From the inside of the 11:00am Northeast Regional it looks warm outside. I can guarantee you that it is not, and that the further north we go, the colder it is going to get. I still haven’t quite come to terms with whatever I’ll be stepping off into in Boston.
There’s a woman named Maria that I am about to send a text message to. She lives in Boston. We met at Burning Man this summer. She was camping in the camp that hosts the “bootie black rock city” party, which happened to be next to a camp called “The Star Cats” that many of my friends camp in. Maria had a friend at the camp, a 48 year old looking guy with pink hair, strappy leather work gear, and a big exposed belly. It was his birthday that day. The camp mates ran out into the middle of the clearing by the camp and held up balloons that read:
“Happy Fucking Birthday”
Maria organized it. She stood there and snapped the photo. It was my birthday too, and I told the pink haired man that. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” he said, “to have your birthday during the burn. It’s kind of like having your birthday on Christmas.” My mom’s birthday is on Christmas day.
A few month after Burning Man I was walking down Ames St. in Cambridge with my bag fully packed, er route to NYC. I saw an awkwardly parked U-Haul van and a woman in black utility boots was standing on the sidewalk evaluating it’s placement.
“Hey,” I said, “I know you. We met at burning man right?”
“Oh yeah,” said Maria, “Nice to see you.”
We hugged and then had a conversation about what she was doing in Cambridge. We added each other on facebook, zero mutual friends, then I left to go get some dumplings.
Sitting at the counter waiting for my veggie dumplings, I looked at Maria’s facebook. It was her birthday that day. I felt bad missing a chance to tell her happy birthday, especially since she had unwittingly delivered an enthusiastic birthday message on mine.
After eating I ducked into a bank that looked like they were setting up to have some kind of party with a cake. “We just launched our new branding,” the clerk explained. The new logo updated their font from a gothic calligraphic script (think “New York Times” logo) to something a bit closer to Helvetica.
“Do you have any printer paper I could borrow?” I asked the clerk.
I took a sharpie out of my bag, and drew a happy birthday note on the sheet of paper, then walked back to the U-Haul and stuck it behind the windshield wiper. There was something else in the windshield wiper too - a parking ticket.
That was the last time I spoke with Maria, but I’m going to message her again right now.
. . .
Three days later now I’m on the train again, this time facing backwards as I get hauled from Boston to Providence. Wet and nippy out. Dark.
As for things with Maria, we got drinks at the Independent in Somerville. We smiled at one another. I was a little late, she was a little later. She had spectacular hair. Two beers in I learned that she loves motorcycles and recently started dating someone who rides one.
“We’ve been friends for a long time.”
She did connect me to the 48 year old looking guy with pink hair. It turns out that his name is Sean and he’s probably 31. We had a 10:30am call and I took it from a nook in the wall of 4th West, an MIT dorm with graffiti on the walls and sticky carpet floor.
"I'll send you the form, fill it out and if you can make it up to Boston 3 or 4 times you can join our camp."
the big window is high in the trees there’s a ledge my cat can jump up. i have all kinds of vehicles here but my van is jumbled in with the washing machines. some succulents thrive in the garden others have gone to rot: not wanting my grandmother to see the dead ones i turn over the grainy red dirt so they won’t show.
One... one. One... Is this real? Dream check? Yeah, no, this is real.
“There’s nothing here.”
That's my first thought upon arriving at 179 Russell St.
It's a church. A small older man with a balding head, a funny little moustache and a back pack that looked like it weighs half as much as he does is slouched on the church steps. That's it.
I came here for a dance party. I say “hey there” to the man, though it seems like a stretch that this little old guy in a tucked pale orange plaid and khakis would know anything about a dance party.
The man looks up, grunts, and looks back down. It’s a big, dark church across from a park and nobody is around.
About to give up, I figure the event must have been cancelled or something, and start walking back towards Williamsburg. Then I notice a door, a side door into the church with the numbers 179 above it. It’s worth a shot. If there’s any chance of a dance party, I want to find it.
I open the door and it’s dead quiet. There’s a stair case going down to a door. I walk through it into a very large room. Extremely brightly lit, white fluorescents casting an uncomfortable glow over the whole room. And there’s a dude in there - just one guy - but as soon as I see him I know that this is somehow where I meant to come. He’s a large asian man with a gelled up hairstyle and plenty of tattoos.
“You know what this is, right?” he asks me.
“Um yeah, I read about it in the email newsletter. Dancing in the dark right? Dance party with no light?”
