Burning Man Low-Cost Tickets Application Q&A (2005)

Burning Man Low-Cost Tickets Application Q&A (2005)

by Gregory J. Pleshaw (the artist at that time known as gregoryp(tm))

1) How many years have you attended Burning Man?

If I attend in 2005, it will be my fifth year, with previous attendance in 2000, 2001, 2002, & 2004.

2) Why do you feel you need a low cost ticket?

For the past two years, I have lived almost exclusively on SSI disability. Almost exclusively because I occasionally make a few hundred dollars here and there writing for money, as either a freelance arts journalist or a marketing copywriter. My total income for the past twelve months is probably eight thousand including my $579/month from the federal government, most of which goes to rent. (I live in New Mexico, rents are lower here.)

3) What do you do to pay the bills and keep the landlord off your back?

Thanks to the feds, I manage to keep roof overhead and am reasonably well-fed with the aid of food stamps. Again, I occasionally work for cash (most of it under the table) but spend most of my time in semi-volunteer type positions in my communities. (Santa Fe & Albuquerque.)

4) What is your average monthly income after evil taxes?

Including my food stamp grant of $125 and my SSI payment of $579, I generally average between $800-$900/month. Occasionally, I will get cash from the sale of my book (available on my website at http://www.gregoryp.com), but if I sell ten copies a month ($125) that’s fairly miraculous. And I occasionally sell a magazine article or manage to do some copy for a company that needs it for a website or brochure – such gigs are infrequent but they do happen. For either of those things, I’ll pull in $400-$500 in one shot – but in the past twelve months, that’s happened less than half a dozen times. I don’t really pay taxes, truth be told.

5) How do you plan to contribute to Burning Man 2005?

Well, let’s see – three out of the four years I’ve attended I’ve been involved with the Black Rock Gazette, generally as a writer, and I might do the same this year. However – most of my time there and now is through my involvement with a New Mexico-based theme camp called “Lucid Revolution.” With roughly 100 or so members, a school bus, a 60” dome, too much stereo equipment and a multitude of props (including two couches made of cloth-stitched penises and vulvas which I am pleased to say I helped to sew) there’s a really awful giant ton of logistics (rewarding in and of itself if we can actually PULL IT OFF) and I’d say a lot of my time is going to spent on that.

(A side project which may or may not happen: My friend has designed a new kind of electrically-generating wind-turbine, more or less an advance on the Air 404 which he’s created two prototypes of which he wants to test-drive in Black Rock City. We’ll set up at Alternative Energy Zone, pray for wind, take lots of pictures and notes, and just generally participate in the AEZ’s project of charging batteries or perhaps setting up a mini-grid.)

I also started a Burning Man-oriented blog called “Lucid Dreaming” in December which was intended to chronicle all the weird shit I’ve seen at Burning Man in the last four visits. I got bored with it (blogging isn’t really my medium) but I now use it as a hosting spot for all the weird essays and stuff I do write. There is one particularly choice piece in there about Chicken John & the Borg2 project – if you want to check it out, point Firefox to http://gregoryp.blogspot.com

6) What does the Burning Man community represent to you?

In my first year, (2000), I was fortunate enough to be invited to join the Spiral Oasis community, which as far as I know no longer exists, at the request of friend Mark Pesce. Through him and that community I met dozens of people who were doing precisely what I was trying to write about – intersecting art & technology in such a way that 30,000 people could affectively create their own damn Disneyland in the middle of fucking nowhere. In that year alone, I got over my fear of camping – bad experiences in junior high and Boy Scouts convinced me it wasn’t my scene, but after surviving Black Rock City I pretty much feel like I can go anywhere, and today I actually have two sleeping bags, numerous tarps and tents, a sunshower and portable toilet, and at least a year’s supply of suntan lotion. I camp a lot now – recently I spent two days in the East Mountains of New Mexico celebrating Beltaine with an equally weird bunch o’ folks, and four days last week in the Verde Valley of Arizona. Burning Man represents freedom, in a way – but my experiences at Burning Man have been enough to teach me that it ain’t all “Operation Desert Snuggle” – I spent a few weeks cleaning up after 2002 and hanging at the Eighty Acres to learn the other side, which I didn’t necessarily love but it gave me a broader perspective on the apocalyptical nature of it all…

