Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

by Brad Listi

  We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.

  Anyway we “think” we have found the way to cause a disintegration of the atom. An experiment in the New Mexico desert was startling—to put it mildly. Thirteen pounds of the explosive caused the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high, created a crater 6 feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter, knocked over a steel tower 1/2 mile away and knocked men down 10,000 yards away. The explosion was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for 40 miles and more.

  This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless, and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.

  He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.

  nucleomituphobia n.

  Fear of nuclear weapons.

  13.

  Black Rock City was shaped like a giant horseshoe. There were streets, clearly marked and arranged in a U-shaped grid. The U-shaped streets were named after parts of the human anatomy, in keeping with the festival’s theme of “The Body”: Feet Street, Knee Lane, Anal Avenue, Sex Drive, Gut Alley, Avenue of the Heart, Throat Road, Brain Boulevard, and Head Way. The straight streets cut through the U-shaped streets at regular intervals. They were named after hours on the clock, starting with 2:00 at one end of the horseshoe and continuing, in half-hour intervals, all the way to 10:00 at the other end.

  We lived at 8:30 and Avenue of the Heart. It was a pretty good neighborhood.

  In the dead center of the horseshoe’s hollow stood the Man, gazing out over Black Rock City from atop a pyramid made of hay bales, a towering four-story monument to hope and finitude.

  On Saturday night, shortly after sundown, he would burn.

  I entertained myself with the notion that this was what would happen if the Big One hit. Maybe if the Big One hits, I told myself, the world’s few remaining survivors will convene in the wastelands in the aftermath, giving rise to a bevy of semiutopian, hedonistic shantytowns characterized by outrageous celebration, massively creative explosions of self-expression, a bartering economy, and a nearly obsessive preoccupation with sex, fire, art, and the finite nature of existence. Maybe the world’s new leader will be a nonleading leader, an antiauthoritarian bohemian with a penchant for innovative social theory. Maybe Burning Man is a demonstration of how human beings might handle things in the event that we finally succeed at fucking things up for good, which, as far as I can tell, could happen any day now.

  Or maybe not.

  14.

  On our first full day in town, I went for a bike ride with Horvak and Blair in the heat of the afternoon. They had brought five bikes with them from San Francisco, enough for everyone, which turned out to be a good move. Black Rock City was huge, and auto traffic was prohibited (art cars excluded). Bicycles were therefore the most convenient and sensible method of transport available.

  The three of us rode out of the city into the emptiness of the open playa. The landscape was extraterrestrial, impossibly vast. Horvak suggested that we ride as fast as we could toward the horizon with our eyes closed, and Blair and I agreed. We picked a direction, spread out, and sped off. The idea was to see how long we could go without looking.

  I closed my eyes and pedaled as fast as I could across the desert toward the mountains. My tires ripped against the earth, and my heart was thumping in my chest. Horvak was to my left, and Blair was to my right. There was nothing out there, no danger. The air was clean, the sun was beaming down, and everything was wide-open. Yet for some reason, I opened my eyes after about thirty seconds, overtaken by the enormous fear that I was going to hit something. There was nothing out there, nothing at all, and I knew it for a fact, but still, I was afraid.

  Come nightfall, the weather turned freezing cold, but there were no storms. All five of us ventured out into the city for our first real nocturnal adventure. The place was electric. Music, fire, and light. We bundled up and rode into the chaos. The city felt even more self-contained at night, when you couldn’t see the emptiness of the surrounding terrain. The stars came out, millions of them, and the place became its own universe.

  Naturally, there was no shortage of unfamiliar stimuli. We played with an oversized Lite-Brite set. We stood at the foot of a giant figure sculpted entirely of old books, while a group of people dressed in Day-Glo skeleton costumes danced wildly around a fire, accompanied by drums. Down the road, a sword swallower was swallowing swords. We said hello to a group of Oregon hippies massaging each other in a heated tent, whacked out on ketamine. There was an enormous boulder sitting in the middle of the open playa. It was ringed by fire and tended to by an enthusiastic team of belly-dancing girls. At the city’s outer reaches, there was a giant tepee packed with bodies and pulsing with trance music—synthetic bird sounds and thundering drums.

  Eventually, we found our way into a bar called the Green Monster, where we ordered up a round of absinthe. It was the first time any of us had ever tried the stuff. The absinthe was served with a splash of water and a spoonful of sugar. It was a milky green color, and it tasted like pastis. We sipped it and smoked cigarettes, waiting for something to happen. Ultimately, it made our faces feel somewhat numb, but otherwise, it was pretty mild.

  absinthe n.

  1.) A perennial aromatic European herb (Artemisia absinthium), naturalized in eastern North America and having pinnatifid, silvery silky leaves, and numerous nodding flower heads. Also called common wormwood.

  2.) A green liqueur having a bitter anise or licorice flavor and a high alcohol content, prepared from absinthe and other herbs, and now prohibited in many countries because of its toxicity.

