Last year my first Burning Man was transformative. I felt like I drove through a portal into a world of freedom, joy and creativity (see “Born Again“). This year (2009) I felt like I returned home, as in “where the heart is”. But this year I took ten burning man virgins with me, hosted a graduation party for the “Roads Scholars” and screened several movies. We bit off a lot to chew. But it tasted delicious.

[View as slideshow]

123►

Our 2009 Camp

This year our little tribe of Digital Vagabonds camped with our close cousins the TechNomads. Like me, these vagabonds at heart use telecommunication technology to make the world their office and playground. This year they hosted a very well attended workshop on how to become a Techno Nomad. For those who want to learn how technology can enable them to be “location independent” visit http://www.technomadia.com/links/links. I look forward to crossing paths with these Nomads on and offline.

[View as slideshow]

Roads Scholars Graduation Party

This year we hosted a graduation ceremony for the first annual “Roads Scholars“. This past spring four talented writers were awarded “Roads Scholarships” to road trip North America during the summer and share their journeys online at Matador Travel.com and DigitalVagabonding.com. Their road trips converged at Burning Man where they “graduated” from Vagabond U.

The author of Vagabonding in America, Ed Buryn, acted as our honorary dean. Ed was appropriately attired in a tuxedo T shirt and briefs reading “Why am I God”?

[View as slideshow]

Outdoor Movies at Burning Man

On Tuesday night during Bat Country’s “Hunter S. Tuesday” celebration, we sponsored “Gonzo Movie Night” with screenings of “Fear and Loathing” and “Gonzo – The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson”.   Scotty – the “Magic Bus Tripsmaster“ and myself stirred up some live audience participation by re-enacting the insanity of Hunter S. and Dr. Gonzo. The Bats flocked to the screen and the insanity.

Wednesday night was “Evolution Cinema” in honor of this year’s evolution theme (see “The Evolution Trip” for more info). We showed cult classics that question our evolution as humans, including a new and challenging movie, Fierce Light – When spirit meets action, by acclaimed filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. In Fierce Light Velcrow Ripper, filmmaker and spiritual seeker, journeys through the world exploring what Martin Luther King called “Love in Action” and Gandhi called “Soul Force”.

Prior to screening Fierce Light – When spirit meets action, we screened “Humanity Ascending” with Barbara Marx Hubbard. This documentary features author and futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard and offers a vision toward our birth as a new humanity – Homo Spiritus.

After screening Fierce Light we showed Zeitgeist – the underground classic the banks don’t want you to see. Unfortunately it’s not your imagination or the drugs, the shadow government and banking system are really out to own you and the world.

After all this burning intensity in the desert we did some serious soaking. Right after Burning Man some of our vagabond tribe made it to the nearby Sierra Hot Springs to soak, unwind and relax after an intense burn. I’m a big fan of their brother/sister place at Harbin Hot Springs, which I wrote about as “Human Soup“.

We hope to see you out on the playa next year.

Be Well and Live Large, Pat the DV.

Now a word from Jack Kerouac who was apparently a Burner before Burning Man –

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” – On the Road

Have you ever experienced such over powering beauty, love and hope that your heart swelled and your eyes welled up with tears of joy and sorrow? Tears of joy from profound gratitude and yet sorrow for all the years you’d walled off this beauty.

It happened to me one morning in the Nevada desert as the sun rose over a mountain ridge. When my tears finally flowed, it was as if a lifetime of pent up emotion broke through a crack and then burst the dam that had held back my emotion.

Beyond choking back emotion in a dark movie theater, I can’t recall any other time I cried. It must have been some time during my childhood. I grew up in a family that swallowed their emotions like a lump of peanut butter. We didn’t hug and we didn’t feel the need to say we loved each other. It was assumed that despite the disharmony and anger between my parents that we all loved each other. I spent most of my life waiting to leave.

But when I left home I took what I learned with me, along with a dark sense of humor and a shield of sarcasm. I was crippled and didn’t realize how badly until recently.

I never expected to experience anything at the Burning Man Festival that would move me to tears. But the dam began to crack as soon as I got to Black Rock City. Black Rock is a “city” that is created temporarily each year to host the seven day Burning Man Festival and provide services for its 50,000 participants.

