so you're creating this this new environment right

well don't don't we all create our own reality I mean we we really do that and and there's a lot of power in that once you figure it out uh most people don't ever figure it out and they get uh conditioned by by a diseased culture basically and become

part of that. You know, the idea is to live a little bit above that, beyond that.

And and uh I think everybody that was out there early, most everybody had that in their DNA. It was part of who they were. So it was very real and and and you never knew what was going to happen next, which was exciting. So there was an excitement to it. And that that not only what the humans would do, but what mother nature would do. You just never knew what was going to come along. I mean, within a half an hour, a thunderstorm can come up on the Black Rock Desert and and dump an inch of rain and all of a sudden, you wish you had a boat, you know? I mean, that can happen out there. It's it's part of uh the power of the place.

And also, it's an unusual large blank canvas, so there's no real reference. you you you sort of need like once you put your tent up, you have at least a frame of reference and something that is higher than the desert.

But when you're out there alone, it's it's awesome because

it it's just the largest flat expanse in North America.

What I found amazing was like my first year is 96 and um we kind of got a little bit lost trying to get there cuz you know we went out to the road and was like, "Okay, point your compass in this degree and then go." And when looked at my brother and was like, "Did you bring a compass?" And he's like, "No, did you bring a compass?" And so we're following this train of cars. And there's all this D, you know, and so it's big plume cuz everyone's driving super fast. So we're like, "Let's just go outside the line of cars and we can be able to see where they're going." And of course, everyone just sort of split off in every different direction. So before long and what I'm getting to is like just the beauty of like being out in the middle of where like You see a 360° like the heat mirage and you could see the mountains. You could see the immediate playa at your feet, but like the whole middle range was it was all just like heat mirage.

You can actually see the curvature of the earth. I mean, it's it's a pretty bizarre place. So, when you're when you're driving out there, when there's nothing out there, um you navigate like you do in a small airplane without instruments. You dead wreck. So you look at the mountains, you see the shapes and as they go by they change and you that's how you get around.

Um it's a unique place for that because you don't get that on land much. You get it on on the ocean,

you know, or when you're flying, but you don't get it in your car usually. And it's really easy to get lost, especially at dawn or dusk because the lights of the There's a gold mine and there's Gerlac and they have lights and they It'll sometimes merge with the stars

and so you don't really know where the horizon is and it's very easy to get lost.

Yeah. The one piece of advice remember that first year people were saying like when driving around don't follow other people's tire tracks.

Oh, especially if they stop.

Yeah. Because I remember we're trying to go to the hot springs one time and then like all were like, "Well, they're all the tire tracks. They're all going the same direction." But then over time they all kind of split off and I could tell my brother was like You know, I was like, we're pointing toward this mountain and then all a sudden see him veering off like no, no, no, back to the left. It's like

Yeah. If all the tire tracks split off, you want to back up. But if they all come together, that's what you want to follow.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's how you make roads out there. So,

well, I'm sure like after the rains in the winter time, like the roads are all gone then, right?

Oh, no. There there's uh there's three main roads. East track, middle track, and west track. And they've been driven. So, much that they're worn in and they're on maps. You can see them on maps.

Yeah. And isn't there like historical like um trails that like the early settlers used?

Yeah. The immigrants came through. There's the um glass.

Hold on. Okay. I'm on a Zoom call. Crimson, you just got on the call.

Hey, Crimson. It's Andy.

Hey, Crimson. It's Andy.

Wow. Well,

okay. Thank you.

Yeah, we we uh our place here is two acres, so we use radios.

There's three buildings. So, we use radios to communicate with each other.

Oh, that's good.

It's kind of a little safety thing.

Yeah. Now, I live about an acre and we're always kind of yelling back and forth. I'm like, is that my wife yelling. H

you should get little handheld radios. It makes it easy.

I don't know. He can just ignore it at your peril. Didn't you hear what I said?

Well, when you get to be my age, a lot of your conversations are what?

What

exactly? So, when you first went in 94, there must have been what, like just a few hundred people?

I think it was a thousand, maybe 2,000 people

in 94. 94. Um, yeah. 2000 and 95 was 4,098. 96 was 8,000 and 97 we thought we would get uh 16,000, we got 12,000. So it it, you know, it it doubled in size every year.

So 93 was like a thousand,

92 was 700 and

was 700 like 500 90 1990 was 70.

Yeah. Yeah.

So doubled in size until 97.

So if it's doubling in size then at a bare minimum at least half the people must be coming for the first time. Right.

Yeah. Exactly. And they they were bringing that energy you know probably a little more than But they were bringing that that that awe energy, you know, where everything looks awesome, right?

Mhm.

And uh you're experiencing awe, which is something that our our culture lacks. We're trained not to see the awe. In fact,

we're dumbed down. And and when you go to the to Burning Man for the first time, your brain doesn't know how to describe it. So your inner voice stops and you're in that that place of awe. And Burning Man still does that. It still does that to especially the new people. But I still get it when I go out and this is this will be my 32nd year.

So

yeah, I think it's just also just like that.

I don't know. I mean I I think like going to a place where it's just like just about anything is possible, you know, cuz like In our regular lives, we're just so contained and there so many times people just tell you it's like, "Oh, you can't do that." Or, you know, "Don't do that." Or, you know,

when Danger Ranger drew drew that line in the in the dirt and had people step across it, that was that's a metaphor of what really happened. It it it it basically when once you go out to the Black Rock Desert and you're among a whole bunch of like-minded people, people with the intention of transformation, of change, of of the power of art, the power of community, the power of nature all at once.

You go into awe. You go into, oh my god, this is amazing, you know, and and and that's what keeps bringing people back, you know, because you you get that and you don't get it anywhere else. You don't get it in the in the concrete glass. steel things we call built cities. You don't get it there.

Yeah.

You're often several stores stories away from standing on the ground.

In fact, in some cities, you can't really stand on the ground. It's all concrete and steel, you know.

So, you get to leave that and all and your body needs this connection to the earth and you get that connection at birth.

