Adventioneering

There are 30 days left on the clock until Burning Man, and it’s official, now with mute dropping out that’s the last of my friends who have opted out of the plan.
I am fond of saying that the one thing you can’t do is make somebody want someone that they don’t already want. All you can do is pander to to they already want, or what they fear, to steer them in a particular direction. Some might call that manipulation, but I just settle for calling it marketing.

In the end though, it seems to always ring true, at least for me. Perhaps somewhere a more persuasive person really could take someone and truly make them want something that they had never wanted before, out of thin air. Maybe that’s the difference between leaders and salesmen. I suspect, though, that it is just impossible.

I have a couple of camps that I am considering trying to sign on with, but I know I won’t. I am just being reactionary, now, after months of trying to put together a camp and a group of friends, I am sick of trying to make people be interested in what I am interested in, and I don’t want any part of it anymore.

When this first started, Joel and I had plans of joining together and creating a single camp representing the kcgeek crowd, and the people I knew. Lots of people were interested at first, but as with all things that seem to require real effort, more and more dropped off after time passed.. After this kept happening and I didn’t hear from Joel for awhile, I decided to radically scale back my plans.

Originally, I had wanted to go in the full Burningman spirit – A veteran burner said “Burningman is not a camping trip; bring a sofa, hell, bring a oven”. To pull that off, though, you of course need people, and will. A motive. After that became increasingly clear that it wasn’t going to happen, my instincts came over; screw everyone, and just look after myself, like always.

I’ve camped enough to know that everything I need for weeks in the mountains fits on my back. There is, I admit, a sick elegance to this, that you can just walk out into the woods. It is the way I am accustomed to, striking out.

Everything I need for a week in the desert, water and all, readily fits in the trunk of the car. No need to take a truck for one. Too heavy, to gas guzzling, too big, too high impact.

By the time Joel got back in touch with me and I learned that his plans were still progressing, I had already scaled back. I knew that the remaining two people, Victoria and mute, were going to back out. And by then, I didn’t care, either.

When they finally did, I contacted Esther and she fenced the ticket that Victoria had stuck me with the bill for in about 10 minutes, I was quite impressed. It gets fedexed out to a chap in Chicago tomorrow, and then that’s the last of it, really.

Now I have freedom, though. I will cut a few days off the burn and instead drive through the Sierra and perhaps to the San Fran and the Pacific, or possibly explore ghost-towns in the desert. I will photograph.

At the end of the day, it always seems, it’s just me. It’s funny, but the mornings seem to start out that way, too. Victoria fancies telling me that I don’t need people, but I wonder if that’s not simply out of necessecity rather than choice, I don’t have any people I can rely on, so I’ve never had a chance to try it out.

So to Burning Man I go, in a way that is the total antithesis of the event itself, but in a way that is now natural to me. Quietly. I am not going to have a camp, but rather a corner. I am not going with anyone, although I hope to meet many, others that like myself that would bother to make this trip. No dome or other elaborate and fancy shelter, I’ll just take a tent and a tarp for shade. No sofas.

The only art I have to bring is the kind that you only take away, photography. It’s uncontribuitory, very after the fact, and in many ways is a negative. You “take” a picture, after all. I’ll donate my photographs back to them, but that will be too little, too late. This is the ultimate chance for Burning Man as an Event, to turn the course I am on. I feel bad, I don’t go to be a spectator, yet I know I am on the path to being one.

Hopefully the Man can save me.