Life
Burning Man 2011: Or, I Can’t Believe This is Happening
I spent a week in the desert for Burning Man 2011.
Burning Man, by its nature, is hard to describe. It’s a festival of 50,000 people in the desert, where participants leave no trace and commerce or advertising is not allowed. It’s not a barter economy, but a gift economy – people give things away, ranging from food, to alcohol, to performances, to trinkets, with no expectation of receiving anything in return. The only things you can buy there is coffee and ice – you have to bring all your own food, water, and camping supplies with you, and all your trash out at the end of the week.
It’s a farmer’s market, for free, in the desert. Duh.
One of the most incredible things is how fully-realized “Black Rock City” is. There’s a post office, 3 publications (BRC Weekly, The Shroom, some other one), street names, villages, and police. One camp set up a farmer’s market, where they gave away fruits and vegetables, as well as serving up homemade chai and hand salads. Improbable, interactive art structures dot the landscape, inviting you to climb or contribute. There are incredible parties that happen at all hours of the day (whether it’s 3am or 10am). This is the land where drinks are free (just bring your own cup); the dubstep blasts at top volume; the people are gorgeous; and everyone’s respectful of your personal space. I felt a lot safer here at night than walking around around Boston during the day.
The environment is intense. The hot, dry air immediately wicks away moisture, which proved hellish for my skin. They recommend you drink at least a gallon of water a day, which isn’t an exaggeration. You have to carry goggles and a bandanna at all times in case a dust storm kicks up, reducing visibility to 10 feet.
The temple, before being burned
The temple, in a choreographed burn.
Conversely, it’s also some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve seen. Biking around the playa as the sun sets is breath taking: the gasoline-slick of sky slipping behind the mountains, bikers in fantastical outfits criss-crossing the desert while white dust rises like fog. Look around, and you’ll see a stunning two-story temple built out of wood (which will be artfully burned to ashes at the end of the week), a Trojan horse, and of course, The Man – a wooden effigy that is burned on Saturday night after a frenetic fireworks display and 200 foot-high mushrooming green flames, putting every action movie to shame. At night, the playa lights up in all directions, a cross between an amusement park and an acid trip’s rendering of Vegas.
Photo by Bruce Miles
Imagine all this, while art cars – moving vehicles you dance on, ranging from sharks to yachts to octopi – blast their best dance music around a screaming throng of thousands. Some art cars carry giant propane tanks so they can spew 30 foot high flames into the night sky while they serve you drinks. The heat from the flames is actually somewhat painful, reminding you that yes, this is actually happening.
———
Photo by Bruce Miles
I ended up at Burning Man on total whim. A friend of mine from Harvard was organizing a theme camp and described it as an “art festival in the desert.” I was looking for things to do in my year off after college, so I shrugged and figured going with her was a good bet. It wasn’t until after I bought my ticket that I had this conversation:
Me: So, uh, what about running water?
Natalie: Well, you bring all your own with you.
Me: Oh. So what about showers?
Natalie: There aren’t really any, but we’re going to have a solar shower for the camp!
Me: But there’s electricity, right?
Natalie: No. But some people do have generators!
Me: Wifi? Cell reception?
Natalie: Nope.
Me: AM I GOING TO DIE?
Natalie: No.
Me: [hysterical] I’M GOING TO DIE. AM I GOING TO DIE?
I haven’t gone camping in over ten years. I was more nervous than excited as I rolled onto the playa in an overloaded sedan with Natalie’s friends from Berkley, CA.
The car engine immediately broke into pieces. We fretted for a few minutes, then the 5 of us pushed the car for 3 hours until we reached will call to pick up our tickets. They wouldn’t let us push the car the last two miles, so we hooked up the sedan, all of our luggage, and all 5 of us to the back of a Budget truck with nothing more than nylon rope thinner than my pinky finger. Miraculously, it held.
It was an inauspicious beginning, and my first full day on the playa beat me up physically. Scorching dry heat and high altitudes make you feel like crap. I drank some water, wandered around, went to bed early. My tiny tent and sleeping bag that night felt more luxurious than any 4 star hotel.
