Welcome.

Why this burning enthusiasm for Burning Man ? Just imagine… 80 000 people in the desert, experiencing for a suspended time a version of society founded on different values : creativity, caring, freedom of expression, geniuneness, spirituality. How does it feel like ? Photo credits : Victor Habchy For a long time, I have been wanting to write about experiences which have changed my perception of life. I am starting today by sharing a tiny spark of the magic I have experienced during one week in 2014, and which enabled so many things to fall into place in my life : Burning Man. Unreal and wonderful instants of life and, to be honest, quite addictive : in two years, I attended 5 other “burn festivals”, Midburn (Israel) in 2015, Afrikaburn (South Africa), Midburn again, and Nowhere (Spain) in 2016. While waiting for the testimonies of the happy fews who just came back from Burning Man 2016, I am happy to share why I love these festivals so much and what they made me understand. Welcome Home. It’s the very first sentence you hear at Burning Man. You just arrived after 8 hours of drive and 5 hours of line. You are exhausted and you don’t really know what to expect. And then, people you don’t know come to meet you, take you in their arms and tell you with a genuine smile and a deep look “Welcome home!”. Welcome Home means two things. It means here is your HOME. No matter where you come from, what you do, who you are, we are a family here and this unpermanent city is your home. But it also mean here is YOUR home. You are going to experience an encounter with yourself, the real you, the one you where before the world told you who you should be. You are going to reconnect with your dreams and fears, your emotions and intuition, your joy and love for life. You are going to wake up the child who has been sleeping inside you for so many years. You are going to remember how lucky we are to live, feel, see, hear, taste, touch and you are going to rediscover the joy to play with anything that surrounders you, like a child. You are going to let go of the fear of being judged. You are going to forget time and space, and to surrender to the present moment. You are going to believe in life again, believe that all this has a purpose after all, believe that humans are good and that they can live together in harmony. Welcome Home. Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be ? In the desert you can remember your name. Surprising, right ? How come a mere festival echoes such deep and existential questions ? Before I had been to Burning Man, I thought it was all nonsense. I couldn’t figure out how it could be possible. So… what is the magic recipe which changes our live perceptions in only a few days ? So many things. I could share about Burning Man for hours, but I will focus on eight points. 1. First, extreme physical conditions. Photo credits : Victor HabchyBurning Man takes place in the middle of the Nevada desert. The physical conditions are harsh : 40°C during the day, 5°C during the night. During daytime, you are feeling overwhelmed under a blazing sun and you are desperately looking for shade and coolness. A few hours later, you are blessing your scarf, your hat and your gloves. And there is the “dust” : a sand dust that creeps in everything : your skin, your nose, your tent, your plate. Most people experience great physical discomfort during Burning Man. I only took two showers in eight days. I was always feeling dirty. But who cares ? For in that environment where bodies and minds suffer from strain, everything collapse : emotional barriers, social masks, fears. Men get closer and help each other. They finally remember that human beings didn’t live in condo originally, they used to dance with their natural environment instead. The power of nature keeps humanity humble. And it is beautiful to rediscover this feeling. It brings us back to the essential. We actually learn to love our discomfort at Burning Man. In such a way that many burners bring back home a bit of dust in a small bottle, Proust’s madeleine. 2. Decommodification Our “normal society” is grounded on possession, “having”. But having creates a feeling of separateness : I distrut the other, who can take what I have, whether it is my seat in the metro, my money, my job, my social status… A Burning Man, being takes over from having. At Burning Man, there is no money and (almost) no possesion. Obviously you pay to get a ticket to the festival, but once you are in, cash disappears from your everyday reality. The economy, if I may say, is based on gifting. I said gifting, not barter. It means that concretely, you are strolling along the “street” and a complete stranger enters your life and offers you a “creme brulée” he just cooked, a massage, a glass of cold water. He doesn’t expect anything in return. He is just doing it because it makes him happy. Your gift for him is to receive his gift. And later on, it will be your turn to offer a gift to other people in the festival. Everyone is caring for everyone. And it changes DEEPLY the relationships between people. You don’t feel separated anymore, you don’t feel distrut. Caring, sharing, geniuneness of relationships are taking over, even between strangers. You open your heart. You begin to understand that anyone can bring something in your life, not only a gift, but above all a presence that makes you blossom. After all, isn’t everyone a mirror of myself ? 3. Community Photo credits : Victor HabchyThere is no participant at Burning Man. No consumers, no producers, only actors. The city is built by everyone. Theme camps, art structures, workshops are the fruits of your creativity, mine, his, hers, theirs. The organizing team focuses mainly on security (there is a real hospital with real doctors at Burning Man), on supporting the artists, and on coordinating all this merry mess. At the end of the festival, everyone unbuilds his part, with the objective of leaving no trace of that city, not even one butt. To give to desert what is desert’s. It is beautiful all this collective energy, it lifts you up. You feel you are part of a greater whole. 