You get connected. You get you get uh cosmic energy. you know, the energy of the universe, the energy of of the solar system, the energy of the earth.

I think also just the energy of possibility too because like you say, the first step is like awe and you see like, wow, look at this. But then I think the second step is like, well, wait a minute, what can I do,

right?

I watch I've watched the art develop over the years, you know, it was just a a couple of things at first and then people would experience those things and go and go, next year

I can I can do better. You know,

it sparks something in there, right? Yeah.

Or, hey, this is amazing art. Maybe I could make some art.

You know,

also inspires people, gives them an idea like, oh, I could do that or I I have a bet something better. Yeah.

And also there the same thing happens with community. Like often we live very isolated lives. We're in our little rooms and and we don't really interact in a in a heartfelt way with our fellow man. It's often convenience and and storytelling in a very mundane way. And you you know we we don't really we don't really have that that connection that you get at Burning Man.

I mean after the first storm, everybody's the same color. You're all tan,

you know.

Yeah.

And your tennis blown down and you can't put it back up by yourself. So, people all around you come to help and then you start helping them and all of a sudden you see how humanity should be living on the planet, you know.

Yeah.

You know,

and so that that's the power of the place and the power of the intention that people bring there.

Yeah.

And that's what Bernie man does. It it creates that sense of community, um that sense of awe, that sense of of artistic creation that is missing very much in in our everyday lives.

Oh yeah.

Not so much in my life. I mean I've built a life here in Gerlac where I can experience those things and it's been very deliberate to do that. I I fell in love with the desert. I you know I started this story talking about seeing the mountains

for the first time. Well, I've spent the last 25 years or more. are exploring and and finding out what's out here. And I live here with Crimson.

We we have a place on the edge of a small town, town of 120 people. And and um I can take my my ATV out my back gate and go right on the public land. I can go all the way to Oregon if I want, all the way to Pyramid Lake. And and uh it's all incredible nature. here. You know, I'm surrounded by it.

So, did you just get bitten by it?

Yeah. So, you just got bitten by it immediately. You mean you said you're living in Oakland, never even thought of never wanted to go to the desert and then uh

it it smitten.

It bit me. Yeah. It I got snake bit by the desert and and I love it. And there's no um there's no remedy for it. Yeah. I have to be here. So, I'm kind of recluse. I I live here. I have a a dog and two cats and six chickens and I grow fish. I have an aquaponic system where I grow medical marijuana and my fish fertilize the plants and

and it's a self-contained system and and it it it it takes a little bit of care every day. So, I have my chores. I get up in the morning and I deal with the chickens and I run my dog and I feed the fish and I do

What kind of fish? Cuz I was doing a a Tilapia. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I grow medical marijuana and peppers and so the fish are in a big tank and then every hour a pump pumps the affluent through the main bed that has a medium in it where the plants grow.

And right now I'm growing um peppers, a really good strain of medical marijuana called Royal Highness. I've got um in one of the other beds I've got beets and Swiss chard and potatoes and tomatoes and I grow I grow some flowers. So I've got maragolds because they help with the with the system and and the tilapia. After about a year I harvest them

and and I marinate them in the the peppers that they're s*** fertilized

and then I I I put them in a smoker. So we have smoked tilapia.

Oh wow. which which we I got some in the freezer right now.

So the fish poop in the water and then that water circulates through and then that like fertilizes the plants and then the plants kind of clean the water.

It also filters the water. Yeah. So the fish always have good water and the plants always have good fertilizer and um the there are some you know drawbacks. One of them is it's an indoor system

and it's controlled You know, I've got a a heat pump on it. So, it's in a climate controlled area

and there's no pollinators.

So, because I don't have pollinators indoors, I can only grow certain things. So, tomatoes do really well, peppers do really well. They're self-pollinating. But things like squash and watermelons and stuff like that, uh, I've tried it and I've tried to learn how to pollinate it, but I

Yeah. Little brush. Yeah.

I wasn't very good. good at it. Yeah. So, I never really got anything to harvest with with plants that need pollinators

and to keep the the bugs down in there. You know, spiders get in and white flies. I I buy uh uh ladybugs and I let them loose.

Oh, okay.

Every couple of months I'll buy

And you still have to feed the fish, too, right?

I feed the fish every day. Yeah. That's the morning thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Wow. I mean, but also I mean, because it gets cold there, right? I mean, in the It snows and I mean it must be

Yeah. So it's it's on a it's in a greenhouse that's climate control.

So I keep the greenhouse at 70 degrees.

Okay.

So I take it you didn't move out there like you know. So you first go in 94 and then all a sudden 95 we're like screw you Oakland

95 I volunteered with John Law

um setting up a little bit of infrastructure. We put a scaffolding up. Um that was part of my job and and a generator with a with a percolator coffee pot. So that was the first center camp cafe and uh terrible coffee, loud noise, it was just weird. Uh we put a parachute over the the scaffold and that didn't hold up in the wind so good. So

we learned in 95 I I uh did the same thing and put up the first spires. Uh we made four. So the first prominade was in 95

and I put up four spires.

And then in 96 they made four more. So there was eight spires

and the prominade was longer and I I brought in a couple of friends Jason and Tony Perez Benet who

Yeah.

And uh they came in and they were going to help me but they were tripping when they got got there.

Yeah.

And Tony tells that story

in his book.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so they were supposed to help me and I'm like, "Oh jeez, I got to do this again."

Built to burn.

Yeah.

And uh and anyway, we uh we managed to get the Spires up and 96 was your first year,

so you can probably tell stories about that. But 96 felt dangerous.

Yeah. 96 had a danger level that you could

you could almost feel like you were bumping into it.

Yeah.

It was it was tangible. And that's because there was a lot of speed and a lot of guns

and people were just driving all over the place. I mean, there's no restrictions.

There was no camp plan. People were driving at high speed. The the one car drove through a tent that had people in it and

yeah,

their lives forever. And that bec became a lawsuit.

I remember

that was floating around. It went from desk to desk on all the the cooperators, you know, for the event.