  According to published reports, Vincent van Gogh was high on absinthe when he cut off a piece of his ear in December 1888.

  van Gogh, Vincent (1853–1890)

  Dutch postimpressionist painter whose early works, such as The Potato Eaters (1885), portray peasant life in somber colors. His later works, including many self-portraits, a series of sunflower paintings (1888), and Starry Night (1889), are characterized by bold, rhythmic brushstrokes and vivid colors. His long struggle with depression ended in suicide; van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest on July 27, 1890.

  Sometime after midnight, we left the bar and ventured over to a giant tent called “The Arena.” A band was on stage playing ambient music, accompanied by fire dancers. The music was terrific. Sonic liquid. The dancers were average. We stood in the back watching the show for more than two hours. Blair danced easily, spinning around and moving her arms in what appeared to be a swimming motion. The rest of us just stood there, bobbing our heads and sipping whiskey from flasks. Horvak lit a joint the size of his pinkie finger, and we each took a puff before sending it out into the crowd.

  At about 4:00 a.m., we made our way home, exhausted and happy, wasted and cold. Henry was making us all laugh, bitching endlessly about the weather. His Manhattan accent came out when he had too much to drink. And when he got pissed off, everything he said was somehow funny.

  “I’m lost in a goddamn sand trap,” he kept saying. “But I feel like a goddamn Eskimo. Is anyone else having trouble processing this?”

  We cut across the playa on our bikes. To our left across the desert stood the Man, hovering in the distance, solitary and majestic, lit up brightly with blue and purple neon tubing. His pres
ence was bittersweet. There was something wrenching about it, something lonesome and deeply sad. His death sentence was imminent, and there was no getting out of it. Everything was locked in. His ultimate fate was nonnegotiable. In less than forty-eight hours he would burn. I was stoned and feeling sentimental. Everybody’s fate was nonnegotiable. I turned my head to the sky and took in a deep breath. Then I raised my hand above my head and waved at him.

  15.

  Theme camps formed the core of Burning Man’s culture of participation. Hundreds of them could be found all over town, on every street, in every neighborhood. They were designed to blur the line between art and spectator. They were the lifeblood of the Black Rock City experience, facilitating interpersonal exchanges among festival-goers while creating an atmosphere rife with delirious overstimulation.

  theme camp n.

  A Burning Man campsite that presents an idea or concept in an artistic fashion and is designed to facilitate interactive participation.

  Thunderdome was one example of a theme camp. It consisted of a huge, steel geodesic dome. It looked like something you might see on an elementary school playground, only it was ten times bigger, ten times weirder, and bungee cords dangled from its summit. Willing participants took turns strapping themselves into harnesses, hanging from the bungee cords, and engaging in man-on-man battles, armed only with four-foot foam lances. They swung across the expanse of the dome, trying to bludgeon one another. Spectators swarmed the dome’s exterior, perched on its bars, looking in on the action, howling playfully for blood.

  The crowd around Thunderdome tended to be a bit unruly—lots of people in leather, lots of biker types, sadomashochists, pyromaniacs, festishists, people with genital piercings. Two girls dressed in dominatrix attire could usually be found inside the dome, strutting around the desert floor, heckling onlookers. One would juggle fire while the other would offer to spank people with a riding crop. The place looked like a casting call for Mad Max.

  The Picasso Camp encouraged participants to paint. It supplied two huge canvases and a wide variety of paints and brushes to anyone who felt like contributing to a mural.

  Lynch and Henry and I walked over there at one point and picked up some brushes on a whim. Lynch painted the head of Elvis Presley. I painted a man in a cannon, about to be launched into the stratosphere. Henry painted what appeared to be a purple mountain goat.

  The creators of the Astral Headwash theme camp offered dusty, dirty participants a full shampooing, just to be nice. I got my hair washed on two separate occasions by a topless woman who referred to herself only as Mother Inferior. She was a hairdresser from Seattle, a five-time Burning Man resident, and the tambourine player in a garage band called The Miracles on Ice. She also bore a striking resemblance to Charlotte Rae, the actress who had played Mrs. Garrett on the hit TV show The Facts of Life.

  The Nipple Clamp Camp was devoted to nipple arousal through the use of clamps, ice, feathers, and other things. People went there to get their nipples aroused. Blair and Horvak made a trip over there together on a lark, as did Henry. They got the feather and ice treatment. Lynch and I opted against it, convinced that such activities were only semijustifiable in the company of a topless girlfriend.

  The O.B.E. Camp reportedly helped facilitate out-of-body experiences through the use of light, sound, and artwork. People who wanted to try to have an out-of-body experience tended to hang out there.

  Once again, my involvement was limited to observation only. My mere presence in Black Rock City seemed to be tantamount to an out-of-body experience all by itself. I felt no need to push the envelope, concerned that if I left my body any further, I might not ever return.

  The Anonymous Camp offered twelve-step meetings of all kinds, both scheduled and impromptu. Anyone involved in a twelve-step recovery of any kind was encouraged to drop by for assistance and support. The place was somewhat anomalous, a beacon of sobriety and restraint amid a sea of remarkable decadence. And the tent was always packed.

