The Burning Man Responds to the Proust Questionnaire

I've always wanted to write about my friend Larry Harvey, who I often introduce, to his embarrassment, as Mr. Burning Man. The Burning Man, when we met, was an arty attraction of San Francisco's creative underground; Larry and his friend Jerry James had begun, four years before, constructing a human figure from scrap wood, taking it to Baker Beach on the summer solstice, and burning it against the ocean sunset. The first Burning Man captivated an audience of unexpecting passers-by, and so a second, larger Man was burned the next summer solstice for the delight of friends. The third year drew a bigger crowd for a Man of forty feet, but oddly engineered, and for the fourth year, a perfected structure was devised.

In the late summer after the third burning, I met Jerry James at another curious event, the clever Mel Fry's Wind Sculpture Festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the largest empty space in North America, 400 square miles of absolutely nothing but sky and the cracked clay floor of an ancient lake, devoid of vegetation, water, pebbles, beasts or bugs. The price of admittance to the festival was an entry, something that moved in the wind. My party, my housemates Kevin and Miss Dawn, our friend Cyndy and I, created a PVC, chicken wire and fabric canopy bed on wheels, with canopy sails to propell it across the flat expanses of the massive site. People laughed when they saw us building it, but were suitably impressed when it moved almost as well as the beautiful works of Mel Fry.

We spoke to Jerry about the Burning Man; we'd heard of it, but never been, and on the next solstice the four of us made a definite point of showing up, along with a few hundred others. So, unfortunately, did the police. There would be no more burnings at Baker Beach. The crowd grew frenzied with disappointment, but all of us who'd been to the Black Rock approached Harvey immediately with the same idea: let's take it out there.

My friends in the San Francisco Cacophony Society made it possible to transport the elegant 40' figure to this otherworldly site 100 miles north of Reno. Cacophony has staged numerous events with the aid of Ryder trucks, relentless labor and derring do; the Man was stored and hauled out on Labor Day weekend that year, followed by less than 100 of us, armed with our tuxedos and cocktail dresses, gin and vermouth, a full drum set for Dean Gustafson's sophisticated solo as the Man approached demise, tents, sleeping bags, and the Winnebago Cyndy got for us, in which I catered for the fledgling staff.

We went again the second year with twice as many others, and the third year with twice that, and a Man with a glorious blue neon skeleton fashioned by the extraordinary John Law. Each year, the crowd exponentially doubled, more musicians brought their instruments, more artists brought installations, more entertaining events were added to the schedule; word of this still underground extravaganza made it across the world, bringing a wicker sculptress from England, a journalist from Europe, film crews from South America, Australia and America from the second year on. Last year's event was filmed for documentaries by PBS and HBO, and the PBS film was nominated for an academy award.

We know of nearly a hundred articles that have been written about this desert experience; I wrote one of the first for a now defunct magazine, The City, which was plagiarized from the press kit by dozens of others. We were immensely gratified by a beautiful piece that appeared in last October's New York Times Sunday Magazine, but it took until this fall for any of the local publications to write about it at all, and most of them still have not.

This year there were between 4,000 and 5,500 people in this instant community in the desert, depending on whom you ask. If you ask the BLM, the government agency that will collect a fee for every head they counted in their helicopter surveillance, it was more. If you ask Larry Harvey, who requests an admission fee to cover the construction, insurance, BLM fees, potties, newsletters, preliminary exhibitions in San Francisco, phone calls across the world and so on, it was less.

Out there, a good drive from the tiny town of Gerlach (population 250, 5 bars), we recreate society for ourselves, casting aside a refreshing percentage of the rules we must observe in ordinary life. Some kind of artistic anarchy prevails here, but with a few necessary rules: don't irritate anyone, don't discharge firearms in camp, don't dig holes in the playa, pick up your trash, and have a sense of humor.

...I found myself once more in an unknown world, and everything that followed only confirmed my knowledge, that this world was one of those which I had never even been capable of imagining...
The Captive

The desert atmosphere, when the wind doesn't blow, or lightning isn't striking, bakes you in fabulous serenity. It is like being in a gigantic room with a cracked clay floor and very blue, or starry black, ceiling; we, our vehicles, tents and installations, are the furniture. If you walk alone a mile from the farthest reaching suburbs of camp, especially under moonlight, you feel suddenly, absolutely, alone with the powers that be, absorbing magic from the cosmos.