4. Fugacity and intuition. Burning Man is a suspended time. Whatever happens, after seven days, the man will burn, the city will be unbuilt, and you will go back home. So, enjoy it. At Burning Man, you don’t plan, you don’t overthink, you abandon notion of time, you just let yourself be carried by life. In other words, you let go. TRULY. For the first time in your life maybe. And it feels so good. You realize that when you don’t try to control your life with your brain, you surrender to another life force inside : intuition. And then magic happens. Letting go of plans, incredible encounters and discoveries pop up along your way, one after the other. Events unfold as if everything happen at the right time and the right place. As if a path had been traced to make you blossom and grow. Since then, I do believe intuition is a strong human capacity. Except that we have never been taught to develop it. Relax, nothing is under control. Photo credits : Victor Habchy5. Beauty and art. I am a city woman. I was born and raised in Paris, that I love. Ant yet, even in the “most beautiful city of the world”, my senses feel constantely attacked. Everywhere I look, I see grey concrete, adds covered with vivid coulors aggressive information, brands, products and screens which draw my attention and absorb my energy like a moth to a flame. Not to mention what I hear, cars’ engine and horns. Not to mention what I smell, pollution. In short, an perfect environement to feel peaceful and calm… Photo credits : Victor HabchyAt Burning Man, everywhere you look, you see beauty and art. The sky is deep. The arid and cracked earth is beautiful. And as your eyes aren’t aroused by brands and adds which nourrish your frenetic willingness to posssess, then they fall on… people. When there is no screen to obscure reality, you come accross looks, that are joyful, deep and caring. And over there, when you accidentally make eye contact with someone, instead of feeling embarrassed and turning you eyes away, well… you open your mouth. You just say hello. You stop to share with this other, towards whom your look has been drawned without knowing why. Who knows, maybe you have something to learn from this encounter. Photo credits : Victor HabchyIn the background of these encounters, the infinite beauty of the desert blows you away. Not to mention the magnificient and insane art structures arising here and there. They have been built with love for several months by volunteers. It is crazy how men can be creative when you give them no rules except having fun with what they are building. The sand dust covers the scenery with a poetic veil. NEVER would you have imagined to see such images in your life. You are just in another world. Unreal. Enchantic. 6. Immediacy. Here and Now. Photo credits : Victor HabchyI recently realized that the reason why it is so hard to feel the present moment in cities, to breathe, to look, to feel, is because urban environments are so agressive for our poor senses. The perfect example for me is the parisian metro. You want your journey to be as quick as possible because it is so unpleasant. So you flee somewhere else in your mind, either in the past of your memories, or in the future of your planifications. You lose touch with the present moment, with the reality here and now. The difference is actually obvious when you go back to nature : your mind calms down and comes back home — the present. I think Burning Man was the first time I fully felt in my body what it means to be mindful. The magic happened while I was cycling on my bike, heading towards the wooden Man, huge, beautiful, powerful, erected in the middle of the playa. At that exact moment, reality appeared in a different light. My senses were grasping all the beauty that I was experiencing. The instant seemed suspended. It seemed as if time had stood still. Immaterial. I I was feeling intensely alive. It lasted for several days. When I god back, I tried to keep as much as possible this feeling of fullness. Not easy. I can breathe some from time to time. 7. Body expression We grow up with the idea that we are a brain carried by a body. We brutalize our poor body that we consider as a possession, as a slave. We remain seated ten hours per day, first at school, then at work, and in the transports, restaurants, bars. Only two postures are socially accepted in public environments : standing and sitting. But the human body is not supposed to be static. It is meant to move, to play with gravity, not only two hours per week but several hours per day. Thus, it suffers. Personnally, I have been suffering from back pain for more than ten years. At Burning Man, your body casts off. You dance, you run, you cycle, you climb, you lay down on the floor, you practice acroyoga. And it feels amazing. You feel free and relieved from such a heavy burden ! You rediscover the relationship you has with the world as a child : you play with reality. 8. The appeal of the sacred. Burning Man is not a religious space AT ALL. But it is a deeply spiritual place. You feel a very strong presence there. The symbol of this spirituality is the Temple. An architectural wonder with a different face every year, everyone comes to write on its wood what he wants to burn in his life : a mourning still unrecovered, a broken heart still bleeding, a fear or an anger which prevents you from moving forward. The Temple is a poignant contemplation space. You often cry inside. At the end of the week, in front of 80 000 persons sitting and watching in silence, the temple is burnt, carrying in its flames the wishes of the pilgrims up to the sky. That is how the festival ends. 2016 Temple Burn. Photograph unknown.And after ? When you talk about Burning Man on your return, it is strange. Part of you is still carried by this unbelievable energy you received. You continue for a while to live following the same values, spontaneity, creativity, openness, faith. At the same time, you realize that the form of society we have been building as human beings (capitalist, based on having and power, nurrished by ego and competition, disconnected from nature and sacred) is nothing but one form among all types of society humans can potentially create. It is a shock. You don’t what to do with this realization. At last, you feel misunderstood. It is true that you have to live it to understand it. And also, parisians’ cynism can be sumed up in one sentence, heard 100 times : “It sounds great, but after all it is temporary. Such a society would not work on the long run.” Maybe. Probably. Not exactly like this, indeed. But is it because it is time-limited that it doesn’t have any value, nor any echoe in our lives and societies ? After all, isn’t our life time-limited too ? Photo credits : Victor Habchy