SAM: 

Being in combat, you experience the worst of humanity. Alright? And because you experienced the worst of humanity, it pulls the veil off, and you no longer care about the facade. You get raw about it because you’ve seen the extreme. Burning Man is the opposite of that. It is also extreme, but it is the very best that humanity has to offer. You’re not going to experience anything more stimulating, more accepting, more exciting than Burning Man because everybody there has coalesced and converged on this area to express their art and their love for the celebration of the human experience. 

STUART: 

Hey everybody, welcome back to Burning Man LIVE. I’m Stuart Mangrum, and here’s a fun fact about me: People often act really surprised when they find out that I spent eight years in the United States Air Force. I don’t know what it is, but people just assume that a 30-year Burner like me must be some kind of tree-huggin’ and bleedin’ heart, gun-hating liberal who would never, never do service for his nation’s flag. And that is just not the case in my case. 

And honestly, you know, if I look back on my time with Burning Man, there’s a whole lot of us out there. You may not know this, but Burning Man’s founder, Larry Harvey, did a stint in the Army during the Vietnam War. His co-founder, Michael Mikel, Danger Ranger, was a Navy man. JD Boggman, who set up our first gate in Black Rock City, was an Army man. And if you look around, there’s a lot of us. I guess if we had the event a little bit later in the year, we could have a Veterans Day parade and call attention to this.

These people are quietly serving the Burning Man community in pretty much every volunteer department, particularly Rangers—Why do you think they picked khaki? Come on—Emergency Services, DPW, we have veterans who are artists. 

So, anyway, I’m here to learn more about this. I’ve got lots of my own stories to tell, but I’m just really curious about some other peoples’ experiences as veterans coming into the Burning Man community, particularly those who maybe have a little bit more recent or direct experience of the military life.

I just wanted us to share some stories about whether it was easier or harder for a military veteran to join the community, whether you felt welcomed and appreciated, and whether the experience had any extra meaning to you because of your background. 

We’re just going to go through some of these stories of Burning Man with a few of my friends who also serve the country. Let’s just start by kind of going around the table and introducing ourselves with a little quick service bio. I’ll start. 

I’m Stuart Mangrum, I did eight years in the United States Air Force, 1979 to 1987.

Highest rank served was E-6 Technical Sergeant. My job, I was an airborne cryptologic linguist, Mandarin Chinese, and I flew 125 strategic reconnaissance missions during the Cold War over pretty much all of the Asian landmass. And then I went to Burning Man.

SAM: 

My name is Sam Williams. I joined the United States Marine Corps in 1999. The first time I ever got on a plane was to go to boot camp. I was a very poor farm kid from northern Michigan. I served 13 years, so I got out in 2012. I deployed four times to Iraq. I was 0311 infantryman, and all the lovely things that come along with that as far as my job was when I was over there. Stories upon stories, whatever is germane and pertinent, I will feel free to share with you guys. Highest rank served was Sergeant. And last year was my first Burn.

RAY: 

My name is Ray Christian. I served in the Army for 20 years. I was a paratrooper for most of that time. I’m an infantryman too, Samuel. A couple of years in Korea. I did combat patrols on the demilitarized zone with the 2nd Infantry Division. I served in Grenada, Desert Storm, served with the 82nd Airborne Division three different times. I was in Germany for about three years; Sinai desert in Egypt for six months; also the first Gulf War.

Samuel, what you were saying about the first time on a plane; the first time for me on a plane was when I jumped out of the plane. I went to airborne school. My first five times on an airplane was jumping out. I aint even know what the hell an airplane was. The thing that struck me about that was: it made noise. I’m seeing wires and hydraulic stuff moving. I didn’t know that’s what a plane was supposed to sound like. And I can remember on that first jump, we seen some, like, oil leaking from some thing. We go, “What’s that? Is that normal?” We didn’t know. Anyway, that’s my military background. I retired after 20 years serving in combat.

STUART: 

Ray I gotta ask: Was this airplane on fire? Because as far as I’m concerned, that’s the only good reason to jump out of an airplane. Well, different training, different backgrounds.

RAY: 

They were paying us a whole $55 extra a month. 

STUART: 

Jump pay, huh?

SAM: 

Wow. Look at that.

RAY: 

Wooo boy! You know what I could do with that?

SAM: 

Who wouldn’t sign up for that?

RAY: 

The thing was, you know, I grew up in the south protestant work ethic, you know, the whole idea about “idle minds being the devil’s workshop,” stuff like that. I can remember telling the recruiter, “Listen, I want to make some money. Give me the hardest job the Army got!” And they did too! I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I stayed.

STUART: 

20 years and a Bronze Star later, I’m sure you got some stories to share, right?

So, Sam, tell me about your arc from getting out of the Marine Corps and getting to Burning Man. What was that journey like? 