And when we applied for a permit for 97, uh that lawsuit was on the desk of the Winnamaka district manager and he said, "No, you're not getting a permit this year."

So Larry and I took a road trip. We went all over the state of Nevada looking for a suitable place to hold the event. Um that someplace other than the Winnamaka District Office,

but we found a place actually down in Goldfield. There's a beautiful little pla down there and we were going to hold the event there. I I'm sorry that we didn't in some ways because it would have changed it.

Um certainly it was a lot closer to LA so we would have tapped into to a larger population, you know, cuz most people were coming from San Francisco driving, right?

Yeah.

And the ply itself down there was alien. It was like amazing.

Wonderful. Now, good thing that we didn't because as the city has grown, that pla wouldn't have been big enough.

And we got we got railroaded out of uh Goldfield. They didn't want the the heathen pagans coming into their Christian town, you know, so sort of got voted out and

and then we didn't know where we were going to hold it and a guy named Andy Pector

um had some friends that were the stewards of the Fly Ranch. Fly Ranch was owned by a notorious cowboy named John John Casey and the largest land owner in the West.

Yeah.

And his niece had the idea, well, let's let's let Bernie man do the the event on Fly Ranch and we'll make big bucks and and u and and you know it was sort of like their idea that they could charge us, you know, for various services and

and so we quickly put together a plan to do uh the event on the fly ranch. And a good friend of mine, the guy who lived upstairs from me in Oakland and also owned the building was Rod Garrett.

Oh, yeah.

And Rod Garrett was a designer. I I worked with Rod. I worked for Rod. I was a contractor. He was the designer. So, he would design something for somebody and hand me the design and a materials list and I would go load it up and build it. So, I was building decks and pergolas and, you know, different things in uh in the Bay Area. So, um different places around the Bay Area.

Um and so I asked Rod, I said, you know, the county is requiring that we have a plan, that we have a city plan, that we have numbered campsites and they wanted it like a KOA and you know, so I said, "Rod, draw me a city plan." And I hung up the phone. Back then, you know, I had an office office in Empire. After the 96 event, when when the Cacophony Society split from Burning Man, Larry uh after the BLM meeting where the Cacophony Society said that there would be no Burning Man ever again, Larry looked at me and winked and said, "Will, will you be head of Desert Operations for next year?" And I said, "Sure." Because, you know, Desert Operations was drawing a circle and and putting up something. It was in having a beer. I mean, it was it was like

the easiest job you could possibly have. And I said, "Sure." So then all this stuff happened and we got pushed into Wo County on Wo County and they had a festival permit. Now these festival permits were affectionately known around the country as anti-woodstock festival permits.

Do they have like a lot of stipulations? Like just jump through all these hoops.

105 stipulations that you had to honor because they did. No one had ever applied for the permit before because it was so rigorous that no one could could follow it. No one could could pull it off and we were required to apply for it. So the commissioners had us in their pocket basically.

Wow.

And and so Uh, part of the permit was that we had a city plan. I called Rod. I said, "Rod, design me a city." He calls me back two years, two weeks later, says, "I couldn't sleep. I've never designed a city before." He goes, "And really not very many people have ever designed a city. They mostly happen organically, right?" And so, you know, and it's true, most cities do happen organically. If you think of the title city designer, do you know anybody with that title?

Urban planning, right? I mean, I'm sure

urban planning, but not city designer. So,

maybe in China, you know, some of those like mega cities.

Look at I'm stretching it. So, anyway, anyway, Rod uh sent me some plans. We went back and forth. I rejected a whole bunch of them because I couldn't um I didn't have a surveyor. I didn't know how to survey really. I knew how to line of sight things

and I knew how to use a rangefinder and I knew how to do some stuff, but I didn't know how to make like large sweeping curves and and stuff, you know, like that. So, so I basically settled on a rectal linear uh city plan for 97 that Rod designed and and I built it

u with a very uh desert ready but unprofessional workforce. So basically I couldn't pay anybody. Tickets were 30 bucks back then. So we didn't have any cash flow. Um

and the sheriff took it all. Right.

And the sheriff did take it all in in 97.

Yeah.

Um that's another story that's later.

Yeah.

So we we basically had a crew of volunteers and and what I what I could do is feed them. You know, I I put a lot of this stuff on my own credit cards and basically was able to build the city with a crew of people that basically lived under bridges or had PSTD or or I had some really good veterans.

Mhm.

Had nightmares at night, but during the day they worked hard. They were great, you know. And I had uh a circus came in,

Chicken John and his

underground circus

and ended up pulling it off, you know, and it 97 was a miracle that we actually pulled it off. And then after everybody got there, we had collected like $300,000 and and u 10,000 people at 30 bucks each. Yeah, that's about right. And so the sheriff, Sheriff Kirkland, flew in on these stealth helicopters, landed near the box office, came out with a SWAT team, and literally one of the guys picked me up and I'm a big guy and he picked me up and threw me out the door. They collected all the money and left.

They at least have the the nicities to say like this is a robbery.

No, they they felt fully empowered, you know, and so they ended up paying uh inflated payments to their own services. So fire and medical and the the county service all got paid

and all of that was overkill for our event. They had too many people, too much equipment to, you know, it was all related and they gave us back $40,000 uh like a year later. So that meant for the next year 98, we had to start planning our ticket sales and creating cash flow in a way that would allow us to be able build the city of the Black Rockck Desert. So in 98, uh Rod Garrett designed what I considered to be the most beautiful city plan of all the Burning Man events. It was the 98, if you look up the 98 plan, it went from 4:00 to 8:00, not 2:00 to 10:00.

So it was more open and and it uh it was in degrees. It was not in uh Yeah. Yeah. It

was all in degrees and and it was very beautiful. And um that was down near Gerlac. So So that was two miles from Gerlac. In fact, if you wanted a beer, you could walk to Bruno's from the event site.

I got to build that. And that's the year that I started the department to the department of public works.