Civilization, out there, retains the best of city life: radio stations, art, a daily newspaper created on computers and xerox machines in town, and this year's coffee house which I operated in the center of the great circle marked out by the advance team. The circle was ringed by theme camps created by participants from all over the country: the Bigfoot Mall brought by Portland Cacophony, Toyland and Halloween Camp from LA Cacophony, the Twin Towers camp installed by escapees from The Big Apple, our wild friend Flash's bar and grill, McSatan's Beefstro, a gathering of art cars, including Harrod Blank's "OHMYGAWD!", a massive structure of twigs housing Dream Circus, a band of mimes and exotic fire dancers, the wonderful Mangrums' Tiki Camp, where the bar's blenders ran day and night serving anyone who brought a contribution, and nearly a dozen others.

Passing through the amusements of central camp were the citizens of Burning Man City, persons of varying ages and appearances, many of whom would look normal enough anywhere else, others in outrageous guises, plenty in no guises at all beyond body paint, or maybe a slight strip of cheeseclothlamp, a man in nothing more than a gun holster, cowboy boots and hat. Many of us meet again each year out here, and meet many newcomers, painted, costumed, naked or not.

A thousand or more campsites appeared around the great circle, housing an instant town with more inhabitants than the entire Nevada county. In it were the Black Rock Rangers, our peace-keepers and problem-solvers, the lamplighters who illuminated the lanterns on avenues marked by tall wooden spires, a medical team, radio crew, newspaper staff and numerous others who manned the gate, kept the power going, organized the camp and the function at the burn, installed and prepared the Man, and the Man itself, this year embellished with an ornate blue neon skeleton on the camp side, and a red neon, feminine equivalent on the other. Leading out to the Man, the Avenue of Art began with the large pyramid housing a camera obscura, one of eight in the world, developed and brought by our friends Chris DeMonterrey and Dave Warren.

Troughout the day and night, performers appear on the cabaret stage next to the cafe, a lot of fire, drums, Magenta of the Wickett Museum of Exotica (classical belly dancer balancing an illuminated candelabra on her head), and other exotic forms. Polkacide. The unbelievable Three Day Stubble.

On the Sunday night of the weekend, the Man and his neon exoskeletons glows in the halos of fireworks, raises its arms to the heavens, falls immolated, reduced to a massive heap of cinders, not one of which will remain on the desert floor, nor any other shred of evidence that we were there. Much of the crowd is drawn by the burn into neo-pagan whooping and prancing, then moves to the torching of Pepe Ozan's gorgeous Lingam, a massive, virtually erotic sculpture made of chicken wire and clay for more of same, and goes on to party all night.

Several years ago, Harvey related the spectacle of the Burning Man to the mystery religions of 5th century Greece and other civilizations. These mysteries were not about a teaching, he said, they were about a shared experience. Like Burning Man, the mysteries involved encampment, fire, sacrifice, a visionary spectacle, an egalitarian organization, revelry, and the recruitment of an urban population. They were about a direct experience, not a doctrinal belief, and based on a myth of death and rebirth.

The staff of Burning Man has grown to hundreds; I no longer know and love all of them, as in our first trip out there, nor can I, in this short piece, credit very many. I can't help but mention, however, the curious development in this year's organizational effort: a large percentage of the major organizers was women. My charming friend Harley Biermann-Werwe brought together the camp's center, and the remarkable Vanessa Kummerle relieved the mythic Danger Ranger of heading this year's Rangers. The endless entertainments were managed by the exotic Crimson Rose, the battery of media reps by the capable Eileen Hoyt.

I can't fail to credit the people who brought Burning Man to the world's attention on the World Wide Web, my fabulous friends Cynsa Bonorris and Jeffrey Gray, who have done the same favor for Proust Said That. Half their time at the desert was spent at a computer in a motel room in Gerlach, keeping the world apprised of developments. Many other Web sites feature the Burning Man, but Cynsa and Jeffrey's was voted one of the best sites on the Web.

Every year, even before we pack up and eliminate the traces of Burning Man City, most of us begin to live, to some degree, in the days of the future Man, engaged in visions of what we can manifest in the next year. Mine is for a perfect cafe, which in the late night hours, is filled with flamenco musicians, and the desert, like Larry's dream, becomes an al fresco museum of exquisite arts. Already the theme of the coming year rises for planning and creation: we are going to enter Dante's Inferno.