SAM: 

The arc is an absolute disaster. For lack of better terms as a complete shit show. So, yeah, the assimilation from a warrior culture back into a civilian culture was wrought with wrong turns, missteps, mistakes, sub-tragedy level events, just complete misunderstandings. It was very difficult. 

When I got out, I came up to Northern California, and I got into the trades. I remodel houses now. And I was fortunate to find myself doing that kind of work because the culture is very similar and the work ethic is also very similar to what I experienced in the Marine Corps. So I found a home there in that I didn’t have to walk on eggshells too much when I spoke with people. 

And then there was a direct result for my physical labor. So I got edification every day by building things, you know, which is very familiar to me. If I was working in an office someplace looking at a computer screen and you know, how many reports I filed or things I shipped or whatever it was, you know, made a company a little bit more money, but I didn’t really see or feel the direct result of that, I would have gone crazy. “Idle hands being a devil’s workshop,” if you don’t understand your task and your purpose at the same levels, it’s really easy to just kind of veer off into some crazy idea of what you should or should not be doing, which is where a lot of us veterans go wrong. 

We wind up in this disgruntled locking horns with the people around us because it’s hard for us to identify and operate within a system where a civilian has been brought up to learn and to say, “Okay, I do what I’m told. There’s a hierarchy here and I don’t question things. I just do my job every day, go home every day, and I get my sense of value from my home life, and from the people I surround myself with.” 

Where I’m from, it’s a lot more about, I get my sense of value from how effective I am at my job. So just to make me a cog in a wheel after doing what I’ve done, it’s real easy for me to get disillusioned, disenfranchised, disgruntled — all the dis-es — and, then try to operate and function within that system is very, very difficult for me. 

So I made all those mistakes, all the classic mistakes that you could ever make. And the ironic thing about it is that, if you were a friend of mine and I was advising you, I would be able to advise you not to make all the mistakes that I willfully walked right into. Yeah, I always make the joke: If you ever seen the movie It’s A Bug’s Life, where is this bug zapper, and there’s this little fly flying towards the bug zapper and his, all of his friends are saying, you know, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” 

“It’s just so beautiful.” And then he gets killed. He can’t help himself. And it’s really very much how I felt.

       “No, Harry, no. Don’t look at the light!”

        “I can’t help it. It’s so beautiful!”

So my life was completely in shambles. And a good friend of mine, Clint Saint Martin, was like, “You need to go to Burning Man.” And I was like, “The drug-induced orgy in the desert is not how I get my life back together. Thank you. But no!” That was the only impression I had of it. I had no concept of what it was.

And he was like, “Yeah, I think you really need to understand maybe what Burning Man is.” So he starts breaking down why we Burn and the temple ceremony. And I was like, “Okay, maybe there’s something more to this than I thought,” you know? And the way he broke it down in a nutshell, was that the reason why we burn the Man is cause it’s all the things in your life that you want to get rid of, essentially. And then the reason why we burn the temple, it’s all the things that were taken from you that you’re now mourning, and letting go of. 

So the whole concept of Burning Man to me when I went, was to let go of the things that are tying you down, and the facades, and the regret and shame and turmoil, all those things. It’s like a, it’s a cleansing. You know, there’s a very spiritual aspect to burning things, when it comes to cleansing. 

So, I entered into the scenario with that as my understanding now. You couple that with my predisposition to serve. So when I showed up there, I couldn’t stay for the party, I was just there for the build. And what I experienced was life changing, 100% life changing. I don’t know how deep you want to go right now, but that’s pretty much…

STUART: 

Well, that’s a lot. I want to hear more about that. But I want to hear from our other guest. Ray, how did you end up at Burning Man after you retired from the Army?

RAY: 

When I was on active duty, and I retired as an E7, Sergeant First Class, even on active duty, I probably had more of a liberal bent in my general attitude compared to my peers, even when I was in, which even became more profound by the time I had retired. So I was always leaning toward being an open person, even though I was a career soldier like that. I was looking to do something that was kind of outside the box. Something just different, to be around people that I didn’t have to worry about judging or judging me. I wanted to do something not in the same box that I spent my whole life doing. 

I joined the Army when I was 17, and that was the only adult life I had ever known. Even though I was still in my 30s, in military years, 20 years is a long damn time. And even though I was like 38, I felt, you know, old compared to everybody else. 

So the thing about Burning Man is, when I went unexpectedly…you see I have severe post-traumatic stress disorder, 100% disabled because of that. And so I have lots of triggers in my normal life anyway. And this was so different for me. I was wanting to do this thing. 

When I went initially, I had three triggers right away that I didn’t think that I would have. And one of them was when I started smelling the playa dust, and just the sound, the sound of people in the distance, you know, banging on things, moving stuff. That sound immediately took me back to the war. You know, when we were staging operation, preparing. I remember that sound, the smell of it, just real distant sounds you hear in the desert.