We would start we started getting more uh more, you know, good people. We started to get some really good people that people that were dedicated to Burning Man and dedicated

to building the city. And

uh all of a sudden, I couldn't do everything. Tony couldn't do everything. And so we started to make departments. So we we developed a transportation department, a cleanup crew, you know, we had trucking, we we had uh uh Roie Jonas came in uh a contract from California

and he brought our first equipment. He came in with a with a backhoe and a bucket loader and and uh we trashed it. I mean, we we worked that equipment pretty hard, but Rody's still a good friend. He he's this uh uh he has a solar company. He he installs

solar in off-grid situations.

So like so from like 1990 to 1996 it was pro it was more are just kind of organic, right? I mean,

it was a camping trip.

Yeah. So, it was like a cacophony society. I mean, Larry I mean I the first like the zone trip out was kind of a cacophony event like featuring Larry Harvey and his his Burning Man or whatever.

Great.

Like Yeah. But it was it was just like saying like it's more organic like I think like John Law and did was involved in a lot of like the logistics and the back end trucks and things like that.

John uh basically trained me in many ways on

Yeah. in the desert and how to get things done. I mean,

but he didn't have much to do. Let me put it that way.

Uh after the 97 event, we had a lot to do.

But in 96, there was like the big kind of split, right? And so then going forward, I mean, that was a justosition in time, right? Because I think like John Law, he liked I think he liked it smaller or he just kind of looked a little more communal and not as bureaucratic.

I agree. There was a charm to that, you know? I mean, his one of his good friends got killed just before the events started. Michael Fury.

Fury. Yeah.

And I think that really tainted John's experience um in many ways. And and uh certainly it affected all of us. I mean, but but you know, they were it was just a guy on a motorcycle being playful at night on the desert. I mean, you know, there there's a bumper sticker that says, "Help keep Burning Man potenti fatal. I mean I mean that's one of my favorite things because life life is fatal.

I mean no matter what the only thing you have to look forward to really is your death. I mean life is fatal.

You look forward to the life that you live and live a good life and and be alive and all of that, but ultimately you can't take any of it with you. You you're you're going to die.

And so death for me death is never been this awful tragedy that you cry about. U and and I get criticized for that sometimes because I don't just not in my DNA.

What I want to do is celebrate their life.

So the people in Michael Fury's camp did that at Burning Man. There was a celebration of life and that made more sense to me than carrying the burden of feeling responsible for it.

Yeah.

You know, in some certain way. We all were responsible because we all came to the desert to to party, to play, to be artists, to to experience life in its fullest.

But in that there is also death.

Yeah.

It happens. And and it's it's it's not it's not a tragedy.

We make it a tragedy by the way by by the guilt that we bring to it or whatever by the emot But even now, like all these years later, it's like, you know, I think some people might say like, "Oh, Bernie man's kind of sound sanded off a lot of the like the rough edges where it's like, oh, it's a lot safer now." But there still is that danger. And I think some people might kind of put that out of their head like, "Oh, you know, I'm taken care of now." But it's like you you still can die. You know, they still look at the back of the ticket and still you can trip over a tent stake and

fall off a platform and like head first onto a piece of rebar. I mean, you know, it it's so much,

you know. I mean, I'm I'm 78 years old and every time I walk out into the backyard, I realize it could be my last one.

Yeah. One bad step. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, it's it's it's a dangerous place because it's it's temporary and it's uh sort of put together. kind of quickly and

and uh you just have to be careful if you want to survive it.

Yeah.

And you you have to be um resilient and you have to be um aware your awareness and your consciousness. Also probably large quantities of alcohol should not be consumed

in a desert drying. I'm a good one because

because I had an experience out there

uh because of alcohol and I became sober and I've been sober for 20

Oh, wow.

23 years.

Wow. Congratulations. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, no, I think that that's kind of a a cycle or a thing I've been noticing quite a lot of burners cuz like I have a similar trajectory like Brain Man was always is this experience with like me and my my older brother and like we've been partners in crime and and Bernie man all these years and yeah when we were in our 20s we got there like drank a lot partied had a good time and then like as we got older you know like we kind of diverge you know my brother kept going and I kind of started weaning off and then after a while like you know he kind of realized he was an alcoholic and that you know had to stop and so now like many years later it's like we're thinking of like reviving our old camp that that was this like 247 just drinkathon, you know, but we're like, we love the camp, we love the aesthetic, but we're like, well, what do we have other than alcohol? And so, we came upon a uh like a alcohol-free camp. And so, we still have the same like bar and the same design, everything, but just just no alcohol. And we and we made these like really simple, beautiful, like fruity like drinks with like a lot of soda water, you know? And so, it's like you can still have a good time and then you can still go to bed. and actually wake up in the morning. Yeah. And have a good day.

What happened? I mean, that's the key for me.

There's a whole part of Burning Man for me that I don't remember well

because I I was a a a drunk, you know,

and uh

I was functional. I I was a binge drinker. So, usually on Saturday night, Friday and Saturday night, I would

I would let loose and black out and become a different person. And and then I couldn't be responsible. responsible anymore for what that different person was doing.

And then I realized that I didn't want to be irresponsible. I mean, it just I I couldn't I couldn't have that dark cloud following me around anymore.

Yeah.

And so I I haven't had a drop to drink in 22 years. And

Wow.

And I do do pot. I I like psilocybin mushrooms.

I do that and and that's fine. Um

Well, how was it Also with like back in the early days of Bernie man like the the gun culture, you know? So I'm just imagine combining the two things. It's like the alcohol, the drugs, and the guns. It's like doesn't seem like a good combination.

Oh, it's a dangerous combination. Um, you know, it it was also a lot of fun. I mean, it was it was zany and and wild and and uh

but nobody ever shot at each each other. No.

No. No. There was no that um I had people shooting at each other in one of my camps

really.