It’s a fantastic place where the residents have plenty of time to play with each other and where no money is exchanged and virtually everything is given freely (“gifted”). People don’t transact with each other – they interact. The “coin” of this realm is spirit and personality – not money. Entering into Black Rock is like taking a portal into another Universe. To me Black Rock City is the “City of a million delights”.

On my first day I drove across the desert following a caravan of pilgrims on a dirt road leading to Black Rock City. Our long convoy of vehicles was hit with what I later learned was the worst blinding dust storm in years. As I crept along in my motor home, I glimpsed a fire truck hosing down the charred remains of a motor home burnt down to its frame. I had heard about the devastating effects of the dreaded “playa dust” and its insidious ability to infiltrate mechanical and electronic devices and destroy them. There by the grace of God was I. The drive looked more like entering a war zone than a festival. But I pressed on.

Soon after I arrived and set up camp with Ed, the author of Vagabonding in the USA, my motor home alarm began screaming uncontrollably and shrieking in tones I’d never heard. It would not stop, despite the best efforts of the pope from across the street to exorcise its demons. We cut the battery cord and, with all power to the cab now dead, I retreated into the back section of my motor home to continue on auxiliary power.

[View as slideshow]

But in the spirit of Burning Man, a man emerged from the clouds of dust and introduced himself as a mechanic. He spent the next couple of hours crawling around under my dashboard in the desert heat until he disarmed my alarm and restored power to my cab and ignition. He did his work with joy and love and without any expectation of anything in return. It was my first encounter with “gifting” and the camaraderie that comes from pulling together to not only survive on the dusty desert playa but to thrive.

My deep appreciation of this man’s generous gift was perhaps the first tiny fissure that prepared my heart to crack open. Each day was full of new miracles, acts of kindness and compassion, acceptance, beauty, delight, surprise and joy – all of them chipping away at the wall around my heart. But a lifetime of barriers is not easily torn down.

A few days and nights into the Burning Man Festival, I rode my bike one night out into the vast desert playa. Brightly light art cars, mutant vehicles, boats and mobile nightclubs shuffled across the playa, with some belching flames into the night air. I stumbled upon spaceships, music shows and impromptu parties everywhere.

All sizes and shapes of humans grooved and bobbed on waves of surging music that washed over us all like rhythmic waves. It was a joyous symphony of pulsing lights,   penetrating music and dancing souls.

[View as slideshow]

The night show receded as the faint gentle light of the dawning new day came up over the mountains on the horizon. The music and dancing continued to flow and I stood still in the dawn light watching and feeling this incredible show flow around and through me.

An elegant man in a white tuxedo with a ruffled shirt walked in from the desert playa and stood before me. He took my hand and with an elegant Spanish accent he asked me to come with him as he gestured to a fantastic double decker bus. After a few days in the playa I had learned the futility of making plans and came to trust in serendipitous fate, chance encounters and magic. As we walked together out on to the desert playa I saw a large sculpture of the India God Ganesh with his elephant trunk mounted on the front of the bus. The top floor of this cosmic bus was open to the sky and funky people danced and swayed in the rising sun as a DJ spun records. A tall mast with a crows nest extended into the sky from the center of the bus and a fabulous woman grooved to the music while swinging from the mast pole.

We entered the bus and the elegant man sat down in the driver’s seat. After composing himself with the dignified posture of a royal prince, he flashed a radiant and reassuring smile to the passengers, shifted the party into motion and we blazed across the desert playa heading for the rising sun.

There were no glum faces on this early morning bus – only beaming faces, joy and laughter. I climbed the staircase and emerged on to the open air dance floor. The wind blew over everyone’s swaying bodies. I drank up the vision of these radiant colorful people as they swayed in the wind like blowing flowers.

This was the ride I’d been waiting for my whole adult life. During the Reagan 80’s, when I was 21, I read “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test“, which told the account of some truly far out hippies who tripped across America in the 1960’s in a day glow magic school bus – spreading music, acid and love in their wake. This book had convinced me that I was born into the wrong era and that I’d missed the magic bus.

But as I felt the magic of this bus, the loving vibe of its passengers and the beauty of the rising sun on the wide open desert playa – I realized that I had finally caught my magic bus. We were blazing into a world of wide open possibilities. I knew then that there was no place or time better than right now. This was a moment so perfect that my heart became overwhelmed like a man who had been wandering lost in a barren desert and just spotted his beautiful home on the horizon. I turned my back to the party behind me and faced the sun. The soft warmth of the rising sun dissolved away the last layers around my swelling heart and tears of joy and sorrow flowed down my cheeks.