The hardest part to deal with is not the heat. It is the superfine, alkaline white dust. It coats everything and stays there, even if you rinse off your hands with water. Your fingers are perpetually chalky, and you’ve never had a worse hair day. There’s a coating of dust on your cooking supplies, dust sneaks into your sleeping bag, and dust grinds in your contact lenses.
My skin revolted, my feet ached, my hair felt like plastic. I gave up on makeup.
To my surprise, I didn’t die.
——–
I normally wrestle with a perpetual baseline of anxiety. Sometimes I’m aware it’s there, sometimes I can’t even perceive it. Like many others, I’m always attempting to control the world around me, and sorely disappointed when it fails to comply. Friends flake despite followup emails; it rains during a barbecue; my taxi sits in traffic before an important meeting.
Time exists fragmentally at Burning Man. Few bother with clocks. There are no cell phones, so you can’t text someone demanding to know where and when they’ll show up. Strip away the controls, and you find that social machinery still churns, with even more life and verve than before. I met the most incredible people by accident, and soon, accident became fate. People there, as a rule, are incredibly friendly and helpful.
At the same time, Burning Man only exists a week a year. The entire city is transient, burned or carried away with beauty and sullen efficiency. I caught myself pining for certain moments to be extended. It’s strange. So often, I feel saddest when I’m happy, because I’m thinking about how that particular source of happiness will end. That’s what I took away from the eponymous burning man at the end of the week: that beauty exists for a certain finite period in time. Its end is inevitable, even desirable. It is a gift to experience happiness, and it is wisdom to let it go.
A Belated Fourth of July Update
Warning: bodily functions ahead.
I am skeptical of Large Group Things. Like concerts, movie openings, and crowded clubs. Something so many people like must not actually be very good, my logic goes.
I am not sure where my logic comes from, but that is another story.
This is before all the doom and disaster happened. Just finish reading this post.
Anyway, my friend Evan decided he wanted to float down the Charles River to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. I gamely agreed. Meanwhile, my brain was thinking: “WTF. How lame. Fireworks and a boat? I’ll fall asleep and get shit on by a bird.”
Evan carrying the boating equipment
But it ended up being surprisingly fun. First we blew up the boat using an air pump. Then I practiced my rowing skills.
So skilled! Yah.
Evan and his Olin College alum friends waved to some fellow Oliners floating down the Charles on… couches. Don’t ask me how they got couches to float. It’s those crazy engineering students.
Bad things were about to happen.
The sunset was beautiful – and there’s nothing like a sunset that totally surrounds you and reflects off the water. I paddled along, careful not to get overturned by the wake of larger boats.
Meanwhile, I wondered if I was incredibly boring. Evan was not replying to any comments I made. Occasionally, I’d crack a joke and he’d just be silent.
My questions were answered about half an hour into our journey. The two of us were crammed onto a tiny, inflatable boat, so it was very obvious when leaned over the side and began vomiting the contents of his stomach.
I patted him awkwardly on the back, and dug frantically through my tote bag for tissues and mints. He continued throwing up, then washed off his mouth with some of the lake water, looking pale and fragile.
“You must feel so much better!” I said, filled with optimism. “I’m sure you’ll be fine now!”
“Yeah,” he said, not sounding convinced. “A little bit.”
Half an hour later, we were floating in between giant boats, the periphery of where the fireworks were going to go off.
He leaned over and began retching again, except this time, it was just dry heaves.
The very nice lady on a neighboring boat offered us some Coke.
We decided, at that point, to paddle over to the dock. It was around 9pm and the banks of the Charles were teeming with tens of thousands of spectators. The teenaged Asian girl, who must have staked out her spot hours before, tried to chase us away.
“You’re not allowed to bring boats here,” she said.
I almost believed her, especially when I heard a police boat yell at someone on a megaphone to move away. “Is that at us?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Evan, poor soul, had his eyes closed and was doing breathing exercises.
I figured out she was lying, and ignored her. Evan and I sat on the edge of the dock for another hour until the show started. We had stolen front row seats, thanks to our water route. He no longer felt seasick, and the fireworks were indeed incredible. Especially since they timed them to Katy Perry.
After the show, the streets of Boston looked like the zombie apocalypse had hit. People were climbing over barricades and spilling across the crosswalks. The streets were littered in trash. Evan and I packed up the boat and decided to have some dinner at a sushi place in Back Bay.