Um u that was early on and at some point everybody in my camp had guns, you know, and there was no rules against it. We were cowboys in Nevada and so what one guy, Cowboy Bob, who tried to die every day, it seemed like he he he was he's still around and he's amazing. And but he was the hardest working guy, but at night he would drink and then he'd get out his gun and start shooting it into the air and nobody could sleep. It was like stupid. And so what I did was I built a I took Roy's bucket loader and built a little burm, you know, out out away from the camp that you could shoot into and not have bullets scattering in the around. And I declared a rule that there would be no um gunplay except on Sunday mornings and it would be our church and so it got named choir practice.

That's awesome.

So we would all go shooting on Sunday morning and choir practice is a name that we still use if we want to go shooting. So I've got friends in Reno that say, "Hey, let's do fire fire choir practice." And uh they'll drive up and there's a couple of shooting ranges here. we go to the ship.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. I know there was this one scene in Coyote's book Built to Burn um where I was like 98 or at some point, but you guys were all like in the commissary or early commissary. And so I was like two people having a dispute and so one person just like put their gun like out on the table and and then like you left and came back and you put your gun on the table and then like everyone kind of kept going and then you're all eating just like in silence but like just putting like guns on the table.

Good story. That was the That was maybe the the calmst, most polite breakfast we ever had.

I mean, would you bring that back or you just go like because I'm You said like, "No, no more guns at breakfast."

You know, I have a funny relationship with guns. Um, you know, it's an invention that got made and and there. We use guns for a number of different things. Uh uh protection is one.

Murder is another, you know, and and hunting game is another.

And target practice is another. Just

fun of it. And I fall into that last group of of target practice. Um I I I don't ever think it's the gun that's the problem. People like to blame the gun. It's an invention. It's it's something that's part of our toolbox in many ways.

It's always the person that's holding the gun that's the problem. And and so I've dedicated my life to try to help people raise their consciousness to a level where guns aren't a problem.

I mean, that's not That's an offshoot of it. I mean, um, I've done three books and my third book is called Habitat Annihilation. So, what I'm concerned with is is that we live a a culture that's basically corporate capitalism that's rooted in in the 1761 17 1800s. Mhm.

And we have created a a dependence on on machines and resources that we mine from the earth and uh we poison the the ground with fertilizers that are that are often petroleum based.

We we use medicine that isn't made to heal. It's it's so those are the the real things.

Well, they found like fish that have like anti-depressants in them and stuff like Right. I mean, yeah. We take these drugs and then we pee them out and they go into the environment and Yeah.

It's crazy. And so what we need to do is raise the consciousness of everyone to see the lies of the elite. So we've got we've got u we've got the wealth kind of hoarded in a small 1% of the population and they're making decisions and then we invented something called a corporation.

Mhm.

Which was uh Lincoln was the it was invented in England early but Lincoln was the first one to use it to protect the owners of public resources. So people that owned water and and different things that the public had reason to to use

it created the corporation to protect those individuals. So so you couldn't sue them or you couldn't blame them. And so all of a sudden the corporation became the the business operating model that we have

and and it's not based in anything that's human. It's based on greed.

So the only thing Well, the only thing a corporation cares about is profit.

Oh, yeah. Well, doesn't that go back even farther? Like, isn't like the like the British Empire with like the East India Company like Yeah.

Yeah. It started in England and and and so so all of the humanity or the sense of nature or the sense of cohabitation with nature and and with each other in a in in this beautiful miracle place that we call Earth. All of that's been removed. So at Burning Man, you get a little bit of insight into that into human harmony, um, community, uh, the art spirit, a connection with the the cosmos and and the earth as our home, and all of those things come out of Burning Man in a little bit for a week. And what I've dedicated my life to in the last uh, well, probably 20 years is to try to wake people up to the fact that we are living a miracle on a planet in in a universe that's infinite and that all of our belief systems if they're not based in fact are fiction.

Mhm.

So, so if you look into your belief systems and you really look and you ask is it true? Is this really true? And that's from uh um the work of of a woman from Marin. I forget her name now. But the idea of of first of all becoming the observer, you become the observer. And the observer observes your thoughts. So when you're thinking and you can step back and think why am I having that thought? You're becoming the observer. And that's called metacognition. So once you reach a state of metacognition, you begin to have a chance to change to see the truth and then change your life to not contribute to the destruction of our habitat or habitat annihilation. That's what we do.

So that's basically what I learned a lot from Burning Man,

a lot from my own u pursuit of knowledge and from psychedelics and from awe.

Yeah.

Those Those are the key ingredients. Now, the the astronauts all get it. So, if if you look into the astronauts, anybody who's been shot in space, anybody, they come back with something called the overview effect. And the overview effect basically comes from seeing the Earth for what it truly is. So, when you're in space, you see a very thin atmosphere. You don't see any bound ries. You see the beautiful large oceans and the little bit of spots where human culture exists and and you don't see any conflict. You don't see you see one earth, one humanity.

And that's what we need to replace federalism with. Federalism is stupid. It's archaic. Goes back to tribalism in a in a negative way. And and and it's it's basically humans fighting humans, but the people doing the fighting are just pawns to the very wealthy, to the rich.

We we have a political system in America. It's called democracy. And yet our only choices are two parties that are both in the pocket of corporation.

So it's an oligarchy based on corporate leadership based on profit.

So the only thing that we care about that our government cares about that our companies care about that our food, our pharmacy, our our building, all of it. Our educational system, our entertainment system, our news, everything is based on profit.

Need to pull the profit plug.

Yeah.

So, I propose that we basically take all the corporations and make them nonprofit. Stop. What did we do with Burning Man?

Yeah,

we turned an an LLC into a nonprofit. I mean, there wasn't really the the the profit motive to begin with. Like, well, I remember like early on you guys were like, "Oh, yeah, we're an LLC, but we our goal is not to make money."

We never we never ran it as a as a moneymaking thing. We put all the money back in, you know,

because I always thought like, why not just be a nonprofit? Like, why even start with an LLC?

And that's why, well, we making a nonprofit takes a bit of uh effort, you know, legal work and We we just never did that. We

I mean in 97

Wo County said, "Do you have a business license?" And I said, "No." So we went and got a business license.