I didn’t know where this magic bus would take me. But I vowed to meet it with an open heart.

The magic bus came to a stop along side a gigantic tower. It was made like a jungle jim with metal bars that extended three stories into the sky.

[View as slideshow]

I got off the bus and walked over to this tower that was covered with people climbing the bars upward into the morning sky. I gripped a bar and felt its solid strength. I could see that the welded joints were made with great care and attention to detail. A break in any one of these welds would send a person tumbling down to the hard desert floor.

I gripped a solid metal bar and began climbing upward toward the sky. With each rung I embraced I entrusted my life to the unknown stranger who built this structure. On my way upwards into the dawn of this beautiful new day I greeted and spoke with everyone I met. Some of them I photographed. Together we were all hanging out in the open sky greeting the new day. When I reached the top I met a beautiful young couple seated in a chair at the pinnacle of the tower. I took their portrait with the desert playa stretching out beyond them. They climbed down and I watched them do summersaults in the sands and they bounded off together hand in hand across the playa toward Black Rock City.

When I approached the bottom a woman wearing a butterfly mask and a radiant smile called out to me “Would you like some breakfast?” In one hand she held a bottle of yegermeister and in the other was a can of redbull energy drink. A jolt of intoxicating energy sounded like the perfect breakfast for this special new day. We laughed like silly misbehaving children as we drank our breakfast.

The rest of this glorious morning we wandered about the desert playa encountering seemingly random art and fabulous people. An amazing evening had morphed into a glorious new day and a fresh new beginning. My open heart absorbed its full radiant beauty and my soul was new like a child born into a world with eyes wide open. On this morning I was born again.

[View as slideshow]

Since Burning Man two weeks ago I’ve cheerfully weathered my baggage being lost, being stuck in rush hour traffic in NYC without air conditioning and having my clients locked out of a major event – all with good cheer and empathy. Before Burning Man (B.M.) I can only imagine the bitching, griping and negativity I would have spewed.

I’ve changed and I have a new found love of life and humanity. I hope and pray that I stay stuck this way for the rest of my life.

If I sound like a born again Christian it’s because Burning Man at its soulful best is a spiritual experience in which we rediscover our faith in humanity, life and ourselves. But this soulful experience is free from all the typical religious guilt, dogma and creeds.

I went looking for the “American Dream” at the Burning Man Festival. But I found much more than a vividly alive American Dream. I found humanity. Burning Man renewed my faith in the goodness of life and human beings when we are free from repression, materialism and competition. It can sometimes be hard to see the beauty in life and humans when you are jockeying for position in rush hour traffic or scurrying through a soulless strip mall.

At Burning Man I felt the naked truth that people, life and the Universe, when they are free to be, are amazing miracles. The Burning Man experience is so beautiful and profoundly moving that it can move a grown man to cry. I know because it happened to me.

The beauty of this powerful and liberating revelation overwhelmed me on day five as the sun rose over the mountains and light up the desert playa. The beauty of life, humans at their best and pure natural beauty couldn’t no longer be contained within me or repressed. All my feelings came streaming out in tears of joy, like the tears of a prisoner released from captivity and seeing the sun from outside their cell for the first time in decades.

Those near me gave me heart felt hugs and said “Welcome home brother”. On that glorious morning I became a “Burner”, who as they say “gets it”. I had come home to myself and the powerful realization of how beautiful people and life can and should be. In the “real world” these people would be called strangers. But out in the middle of the desert playa we were all soul mates. A full account of this tearful transformation at Burning man is at “Born Again“.

The seven day party that some dismiss as a giant drug induced orgy is really a celebration of humanity, creativity and life itself. Burning Man is a state of mind that can live far beyond the Black Rock Desert and well past one week. As the true Burners say “take it with you when you leave”.

When the almost 50,000 participants return home to virtually every corner of this world many of them carry it with them and share it with those they encounter. Some Burners even participate in “Burners without borders” and donate themselves and their spirit of generosity to those who are victims of natural disasters. And when Burners return to Burning Man each year they welcome each other home, as in “home is where the heart is”.

When Burners say “Welcome home Brother (or Sister)” they don’t mean to a particular place on earth but in our hearts. Returning to Burning Man and the Black Rock Desert each year is about returning to your best self and renewing your vows to take your best self back into the world to shine and make it the world we know it can be.