The sushi ("pink lady" roll) was not that good, so the restaurant is not being named for lack of remarkability.
I am proud to report I neither fell asleep, nor was soiled by a wild animal.
My Post-Harvard Life, Part 1
Dear Internet,
WTF. I owe you an apology for never posting – or maybe you’re thankful I haven’t besmirched your walls with more image-laden food posts. (Then again, 4Chan and Space Ghetto really have me beat in the besmirching department. I’m not linking to them for a reason.)
My college roommate Felice, on Space Ghetto: “Don’t look! It’s a dead woman… in a bathtub… [redacted]”
Me, covering my eyes in genuine terror: “Oh my god! Tell me when there’s a picture of a kitten.”
What has happened in the past… oh, 6 months?
WIth the inimitable Quincy House masters, Deb and Lee. Thank you for the incredible support and being totally candid about life/the universe/42/evil people.
For one, I’m now a “real person.”
My last semester of college was a blur. I took 3 computer science classes and ran a full-time freelance web design business. Mostly to test the theory I’d be able to support myself without a real job. (Verdict: Can definitely afford my sub-$500 rent on my Allston sublet. Rock on, Craigslist.)
A week of rabble-rousing, two days of graduation ceremonies, one 6 a.m. wakeup call, and one red enveloped diploma later, I am a Harvard grad. I have a degree in Social Anthropology, and it’s actually kind of useful as a designer and business person. Eat it, doubtful Asian parents! (Not my own, they didn’t care what I majored in.)
Dat's right. Hot dog fried rice.
So now I’m subletting in Allston, cooking Thai food in the sticky, poorly-ventilated kitchen, reskinning a little corner of the Internet for mostly startup clientele, as well as working on a website concept with some friends. Who knows what will happen at the end of the summer, but I have a nice setup for now.
I drink bubble tea everyday and cook Pad Thai for my friends. We don’t have a living room, so they have to eat sitting on my bed and drink out of foam cups.
One of my two pairs of heels (~$20 from Forever 21), an American Apparel lace print dress worn under a skirt with zip back from China.
I only brought along 5 pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of jeans, 5-7 shirts, and a few dresses. I don’t have a hair dryer. I clip my nails with my Swiss Army Knife scissors, a graduation present. I clean floors, dishes, and toilets; it’s great. My only luxury: borrowing $300 Bose sound-canceling headphones from my Belgian friend… indefinitely.
Coco the Rat ISN'T SHE CUTE!
My roommates are also eminently likable, another Craigslist victory – Chinese nationals heading into consulting gigs who are charmed by the pet rat in my room (I am pet sitting Felice’s white rat Coco Chanel) and who blankly ignore my attempts to use Mandarin vocabulary. When I break out coconut milk or tamarind pulp to cook, they are fascinated – as I’ve brought home a chimp speaking in a particularly idiomatic Queens accent.
Sometimes there are particularly unfortunate translation problems.
Anna (name changed): Do you have any uh, I don’t know how to say this… wei jing?
Me: Pads? Don’t have any. I do have tampons.
Anna: What?
Me: I have tampons, do you want one?
Anna: What?
Me: Are you talking about your period?
Anna: What?
Me: You know, li jia [Chinese for period].
Anna: What?
Me: [Finally dawning on me] OH. YOU MEAN MSG.
Anna: What?
Me: [Grabbing a jar of Ajinimoto MSG off the shelf] Here. MSG.
Anna: Ahh, yes. What do you call this in English?
Me: Uh, monosodium glutamate…
I’m glad she doesn’t understand everything, so I can get away with pretending I didn’t embarrass myself.
Despite my spare closet, I still manage to put together some outfits from what I had on hand for a graduation photoshoot (taken by my friend Sam and his trusty Nikon):
SWINGS! I hurt my hands on them in elementary school... today, no improvement.
One of those well-timed hair-adjusting moments.
"Ok, done weaving my hair into the flower bush. Time to pretend I'm in a perfume ad." ...
... OR THAT I'M COCO THE RAT. (Body con dress from Bebe)
While I was taking some of these photos on Widener steps,an Asian tourist kept very obviously circling around Sam and me. Gotta love them and their urine-soaked John Harvard's foot touching ways.