I have kicked around an idea in my head for the last few years about a paper (for someone) about the evolving art aesthetic of Burning Man culture. I need to go back again to see if I was on acid (I was, but that’s not the point) when I determined that the confluence of Calfornia’s many diverse subcultures and Hakim Bey’s interpretation of lifestyle-oriented anarchism has created new forms of seeing and expression that don’t even necessarily need to reach the dominant culture in order to have viable impact. As an arts journalist who is completely jaded by the presentation of contemporary art vis a vis the Whitney Biennial and the Chelsea district, I am continually impressed, pleased, and inspired by art that is made simply to be burned, destroyed or even just taken down and packed away – pictures or video do not even begin to capture the grandeur of the Burning Man Arts Festival – one must be there or it makes no sense whatsoever.

Last year, in a triangular act of barter-ness for which I’ve become semi-famous, I simply observed a crew of folks huddled around the engine compartment of a ‘60s-era RV and wandered up to see what was up. The oil pan had simply exploded on the way into the city (it was Day Two), and it looked like that poor land yacht and all the newbies in it were going to be in Black Rock City for the rest of their lives. They knew no one and nothing about Burning Man – I knew where the mechanics were (at DPW, of course!) and so I rounded up someone and several hours later, all was well. That was when I learned that the newbies were also pilots who’d flown in a two-seater Cessna to play with while they were “in town.” For my hook-up, they gave me a ride over the Man (spectacular) and hooked my girlfriend up with a ride to Reno on Saturday morning (she had to leave early.)

By simply participating and creating a connection where none would’ve existed (without asking “What have you got to trade?”) I created a kind of bounty that I never would’ve been asking for. That, perhaps more than anything else, is what the Burning Man community represents to me – the Playa provides, as I once told a friend, for it is the collective unconscious writ large and we don’t always know the symbol sets in our own heads nor what precisely will set us free. In Black Rock City….those solutions can find you if you just relax and participate in the best way you can – and that is why I keep coming back, since my needs seem to change every year.

7) Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

Yes. Almost every year I’ve gone to Burning Man, over-the-top efforts have been required of me. Perhaps that’s true of everyone. My first year, I flew from across the country on a whim at the request of a friend who actually wrote a short story about my “Meltdown” in the Super K-Mart in Reno because I’d left my Adivan at home. I survived to tell the tale, but it was harrowing nonetheless. In 2001, I got mugged at gunpoint in the West Village the night before I was supposed to fly out of JFK, was drugged and left for dead, overslept my flight, and had an equally harrowing adventure trying to get out of New York and to the Playa. In 2002, I had absolutely no business being at Burning Man. I was living on the streets in Seattle and grew and sold mushrooms in a closet at work to get a ticket to go. Once it was over, I had nowhere to be and knew that going in, but I pulled an “over-the-top” effort to go anyway. In 2004, I was on SSI and housed but also unemployed and had to beg, borrow and plead to get ticket and supplies together to get there.

I’m not going to do that again. I think I actually have pretty solid support and ground beneath my feet and journeying off to some unknown adventure (while appealing) isn’t going to do me any good if it completely de-centralizes me when it’s all said and done. Before this year, it never would’ve occurred to me to apply for this – but I think of it like fate. If I’m granted the low-cost ticket, I’ll go. If not, I’ll probably sit at home and keep working on other things, or maybe catch a ride up to southern Colorado for a little sightseeing at Mesa Verde and other spots I haven’t been to. My main reason for wanting to go again in the first place is that I’ve always learn so much and answered a lot of internal questions – but if I can’t do it this way then maybe I need to do that some other way this time around.

Thanks. I enjoyed filling this out. Most forms aren’t nearly this fun (and trust me, I’ve filled out a lot of them.)

Gregory J. Pleshaw
aka gregoryp™
May 8, 2005

May 8th, 2005 by