  The Black Light District was a Burning Man village, home to a collection of theme camps. My friends and I had wandered through it, wide-eyed and stupefied, on Thursday night, our first full night in town. The village was otherworldly, illuminated by more than 16,000 watts of black light, lending the entire area an eye-popping psychedelic glow.

  One of the more notable theme camps in the Black Light District was the Body Hair Barbershop, where Burning Man citizens could stop by to get their body hair colored, styled, shaved, or trimmed. Henry kept threatening to get his back hair shaved there. That or he was going to dye it green. Ultimately, however, he never wound up going through with it, blaming his reluctance to participate on reservations he had about the overall professionalism of the staff.

  The Oracle Booth was a simpler, more streamlined version of a theme camp. It consisted of a small wooden booth planted in the middle of the desert with the words THE ORACLE painted across the top. Random people took turns sitting there, playing the part of the oracle. Passing strangers would stop by, asking for insight and advice. Whoever happened to be manning the helm did his or her best to accommodate them.

  I had gone by the booth on Thursday afternoon when I was out biking with Horvak and Blair. While they were off exploring some other spectacle, I saw a woman sitting there, wearing a Santa hat, a red bikini top, and thigh-high red leather boots. For some reason, I found her instantly annoying. She seemed to be a little bit too pleased with herself, a little too impressed with her own essential weirdness. She introduced herself as Sascha and demanded that I step right up.

  “Ask me anything,” she said. “Anything whatsoever. By the powers vested in me, I shall deliver to you the wisdom of the oracle.”

  Immediately, my mind went blank. I stood there thinking about it with my eyes closed for the better part of thirty seconds, but ultimately, I was unable to come up with anything decent.

  “All right,” I finally said. “What is the meaning of life?” I raised a hand in the air and motioned in the general direction of the cosmos.

  Sascha laughed at me. She threw her head back and roared. “That is such a shitty question,” she said.

  “Hey,” I said, “you said I could ask you anything.”

  “I lied,” she said. “The Oracle Booth is now temporarily closed.”

  She rose from her seat and strutted off in the opposite direction.

  I got back on my bike and pedaled off into the desert.

  16.

  Lynch and I were sitting in plastic chairs in the shade of a big white canopy, waiting to interview Larry Harvey. We’d been led to our station by an elfin woman named Julieta, whom we’d met over at Media Mecca, the hub of all press activity in Black Rock City. She was dressed like Tinkerbell and introduced herself as a high priestess of media relations. I found her attractive and was therefore inordinately shy around her. Lynch handled the conversation from that point forward, explaining his affiliation with The Bomb and passing me off as his esteemed colleague. Julieta had never heard of the magazine before.

  “It’s a men’s magazine,” Lynch informed her.

  “Porn?” said Julieta.

  “No, no. Not at all. Pop culture. Social trends. Cosmo for men, essentially.”

  “I like the name,” said Julieta. “The Bomb.”

  “Thank you,” we said.

  At that point, she issued us press credentials. We hung them around our necks.

  The credentials amounted to a small piece of paper in a plastic casing. The piece of paper read:

  This entitles you to nothing in particular.

  This is paper and ink stuck between plastic.

  Immerse yourself.

  Participate.

  Lose track of time.

  Tempt fate.

  Ask before you shoot.

  Leave no trace.

  Whatever.

  Ten minutes later, Larry Harvey stepped out of his trailer to greet us. We stood to shake his hand, and Larry gave us a warm hello. His voice was low
and gravelly, and he was of average height and size. He was wearing black jeans, a tan safari shirt with big pockets, and tennis shoes. A walkie-talkie was clipped to his hip. He had sunglasses on, aviator shades with big dark lenses. The pearl gray Stetson on his head was the only physical demonstration of eccentricity. He wore it, he told us, as a loving tribute to his late father, who had worn it before him.

  We handed Larry a bottle of tequila, a gift from our camp. He received it with a smile and passed it off to Julieta, and then he asked us a few questions about where we were from, why we were there, what magazine we worked for. Once again, Lynch handled all the talking, explaining our purposes briefly. Larry listened. He was friendly but appeared to be somewhat weary. He had a three-day beard, and his hands shook slightly as he lit a cigarette. He informed us that this was the sixth interview he had given today, with three more on the slate, and that he had only a few minutes to spend. Naturally, Lynch took this as his cue to get started. He opened up his notebook, uncapped his pen, and turned the recorder on.

  Okay then. First things first. What the hell’s going on out here?

  (Laughs.) What do you mean?

  I’m hoping you can explain this phenomenon to those who have never had a chance to come out here and experience it firsthand.

  Well, first of all, it’s not really a festival, although it’s festive. It’s a community. In fact, it’s a very sophisticated and cosmopolitan city that is created in a remote desert upon one of the most barren plains on earth, in the midst of a sprawling grandeur of land and sky. Nothing else—not a bird, not a bump, not a bush—is here before we come. And it’s a perfect and pristine nothingness when we leave.