Despite all the mainstreamification of Burning Man – the Silicon Valley trillionaires, the VIP areas, Kyle fuckin’ Sandilands – it’s still an event that basically has no analogue anywhere else in the world. Over a week, tens of thousands of people descend upon an arid expanse of Nevada desert to participate in a ‘radical’ experiment of community, art and decommodification.
In brief, they get nude and high and trip balls together. In its own way, it’s a beautiful thing.
We caught up with Danny Clayton, he of Channel V fame, after his own exodus at Burning Man, while he kicks back and recovers in Lake Tahoe. Obviously, he wanted to share some yarns, and we were happy to hear ’em.
The best one is precisely follows:
So across from my camp, there was a bucking bull. Without warning, about three hundred naked people turned up to do the bullride. Naturally, I took off all my clothes, and I *won* the bullride. I spent the longest time nude on the bullride. I think it was like 13-15 seconds – but that’s not the crescendo of the story.While all these men – mostly men – were standing around naked and dancing, a very attractive woman, who was also naked, started to dance vigorously against one of the men. Now, that man popped a ginormous erection, which had a ripple effect, and all of a sudden all of these boners RIPPLED out from the sexy dancing woman.I’m in hysterics, laughing my head off, and everyone scattered. Everyone got so awkward that everyone ran away from the erection circle.
Yeah, excellent. I’m sick of hearing stories about transcendent spiritual experiences at Burning Man. That’s passé as fuck at this point. I’m way more interested in stories about pudgy blokes with weird dicks. Maybe it’s just me.
But look, Danny had a couple of nicer ones up his sleeve too:
Nudity and dick aside, there is a side of it this is truly pleasant. There’s a place called The Temple. They build it up, and on the final day they burn it down after the Burning Man. It is filled with things that people want to let go. In particular, it’s a shrine to people’s loved ones. Maybe someone lost a dog – they’ll put a photo of a dog in there.Other people have written these gigantic posters to their friends who have gone. I heard a rumour – there’s so many rumours at Burning Man – that somebody put David Bowie‘s ashes in The Temple. This one guy, a complete stranger, came up to me and asked for my help to put up a poster really high because I’m quite tall.It was a poster to his mother who had died. He started bawling once it was up. I’m hugging this guy I’ve never met, and we’re both crying. I felt so bizarre. This whole temple is full of people who are collectively mourning about other people’s losses. It’s something you rarely get to do in our culture: genuinely mourn as a community. It was really beautiful.I don’t want to sound like one of those cliché first time Burning Man people that say “Oh man, you won’t get it, you won’t understand it,” but until you’re in that temple comforting other strangers… I dunno, it felt genuine and it felt real. I’ve been trying not to get caught up in the wanky spiritual side of it, but if there was a place where I subscribed to that community it was in there.I wasn’t even on acid!
Sure, mate. Get some photos up ya:
If you’re keen, Danny took a tight Snapchat story too:
