DaVinci's Workshop...Burning Man & Me...

Burning Man with this years theme DaVinci's workshop has a 24/7 live video feed and I have been like a ravenous voyeur all week long watching the creatives, the costumes, the art and their artistic expressions of life. It is more than a little embarrassing and totally weird.

I know for the most part, “regular” people will not understand why I am so “ate up” with the Burning Man Festival especially since I have never been there.

 If you are scratching your head…so am I!  

The short 411 is Burning Man is art installation amusement park with over 60,000 people that come and camp for a week, then burn an effigy of “the man” at the end.  Oh…did I mention all of this is constructed and done in the middle of a desert in Nevada with absolutely NO amenities, almost biblical in proportion and spirituality.  Heat and cold, extreme dust, camping, port-a-potties,  etc. are not anything I would ever be attracted to, but here I sit, watching and drooling at a TV screen.

After some thought, I suspect what excites me is the “tribe” mentality.  As an artist there are a host of self-help books and programs that describe artists as a tribe, and I truly feel and understand that, but as a creativity facilitator, I find it difficult to find my tribe and then keep them united.  That may be the fatal flaw.  Every group I have facilitated becomes like a family, we share something spectacular and spiritual that can never be repeated or duplicated again, as much as we all would like to.   Life’s responsibilities crash in and we go our separate ways and back to our individual lives.  We will see each other again, recognize the bond,  experience a fleeting moment of our creative “tribe” and then move on with our own creative lives.

Burning Man guarantees me that I am part of a much much bigger tribe of creatives, and that it is ok to have a magnificent spiritual experience but when it is over, it is over never to be repeated or recovered.   It is absolutely ridiculous to try. (Now all of the burning makes perfect sense!)It is all about being in the now, surrounded with creativity and that sings to my heart, it resonates with me perfectly.  So, I will watch Burning Man 2016’s live feed and drool for one last day of the festival.

"Connected"  Eric Bibb
wanna see more about Burning Man??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1IMW8ctcFY