I decided that I could bring the exploits of Larry Harvey into Proust Said That by asking him to take the Proust Questionnnaire. So a few weeks after we'd gotten back from the desert and had some time to decompress, attending numerous events at which we gathered to hear the stories of everything we'd missed, see the photos, slides and videos, and relive the experience, he came over to Proust Headquarters, and we sat at the kitchen table to get on with it. I had copies of both questionnaires, and started with the one Proust answered at 13.

P:What do you consider the greatest depth of misery?

Larry:To suffer alone without faith.

P:Where would you like to live?

Larry:I'd love to live on another planet for a while.

P:What is your idea of earthly happiness?

P:(Giving up after minutes of unexpected silence) Your most marked characteristic?

Larry:My hat.

Mercedes has been making dinner: she offers us some, and I get up to throw together a salad. Larry picks up the lists of questions and goes through them on his own.

Larry:My favorite hero of fiction? Decoud in Nostromo.

Favorite occupation? ...Smoking and talking. ... Oh, thanks.

What would I have liked to be? ....Everything.

Dream of happinesss? ...A warm place on a cold night.

Mercedes: Some gravy? Larry:Thanks.

My principle defect? The competition is too fierce among my many defects. I'd rather not take sides.

My favorite flower is the lupin; a survivor. It grows at sea level and timberline.

Favorite bird? Ravens, bluejays and crows. The swallow is sweet, too.

Prose writers... John Updike, Conrad, Henry James and William James, Darwin for the last page of Origin of the Species, Freud on melancholy, Tom Wolfe, George Elliot, Dickens...

P:Have you read Thomas Mann?

Larry:Oh, yes, Mann for Felix.... Felix... Mendelsohn. No... Felix... the cat! Felix...

P: Krull.

Larry: Yes. Nathaniel West for Day of the Locust, Flannery O'Connor. This is stupid, there are plenty more...

Poets? Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Harte Crane, Robinson Jeffers, Shakespeare... and I'm haunted by two poems by Empson... He was the weirdest guy in the world, had a very long beard that grew only under his chin. He was an Oxford don. Let's see....

P: Salad? ...

P: Your favorite composer?

Larry:I have many tastes but few opinions. I wouldn't dignify them as but they don't have the quality of opinions.

P:Your favorite painters?

Larry:Corot, Beckmann... Hopper...

P:How about you, Mercedes?

Mercedes: That German... Marc.

P: I love Franz Marc.

Larry: Oh, yeah. Add Marc. I apologize to all the painters I've overlooked.

Paul: (our glassblower roommate who's just joined us) William Wegman.

Larry:I think we can make Hiroshige count... There ought to be a question about filmmakers.

P: O.K.... Who's your favorite filmmaker?

Larry: Orson Welles, Sidney Lumet, early and middle Hitchock, early and middle Fellini... early and middle... what's his name... there's another one...

Paul:I saw Werner Herzog at the Roxie last week...

Larry: Kubrick!

P:Mercedes?

Mercedes: Wim Wenders... Kurosawa...

Larry:Early and middle Bergman... early and middle Antonioni, seems to be a pattern, doesn't it? Let's see... Who are my heroes in real life? Increasingly, as time goes on, my friends. Heroines of history? It's hard to say. I don't want to create ill will, so I'll do it by category...

Congeniality: Doris Day. Joan of Arc, failed congeniality, but she filled a suit of armor. And to all those I've slighted for this title, I apologize.

Favorite names? I love all names. There, I've offended no one. What is it that I most dislike? Smothering and abandonment. I just don't seem to be able to get comfortable...

P:This is delicious. Thanks!

Larry:Which historical characters do I despise? Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger praying.

I admire? Those that require more than admiration....

What natural gift would I most like to possess? I'd like to dance like Fred Astaire....

How would I like to die??? No, thank you!

What is my present state of mind? When I know, I am it, then I forget.

To what faults do I feel most indulgent? All my own. Is that it?

P:What is your motto?

Larry:Jump while you can.

P:What qualities do you like in a woman?

Larry:Eyes, ears, nose and face in general. Brain, butt, thighs, spirit, skin, all kinds of connections, but chiefly... (he smiles) wait a minute, I haven't finished... two principal organs that pump blood.

P:In a man?

Larry:Beards.

Larry thought the Proust Questionnaire was fun, and so very French. "They loved the bon mot," he said, "they're good at it. This is like training."