Something I was supposed to have done more of in college.
Side note: I’m in love with the Urban Renewals thrift store in Allston. I got a cute yellow Abercrombie skirt (wool and cashmere blend, with a silk lining) for $2! $2!!! I spent $4.76 buying a drink from Starbucks! That’s like, two skirts and a pair of sunglasses! Unreal.
So to take us back to the food topic of this blog:
I had a really nice dinner recently, sponsored for media, at the newly opened Nubar in the Sheraton Commander (Harvard Square). Outside of the swordfish being a bit bland, the other dishes were great: creamy, rich polenta topped with spinach and fried egg, its yellow yolk oozing; lobster arancini with morels, arriving as a softball-sized vehicle of joy. Arancini is one of my favorite dishes (rice! fried! with cheese! you can’t go wrong).
Polenta and FRIED EGG.
I think the polenta is a stiff contender for favorite topped-with-fried-egg-appetizer in Harvard Square. The former title holder being Russell House Tavern’s crispy poached egg on brioche. Nubar’s appetizer is closer to entree-sized, and sufficiently heavy-handed with the fat content in the polenta that it renders any prior distaste for polenta superfluous.
Rock on, appetizers. Just don’t confuse the MSG with tampons… that would be bad.
Why Being An Artist is Uncreative
I received an interesting message from a reader about my How to be Your Own Tiger Mother post.
Ronald asks:
I found myself surprised by the end of the article. I agreed with it all the way until the very end, when you said “that it’s not about picking the most creative field. It’s about being the most creative one in your field.”
To me, that sounds like justifying a less intrinsic life route. That makes me question, are you willing to negotiate your true passions to appease what society tells you? Or were your passions too flimsy to withstand the test of time (it doesn’t matter what your teacher said, if you love art, you love art; that’s the way my experiences have been at least).
My response:
“Creative” fields can be paradoxically uninventive. You might love fashion and want to pursue it… but find that the vast majority of all designers actually copy higher end brands who have done all the creative thinking beforehand. Working in film may seem creative, but chances are, you’ll be executing someone else’s vision down to the letter if you’re not the head honcho. And even if you are at the top, it’s not necessarily “creative” – the nature of creative fields is that they’re still businesses that need to be run profitably, and this means that risk taking if often cast aside in favor of another reality show or formulaic action flick. Yes, you might find smaller opportunities to be creative – a buckle here, a piece of a scene there – or the work fulfilling, but the point I’m trying to make is that the gross distinction between “creative” and “noncreative” fields is somewhat illusory.
For the record, I’m glad I never pursued a fine art degree. Yet, I still love to doodle on my iPad during class. (All the illustrations were drawn in iPad’s ArtStudio and Doodle whilst in computer science class.)
Let me relate a story: a friend of mine once wanted to be a novelist. He majored in literature, worked as a journalist for many years, published a biography, and even obtained a masters in creative writing. Finally, he had a novel he began shopping around with a top agent. The marketing people at publishing houses turned it down, saying it wouldn’t appeal to women (who buy 80% of books). Disillusioned, he got into a top law school and began practicing law, figuring he’d still write on the side. To his surprise, he loved it. It challenged him and fulfilled him. Maybe he’ll write that novel one day, but for now, he’s perfectly happy.
Which is why I don’t believe that just working in the field of your purest creative passion is necessarily the right career choice. I believe that you should always pursue that passion in some form or another, but for many, navigating the networking/marketing/financial realities of a creative field will distract or ruin a perfectly good thing.
And you know what? I’m now working as a web designer. I have freelance work up to the gills, and I love it.
I think my creativity is not in web design (which I don’t plan on doing in 30 years time), but in constructing empty spaces in my life for creative projects to grow. The future is awash in planned uncertainty, and I refuse to compromise on that point.
How to Be Your Own Tiger Mother
I never saw myself as a Harvard type. “You have a duty to go to art school,” my high school art teacher told me sophomore year, holding my pen and watercolor sketches in one hand. It was delivered with the same weight as “thou shalt not kill.”
The shock from his comment warmed me. I went home that day and started researching art schools: FIT, Parsons, Pratt, RISD. What bothered me was their breezy academic requirements. After all, I’d been getting straight A’s since elementary school – would they even care?