“Yep that’s it. And I’m the DJ. Just a couple rules. No cell phones, no break dancing, and most importantly - no watching.”
“Can I help you set up?” I offer. He’s just starting to pull a large set of speakers out of closet. The room isn’t set up at all.
“No, no. I’m good”
So I sit down on a piano bench and watch as he sets up. The event is supposed to start at 8:30 and it’s already 8:35. I start to feel bad for this guy, he’s doing all this work to set up a dark dance party and it looks like he’s going to be DJing to an invisible audience of one. Thumbing $5 I brought for the suggested donation I start to wonder if a $20 pity donation would actually be more appropriate.
Finally someone comes in. Actually a nice looking young woman in yoga pants. But she just says “I’m looking for my friend” who apparently isn’t me, and then turns around and leaves.
A few more minutes tick by and the DJ is frantically setting up fans, switching out light bulbs, and plugging in his sound system. As I watch the door, I'm shocked to see the older guy from the church steps walking in. He places his massive back pack against a wall and takes a place on the dance floor.
The lights go off. The DJ presses play.
Madonna - "Hung Up"
I start moving, trying to truly bring myself into the present, to be one with the darkness, to channel energy like a tai-chi flow master. I start grooving, moving, taking up space, bouncing around, hopping, waving my arms madly, hips to the left, hips to the right.
The DJ puts on something funky, something jazzy and latin, with a nice thumpy beat. I’m in salsa mode, back and forth hands to the side hands up, swinging down and around.
When the song goes quiet. I hear applause. Gentle, and measured, but significant. I turn around to see the swaying, bouncing silhouettes of several dozen people. The place is packed, and every single person you can barely make out is shaking, gyrating, skipping across the floor to the rhythm.
I realize I’m violating the “no looking” rule and get back to my dancing. By the time they finish with some ballet inducing melodies and the punky ska of Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” I’m sweaty as hell in my black Levi’s thinking “maybe this is what SoulCycle is like”.
The Violent Femmes - "Blister in the Sun"
Although I constantly feel pulled back to a sense of vanity, a wanting to be seen, I’m empowered by the fact that I’m not. Empowered to swing wider, step faster, hop harder, or sway my hips just a little more smoothly on the sexy parts.
MC Hammer - "Can't Touch This"
Eventually a red light on the side goes on and you can dimly make out the faces of the people. When the music stops, and the lights come back on, the hall is cleared again, just me, the DJ, and the old guy with the back pack.
I stumble back out on the Greenpoint street. Sweaty, but happy. Another night of weird single existence rescued from mundane loneliness.
***
still – in dreams – across nets – in words and glances – as beautiful and eloquent as
to start let’s say there’s the amazing of tens of thousands of people gathering in a desert to be and appreciate art. and there’s the problem of radical inclusivity via exclusivity, of anti-consumerism via Amazon Prime frenzy.
aside from those “of courses”, what I find lovely and special about burning man is just how barely-held-together everything is, and yet how well it all works. it’s that string of eL-wire that’s barely clinging to your fur coat, that little piece of string that’s literally the only thing holding up your art-DJ-booth, the little stuffed animal tenuously zip tied to your brake cables.
it’s an environment so chaotic and ephemeral that any tiny upgrade in the solidity or permanence of things can be directly appreciated as a genuine accomplishment. adding another screw to the two by four that holds the giant thermos of hot-cocoa to your four wheeled art bike; tying a slightly better knot on the guy line that is constantly being tested by fifty mile an hour wind gust; packing that one extra granola bar before you begin a 16 hour long adventure.
coming back into the default world we confront the fact that everything’s already _there_. it’s already buckled down, tied up, double-reinforced, and permanently secured: not only our structures, but our relationships, our identities, our futures.
life on the playa challenges us to identify less with what we built around us and more with what we can bring with us. what we can bring with us physically into the middle of the desert, on our backs as we trek through black rock city, and moreover, what we can bring with us, bare and naked, as we go about interacting with other humans. what can we bring by way of dance, ability to hear and heal, spark of intellect or adventure? How can we delight and contribute without the assistance of the all-to-solid structures that hold us on the pedestals we construct for ourselves in normal life?
the playa challenges us to consider how just being can be enough to be a contributor and not a mere observer. it encourages a deeper generosity of the moment, and a willingness to reach out and make an offer, rather than only to give when asked, and only to ask when absolutely essential.
when I went to the temple this year I was moved by the portrait of an old school burner. in the default world his name was john and on the playa he was sparkle pony. he sat there, smiling wide in a dusty arm chair in the middle of the desert with the oldschool man pavilion in the background.