Yeah.

Crimson. She drove to Reno, filled out the paperwork to create an LLC. It we didn't weren't thinking about

what the future was for that

12:00

or how we would run it as as a company except how we were already running it.

And that was make enough money one year so that we could make the next year and make it bigger

and make it bigger, right? So, I mean, that's basically what we did. And we had the right people. I mean, Larry, Michael, Marian, Harley, Crimson, and myself, we're all different people. We're were individuals,

but you each added something. Yeah.

But as a as a synergistic group, okay, we were better than the individual parts because we worked by consensus for many years. Um, Also, there was no pattern for this, right? There's no precedent. I mean, you guys were just kind of like inventing it as you're going along, right?

You don't go to the library and pull out a book that says how to build Burning Man. You don't. There isn't one. And so, we drew from a lot of things. And we also learned a lot of things the hard way.

So, if something worked, then we would keep it and run it the next year. If it didn't work, we might do it again to see if it didn't work again. then we would eliminate it and find a new way. I mean it was a process and and it was a very good process because it you know after this will be what the 40th year of Burning Man.

Yeah. Wow.

If you include Baker Beach that was 86.

40 years. Yeah.

So it's 40 years. This is the 40-year anniversary. Most things like Burning Man don't last more than 10 years. Well, that kind of Okay.

There's there's Glastonberry. There's a few things that are music venues that have lasted. There's been a few attempts at utopian things, you know, arroante.

Oh, history is littered with utopian communes and stuff. Yeah.

They didn't last very long, right?

Yeah. Well, this kind of gets me to my my last question of like the Birdie Man's impact and stuff. So, I I remember couple a year or two ago um I I put something on social media. I I rarely engage with social media just kind of a fever dream swamp, you know, but because there's so many people talking about I don't know if it was after Bernie man like 24 or something when there was some like money issues and like Marion was putting out a call for donations and there was people on social media being like why why are you doing all this like year- round stuff? It's just a party. It's just a party in the desert. Just focus on the party. And put this thing out. I was like, Bernie man's been going on like 30 some odd years now this year 40 years. It's like do you really think that, you know, if this was all just just a party like that that would be more than three, four, five years long? Like who who in their right minds would just constantly be like, you know what, for the next number of decades, I want to do a party for a rotating cast of like 20 and 30 year olds. Like that's just a big party, you know, and and I'm not interested in making money.

I mean, You know, we described that Andy, we described early on

why it's not just a party. It's

place. It's a sense of community. You know, it's the art spirit. It's the fact that you are responsible for your own survival.

You're responsible for your own well-being there. Uh you just don't just buy a ticket and become a spectator. So the the early one of our early slogans was no spectator.

Mhm. You are the show. You're the show. So, it's not like you're a spectator going with a ticket into a stadium or

entertain me.

It's not entertainment. It's lifestyle and it's much bigger than entertainment and it d dives way deeper into the psyche. Now, some people go and don't get that. Oh, of course. And they'll be the the worst critics. I mean, they're the ones

that that go and don't experience the awe. They get annoyed by the weather. They get annoyed by the the camp next door. They get annoyed by the loud music. And they never relax and they never let the city cloak that they wear shed.

Mhm.

Right.

Yeah.

But the people that do get it come out and they shed that

early on. Right. Also, people that only come out for a day or two, I think it takes a week.

Oh, yeah.

You need to come for the whole week. kind of acclimate. Yeah.

Because after about three days, you're changed,

right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

But but if you come out for a day, you never really get get it. You just don't really get it. Some people do, but but most people who come out for a short period don't.

Yeah. It's always kind of said like I think just about everybody when they hear about, you know, like they come for this the spectacle. That's what they come for initially, right? And they're just like, "Oh yeah, this is crazy thing. But then the people who wind up coming back, that's always the especially with my show, like that's what I'm kind of like more interested in. It's like the people who like it's a bucket list. Oh, one and done. Like who cares about that, you know? But like the people who like it's like something you got bit by a bug, you know? It's like what is that? It's like why why come back? I mean some people like Ply Pete he was like oh yeah like this past year was like his 30th year straight, you know? I mean like like and you know, I mean, like like yourself and the the founders like 40 years, you know, I mean, it's like why?

Well, I mean, I I I'll always go back because it's an opportunity to see to see humans in their glory.

You know, the the the thing that I'm shooting for is to make Burning Man mainstream culture.

You know, where gifting is the rule. and money's not a factor and creativity is honored and and you have a love for your fellow man and it doesn't matter if they're white, black, red, green,

it doesn't matter. You know, we're all human. We're all on this incredible miracle of a planet in an infinite universe together. I mean, that's really why I could never not go. I I mean, I I have to go to man because I get to experience what what I'm trying to to develop as a as the future for humans. I mean, we we we have to change. If we don't if we don't change our our rate of consumption, our rate of of uh extraction, our if if we don't change the way profit dominates everything that we do, Then we will destroy our habitat and the earth will be glad to get rid of us.

Oh yeah.

And do that.

And this I mean just looking around this day and age it's like people are just at each other's throats you know we're so we're so divided you know it's like there's red team there's blue team that you know there's I mean people find like infinite ways of dividing themselves off you know

but but that's all a construct. I mean that that's that's done on purpose by the by the 1%. divide and conquer

to keep us from seeing the truth.

Mhm.

Okay. So, the people that know the truth, the people that have the overview effect, um those people need to help educate the pe people that don't.

Mhm.

Um it's it's really important. We we need we need to take that responsibility. Um we're not we're not helpless here. Um we just have to feel uh empowered. Okay. And so that's what I'm trying to do is empower people to to do that. Right now I'm working on a a course

called the overview effect with a a colleague of mine named Fred Sigman who's an educator.

Okay.

And uh we're we're putting together a course that you would buy into and you would learn how to see your place on the planet in a different way. And we're hoping that the course does well, that that does change people's lives. I mean, going to Burning Man will change your life. You've heard that big time.