Burning Man says to those who come – be whoever you want to be or need to be. But be genuine. Be real. The symbol of the Burning Man is of a human being with arms stretching up into the sky. To me it says burn bright human beings. Lift your hands and heart up into the sky and burn beautifully and rise again from the ashes to do it again and again year after year.

I believe that we humans can and have created both Heaven and Hell here on planet earth. Burning Man was the closest experience of heaven that I’ve experienced here on earth. Where else can you spend one week with thousands of the coolest most turned on people on the planet and have your needs and dreams fulfilled without ever spending a dime?

Unlike the “real world” where “money talks”, at Burning Man money is practically useless since everyone is giving themselves and what they have freely. The real currency of exchange at Burning Man is you. People are interested in you and your ideas. The often corrosive and bullying power of money has no business at Burning Man.

Now doesn’t experiencing perfect strangers who are truly interacting and sharing rather than transacting sound like Heaven to you? Doesn’t experiencing the social barriers of class, gender and race as irrelevant sound like Heaven to you? Burning Man proved to me that such a Heaven is possible.

Some year I want to take a leap of faith into the arms of humanity and parachute naked into the Black Rock Desert. I know and trust that within minutes of hitting the ground the Universe would provide everything from a toothbrush to all the essentials of food, water, love, brotherhood and ecstasy.

I no longer intend to say, “have a good time”. From now on I intend to say “be a good time” because we make the good times within us and all around us. I am overjoyed to be a “Burner”. I can’t wait to return next year and bring those I love to share all the beauty with them and watch their inner beauty burn brightly in the desert.

I will always take Burning Man with me where ever I go.

Burning Man 2008 from Jason Mongue on Vimeo.

Burning Man 2009

I’m looking forward to going home to Black Rock City for the 2009 Burning Man Festival. This year I’ll be camping out in “Bat Country” with this year’s Roads Scholars, some close friends and a fantastic group of truly gonzo burner’s. To view our plans for the 2009 Burning Man during the first week of September, click here.

[View as slideshow]

12348910►

To see more photos of Burning Man from 2001 to 2008 from Michael Olsen “FireFingers” visit ZorkMagazine.

[View as slideshow]

12►

I think the American Dream is alive. But you can’t find or buy the American Dream. You can only dream it up. We can all have our own vision of the American Dream. At this year’s Burning Man Festival (August 25th to September 1st) 50,000 freaks will assemble in the desert to share their individual visions of the “American Dream”.

For me, if I had only one word to describe the American Dream, the word would be “Freedom”. The freedom to be who I really am and to roam free rather than be like a chicken in a cage laying eggs for a farmer.

This year will be my first time as a “Burner” and I will be sharing my vision of the American Dream by projecting 1,000 images from the past year’s Great American Road Trip on the side of my motor home “Destiny“. I call this showing “Visions of My American Dream”.

My travel mentor/guru Ed Buryn, author of Vagabonding in America, will be collaborating with me in promoting and presenting this show. We will also be showing movies related to this year’s American Dream theme, including “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“.

In 1971 Hunter S. Thompson went through the desert and into the crass heart of Las Vegas looking for the “American Dream”, driving a Cadillac with a trunk full of psychedelic drugs. What he found or fabricated became the book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream“.

In his book, the American Dream was hijacked by the privileged few sometime around Nixon’s reign. Judging from the current regime, they never gave it back. Hunter S. Thompson once said that his journalism beat was “the death of the American Dream”. By the time Thompson shot himself in 2005 he had largely pronounced the American Dream dead.

Perhaps his American Dream was dead. For others it has turned into the American Ream. But for those of us still living and dreaming it remains alive, even if endangered.

The pure canvas of the Black Rock Desert seems like a far more fitting place to dream the American Dream than the crass fabrication knows as Las Vegas. I will be painting my vision of this dream onto of this vast desert canvas by projecting 1,000 images onto the side of my motor home. Long live the American Dream and the freedom to create it!

Feel free to share your personal vision of the “American Dream” by posting your reply below.

A final thought from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson that is fitting for the Festival –

“When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.”

I expect to be very professional.

Addendum/Update – I had an amazing and moving experience during the seven days I participated in the Burning Man Festival. View highlights and photos from the 2008 Burning Man Festival.