I was really trying to ask: am I too smart to be an artist?
*
Then, I saw my future as a dichotomy. Either I’d end up fingerpainting in a rented cardboard box, or weeping myself to sleep as a doctor-banker-lawyer. Even worse, this mental prison was entirely self-imposed.
I’m a first generation immigrant, but my parents are not the Amy Chua type. I told my father recently that I was foregoing full-time employment in favor of traveling for a year. He was cool with it. Similarly, when I agonized over the stray A-, my mother told me I was being too hard on myself. Their endless support and forgiveness is, in many cases, unwarranted.
External judgement came instead from a classmate. I find it hilarious that TV shows show jocks and cheerleaders as the tormentors. A ditzy cheerleader would never lean over and comment to a classmate that my Physics midterm grade “wasn’t very good,” or that my hard-won 85 on a brutal AP Chemistry test was unacceptable. The worst were the arguments in front of mutual friends, where I had to fend for myself. High school breeds peculiar bullies: so perfect they seem self-manifested.
*
My parents never issued a curfew. This was because I rarely left my room. Sometimes I wondered if I was mildly autistic during my teen years. Social interactions were confusing and infrequent; while other people trolled the local mall on Friday nights, I would design websites, write novels, or update my Livejournal.
Being totally clueless had its advantages. I was free to whatever I wanted, after all, no one cared. Somehow, I ended up writing articles for the local paper. I had never conducted an interview before, but it was in journalism that I lost my fear of cold calling strangers with no idea what to say.
It was an exciting but lonely endeavor. I liked talking to drug dealers, doctors, and marginalized teens. I was writing a piece about local teens using drugs when an English teacher pressured me to not make the school look bad. I continued reporting in college, where prominent academics berated me, a movie star flirted with me, and the House of Blues kicked me out after a tense conversation.
It can be isolating to believe that no one cares, but I found it be my most useful piece of rhetoric. It’s how I conquered my fear of talking to strangers, of entering a beauty pageant, of a million social failures. No one cares. Your real friends get over it. When I become too deeply engrained in something that I lose that naivete, I’ll make some major change to bring it back.
I love the stories and experiences I’ve collected as a result. The ex-con in a New Haven bus stop who opined on racism in jail. Walden Pond in the dark. Eating dinner with locals in Pudong, and the stew of beef bones that made my stomach churn later.
*
Still considering art school, I went on a college tour junior year of high school. The Harvard student guide was a tall, spindly blond named Ben. As we walked through Memorial Hall’s yawning corridor – where I’d arrive late to Ec10 three years later – he complained that high schoolers were now on Facebook. Of course, I resolved to friend him. I listened to the admissions spiel, feeling chills course through my body. Maybe it was the steady drumbeat of sunshine outside, the stained glasses casting fractal rainbows, or the creme-de-la-creme culture. Suddenly, I had something to aspire to.
My family and I were staying at friend’s house in the suburbs. I drank cup after cup of tea at dinner and couldn’t fall asleep. My SAT scores raced through my brain.
For better or worse, when I want something, I pursue it with the ferocity and grace of a high-speed bulldozer.
My unvarnished ambition is not a particularly feminine trait, which I was reminded of when I heard through the grapevine that an acquaintance remarked, “I hear she gets what she wants.”
I was upset. “Would he say that if I were a guy?” I asked my friend, not sure what it meant.
*
I ended up getting into Harvard. It was December 15th, a data I had circled, then tore out in my calendar to represent a nuclear bomb crater. It was just in time, since my soul had already been tractored from reading too many posts on the College Confidential forum by neurotic overachieving applicants. After a week of joy, I promptly fell into a tailspin, decided I wanted to go to Brown instead, and passed through senior spring like a hospice patient. The bully delivered a quickly forgotten speech at graduation; I fidgeted with my robe and felt no nostalgia.
I ran into the art teacher again before I graduated. We chatted about college, and he said something offhand about remembering I was a decent artist.
Remembering his near-religious conviction two years prior – and how it’d nearly ended changed the course of my life – the remark felt like a blade revealing nothing in a balloon but stale air.
*
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine said something really interesting. “I realized,” he said over Thai food, “that it’s not about picking the most creative field. It’s about being the most creative one in your field.”