Burning Man changed my life. I'll never forget I got an email once long time ago. Guy said, "I went to Burning Man, came home. My wife divorced me. I lost my job. My children won't speak to me. I lost my house. Thank you, Burning Man, for changing my life. And and it's that kind of thing that we need to be able to see the truth in that that there is a different way to live on the planet than the way you're living now. I think closer to the if you really look at at the trajectory of of humans, you know, we've been homo erectus for two million years and the last uh few hundred thousand years we've we've been homo sapiens and and the key there is that we walk upright which is why I walk a labyrinth every night. I have a labyrinth on the property.

Yeah. Yeah.

And uh and then uh we we basically had the industrial age come in and something changed. So before that we were hunter gatherers. maybe minimal agriculture. So we were working with the plants and animals just a little bit, domesticating the dog,

the goat, you know, and at that point we lived in harmony and there was less than a billion people on the planet.

Okay. And then uh profit got into it. So the last time we were truly in harmony, we were hunter gatherers really. And if you look at the indigenous people of North America, the Native Americans, the first people, they know how to live on this continent in harmony with nature.

So there's your your example, there's the blueprint, there's the the outline. We need to take what few things that we've developed as an industrialized society and merge it with the main things that come from indigenous culture.

Well, I'm sure indigenous culture, they never had a term for decommodification. It was just kind of like this is the community, this is the tribe. It's like I help out with this, you help out with that, right? I mean,

yeah. Like you are at Burning Man.

Mhm.

You see, it's very interesting that that that there's a tribalness, an ancient thing comes forth at Burning Man. Your connection to your ancestors. It all comes up.

It's subtle. You know, you might not be aware of it, but there is that and and it's important to get in touch with that.

Um and and that's what Fred and I hope to do with this course. Uh we we want to get people to see

how one Earth, one humanity could be the way that we live on the planet instead of drawing artificial lines and calling it a country

and then

being jealous of your neighbor and bombing your neighbor. I mean, it none of it makes sense.

Yeah.

And it's the wrong people calling the shots on that. And um the 1% people are the least enlightened people that that we have on the planet.

Yeah.

So, they're so encumbered by the profit motive.

Yeah. Do do you have a a link or anything yet? Like if any of the listeners want to go.

I don't have anything for that. Uh you can go to my website willilroger.com and or will roger.com and you can see uh references to my books and my artwork and stuff like that. But um Fred and I I wrote the outline for it and Fred has got some issues going on. Uh so we can't really work on it right now, but uh within a month we should be able to begin to do some of the video work.

A lot of it is going to be me talking on a Zoom call like this

um

about what what we need to do to go into the future. Um I wrote a book which is really a collection of essays and a lot of the people that wrote essays there's 12 people that wrote essays

uh are Burning Man uh either former employees or current employees. a few other people, but mostly Bernie man people. And so if you look at that book, it's a North Fork North Fork Press.

And it's called Habitat Annihilation.

Yeah.

And it's a great read because everybody's got a different writing style.

Yeah. I'll put that in the show notes, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a great great book and

um no one's buying it because I I don't know how to market it and I'm I'm not going to do that, you know. Well, hopefully, you know,

it's sort of antitheical to how I believe. I I don't want to go out and shill anything like that, you know.

Well, listeners or viewers or whatever, it's like you should I'll check out uh Will's book. Yeah. But so, okay. Well, one last thing. Um yeah, in terms of like the impact of Bernie man on you. So, like in 93 when you met Crimson and you, you know, your photography studio and you're doing like con construction around the the big area. Like were these thoughts that you're talking about right now. Were these percolating in your head now or or or

No, back then I was trying to make a business work, you know?

Uhhuh.

I basically got uh went out of business because the digital camera got invented and uh a lot of if you remember, I don't know if you're old enough to remember, but there used to be a photo studio practically on every other street corner in every city of the country.

Oh, yeah. No, it's funny. Like I you know those those little like oneperson like like photo booths there usually like in a parking lot you know it's like you drop off your film like there is still one here in a parking lot like in the north shore of a where I live and I I took a picture of it and I have a couple of co-workers who are like in their mid20s and I was like hey check this out and they're just like what's that and I was like that's like a photo booth thing and they're like what what's that? I explained it to them and they're like they're like so someone that was their job they would just sit there and people would give them these this film and then they'd come back later and you'd give them a print like yeah just like I don't understand like how did this work?

Yeah. I I I uh was one of the many photographers that went out of business in 19 95 96 right around in there.

And then I didn't embrace the digital camera very well. I um I was a chemist. Okay. So My my education is I was a a a chemist. I became a photochemist. Um I have a BFA and an MFA in fine art. But my original degree was analytical chemistry.

Oh.

And I think I studied that because I wanted to be an alchemist more than anything. And and photography provided that because the old wet photography was magic. I mean you had larger and you you you know, projected light on a piece of paper and put it in a solution and like magic an image would come up and I became an expert at that. So, I was well known and I I printed books for people. My second wife is Marilyn Bridges, a very famous aerial photographer. And so, we had an airplane and she she photographs ancient earth sites.

So, I got to fly over Machu Picchu and, you know, the the Serpent Mound in Indiana.

Wow.

All that. We owned an airplane for a while.

Are you you're a pilot?

Uh I was. Yeah. I don't I don't fly anymore. I'm too old.

Why? Never too old to fly.

Well, growing old is is a wonderful experience. I'm honored that that I've, you know, got this in me still. But every day you learn something else that you can't do anymore. It's it's like really weird. I sold my motorcycle. You know,

I uh I can't really go backpacking anymore. There's a lot of things that I miss,

but I'm glad that I have the memories of doing those things well and and experience what I've experienced. So,

yeah,

Burning Man is one of them. What What a ride. I mean, um every year we were always focused on the next year. It wasn't about what are we going to do in 20 years. And the interest thing is that we we provided a a blank canvas and the Bernie man community made the painting every year. It's the community that that just outstanding people, creative, resilient, um loving people that make up the Burning Man community, which continues to grow. Um we have gotten older as a demographic. Um But we're bringing in young people. We're bringing in more young people.

