thought

longevity
July 19, 2004

The first year I went to Burning Man, I went alone.

The Thursday before Labor Day, I filled my little car with a ton of water and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, but no bike, no shade structure, no tent, nothing else. Maybe a sleeping bag. I took off east on 80.

The scenery is quite lovely once you get past the valley & into the Sierras. But I had spent a week or so a year ago driving around aimlessly in those mountains so it wasn't anything new.

It wasn't until I turned off of 80 past Reno and started the last little trip through the tiny road in the middle of the desert that everything began to feel different.

I was not going to be AT Burning Man completely alone. I was meeting up with a friend I hadn't seen in a while once I got out there. It changed my life, but that's a story for another time... The drive there and back was totally my own. And I'm reminded of it now because I'm listening to the alien abduction music I had going on the entire time. I love how music is so deeply intertwined with memory.

This was 6 years ago. I doubt I will ever go to Burning Man again... not that it wasn't amazing, it just isn't new anymore. Well, that and I also think bmorg is kind of fascist. That is only partially a joke. But regardless, it isn't new to me anymore and I need change.

A group of my friends (something like 20) are going to a huge party in Portugal next month. It happens every 2 years and the last one (which I went to, of course) was amazing... Fourteen thousand people in the middle of the mountains on a huge lake in Portugal. There really is nothing quite like dancing as hard as you can while the sun rises with 14,000 people. Dancing like the world is going to end and we might as well be as happy as we can be.

I just finished reading this. It's a cute little book. It talks about a lot of things in terms of emotion and it contradicts itself a little too much for me to take it too seriously, but, it does suggest that parties (read: raves) use ALL the mood-elevating tools possible to create a peak experience.

It isn't just drugs. It's music. It's visuals. It's intense exercise. It's companionship. It's being surrounded by extremely happy people. One can't deny the effect being at a concert with thousands of other people. The cheers & screaming that happens before the main act comes on is intense. Parties are exactly like this, but more intense and over longer periods of time.

And I feel "over" them. I still may go to Portugal in August... just to get away from SF and hang out with my friends, but without the excitement I once felt. And no Burning Man anymore either. I'm getting older and I guess some of that manifests in a desire to want to settle down. But it's also because I've done all that stuff already. I've taken all the shortcuts to bliss.

I want something that lasts longer.