Oh, yeah.

I think that humanity needs Burning Man.

I think we're the experience that everybody needs.

Exactly.

To get them in touch, to begin to see the overview effect,

to begin to care

about their fellow humans regardless of their race, creed, color, origin,

sexual orientation, all that stuff.

None of that matters. We have more in common with each other than we have differences. Way more in common. Eyes, ears, nose, lungs, arms, legs. I mean, those are the things we have in common.

And yet, the ruling class wants us to be divisive over over the subtleties, the little things that don't matter.

Yeah. And

so, we need to we need to rip that out. We need to just say, "No, I'm not going to I'm not going to be a bigot. Yeah,

I'm going to be a human on this miracle planet, you know.

Yeah. Well, I've often heard is that the easiest way to motivate people is to create like an us versus them kind of situation.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Or or I can make a million dollars.

But something the profit motive is huge and insidious.

Oh yeah.

Powerful.

We've created a um a culture where we honor and re the rich,

you know, not the the poor poet living in a cardboard box on on Bower Street. I mean, we we we don't rever them. We look down on them and yet they're the same humans. They're humans.

And I think like another thing like what Bernie man excels at and I think what's more fundamental and powerful than like like said capital or money is our human connection, right? And I mean, I think for me personally, it's like that's kind of like what what what gets, you know, like you go for the spectacle, but you come back because of our our humanity, our our common connection.

Yeah, I I agree. Yeah, I agree. I I have friends that I only see at Burning Man. I met at Burning Man and they're and I'll only see them there and they're the best friends I've ever had.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I love them. You know what I mean? And and I I you know, I I stay in touch with them through social media and stuff but there's no uh direct interaction except at Burning Man.

Yeah. Yeah. And then well okay one last thing but um I don't know is like is is is Bernie man affecting the world or is the world affecting Bernie man? Like I said like you draw that line you create creating this this space you know that that's outside of you know of you know normal culture you know where people and find their common humanity and connect with each other. But then, you know, over time like I guess you know like the the dot like bros have come or the the Instagram like influencers and that and I mean I took 13 years off of Burning Man and and came back and you know people were asking me just like what's changed you know I was like it's it's not so much what's changed it's it's more of like what's stayed the same you know it's like it still has it's like like we talking about like these human connections and like it looks like the awe and the human connections like it's it's still there. I mean people might complain like oh this Instagram model's taking this picture or whatever but like the basics of it is is still there.

I agree. I I think I think that's a bigger question. You know I was uh part of the summer of love the late 1960s

when the people were empowered. I was part of SDS and the weatherman and

Oh really? some of the revolution stuff that was going on. Was living in New York City at the time.

Oh.

And and what I saw over the next 10 years was an assimilation, a commodification of of a lot of the the symbols and signs and and ideals of of that generation of people. And so culture has an insidious way of absorbing things and making them less relevant. making them less revolutionary. So I think is Burning Man changing culture? Is culture changing Burning Man? That was your question.

Yeah,

I think that I like to think that Burning Man is having a positive effect on culture more than culture is having a negative effect on Burning Man.

Um I think we've we've done a good job as as leadership, the board of board of directors of the six founders Um, I think we've done a good job of of insulating the Bernie man community from the political restraints that have been asked of us over the years.

I I think we've done a good job of retaining the art spirit, but that's a community thing. The community has done that

and and the art spirit which is a powerful force in human experience one that we don't get a lot of from our current culture. Uh we don't get a lot of reason to be uh kind of uh uniquely creative in a very base way, you know, digging in the dirt kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

We don't really get that. We we might be creative in developing a code for an app,

but that's a different kind of creativity.

Yeah.

It's not it's not like a a a raw experiential creativity that you get from making something with your hands.

And so Bernie man gives you that. And and and so I think

I think as long as we can retain that and how do you retain it? Well, you hold the event in the Black Rock Desert.

Mhm. the power of nature is is really what what creates a lot of the experience.

And so that you can't legislate out. I mean, the BLM could say, "Yeah, you can't hold the event here and that would kill it."

Um, so we have the fly ranch. The fly ranch, we bought a five square mile piece of property in the next valley

where we're beginning to hold larger events there. Um, this will be the first time we've actually got a permit to hold an event for 500 people.

Oh.

And and and I think that it's exciting because it means that we can do different kinds of things there because we own the property. The Burning Man community owns the property,

right? Because the Burning Man community is in fact

the 501c3 that is Burning Man, right? The the nonprofit.

So if we can begin to do things there that are that are sustainable, regenerative. Uh we we already have a beekeeper, we keep bees, we have gardens, we have a well with good drinking water, and we have the miraculous fly geyser there,

right? If we could begin to use that as a training site to get people to see the big picture, the the overview fact, the the fact that and live outside of mainstream culture. The property is not connected. It doesn't have power coming in.

It doesn't have utilities.

Doesn't have any of that.

So, it's an opportunity to blend that indigenous knowledge with some of the useful things of contemporary culture and create a living experience that could help change the future trajectory of mankind, which needs to be changed.

Wow.

Your lab in fact

to teach people how to live

on the earth harmoniously

and uh that's that's what we're doing. I mean it's happening. It's

Wow. I'd love to make it out there for one of those one of these days. Yeah.

Well, go to the Fly Ranch website and you can see the things that are are happening. Um you can certainly uh sign up for one of them. We do nature walks through Friends of the Black Rockck uh every week and Crimson and I built a labyrinth out there

and we open a labyrinth walk every Sunday at 2 o'clock.

Oh,

two to three.

Wow.

Walk the lab.

All right. Well, we got almost an hour and a half.

Yeah. Perfect.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful interview.

Well, I'm glad. It was really nice to You look real familiar. So, I know that our paths have crossed in the path in the past.

Well, then we'll cross again in the future.

Yeah. Let's do it again. I hope that you enjoyed the what I said and hope I didn't say anything that's too harmful. So,

no, not at all.

Well, thank you.

Thank you, Andrew.

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