But the weirdest one of all was at night. With all those beautiful lights you’re thinking what in the hell of military could you get out of that? Well, during the first Gulf War, I can remember the first time in my whole career seeing the real weight in a magnitude in the military. You don’t get to see all that stuff most of the time. Even if you’re in combat, you don’t know about the whole theater of operation. 

I remember standing on top of this armored vehicle and looking left and right, as far as I could see. Nothing but armored vehicles. I’d never seen anything like that before. 

And here’s the connection to Burning Man. At nighttime the units in front of us had lights. Say, one battalion would be green, one battalion would be red, one battalion would be blue. And so the Blue battalion, the alpha company would be like a blue X, bravo company might be a blue O. The next battalion is red. From the rear looking forward, it looked like a giant damn Christmas tree had fallen down in the desert. And I can remember during the operation I was thinking to myself, “Damn, if this wasn’t combat, this would be beautiful.” 

And it’s so weird to tell that to people because the part people don’t want to say is, you know, sometimes combat can be fun, fun in that you see, if you like seeing stuff blow up and fireworks. And I had that thought, and it seemed so counterintuitive to the people who were around me because I was so focused on it. And what do you thinkin’ Ray? I said, “Man, reminds me of the Army.” 

“What? What are you, what are you talking about?”

“Exactly.”

So I had that feeling every night. I kept saying that to people and nobody got it. “People are nice, they’re loving, they’re kind. What are you talking about?” That was my memory and it stuck to me.

STUART: 

It is comparable to a large military operation in so many ways, isn’t it?

RAY: 

Yeah, the sounds of it, the smells.

STUART: 

And living in field conditions, too. I want to go back to that, but first let’s drill into PTSD a little bit, because I was lucky enough to serve between the wars. I don’t, but I grew up in a house; my father had it pretty severely. He was a World War II veteran, 63 bomber missions. He had cold sweats and the nightmares. He couldn’t watch fireworks, for instance, because they looked too much like flak. 

RAY: 

Right.

STUART: 

Black Rock City does not seem intuitively like a place to go if you are triggered in that way. Sam, I know you were in some serious combat. You were in Fallujah, man. 

SAM: 

Yes. 

STUART: 

How do you reconcile those two things? How was Burning Man a safer, happy experience in that context?

SAM: 

Safer, happier in the context, in reference with Fallujah?

STUART: 

I mean, maybe those aren’t the words, but what I’m saying is, how did you not just get deeper into the shit by seeing all these triggers out there?

SAM: 

Well, my PTSD is manifest in a much different way than most. I am very, very fortunate that I’m kind of bred for that. I thrive in those types of conditions. So I don’t have the traditional sense of what most people would identify as PTSD. So I don’t get the nightmares, I don’t get the cold sweats, I don’t fly into a rage just uncontrollably for, you know, one small trigger or anything like that. 

I was very duty bound, and I was very morally and virtuous — virtuously. Is that the word? — connected to what I was doing there. So for me, what I did was I snapped into deployment mode, is what I would call it as soon as I got there, because, yep, you hit the playa. We call it moondust in Iraq, you know, and I know Ray knows exactly what I’m talking about. There’s a picture that somebody took of me when I’m working on setting up some of the shade screens, and it looks like I’m on a deployment. 

And I’ve shown it to all my guys from Fallujah and all the guys I’ve served with, and they’re like, “Yeah. So what deployment was that?” I’m like, “That’s Burning Man.” And they’re like, “Wait, what?!?!” You know, “How was that Burning Man?” I said, “Well, you know, you got to understand that it’s almost exactly what it was like when we got dropped off in Iraq the first time.”

And it’s kind of a funny story, but essentially, when we got to our AO, we were setting everything up, right? We’re talking 2004, and we’re out in the middle of the desert, guarding this little dirt clot of ammo dump. They put us on a 70 vehicle convoy, and we get to our AO, they drop us off, we offload everything, so we’ve got all these supplies that are in boxes and bound and everything, you know, ready for shipment. So we get all that offloaded and the trucks just pull away. And there we are standing in the desert, and I remember my captain going, “So, does anybody know how to work a generator?” We just started our own city out of nothing. We’re fighters. We don’t know how to wire things together or connect plumbing or, you know, anything like that. So we had to figure everything out while we were there. 

It was very much a similar vibe when I got to Black Rock City because I was there for the build, so there was nothing there. And everybody started pitching in and working, and figuring out how to make things come together. And there’s a lot of unknowns, you know, things that should be that aren’t, and things that are there that shouldn’t be there. And we’ve got to come up with a plan. We call it Semper Gumby in the Marine Corps, which is just “always flexible.” Whatever it is, you’ve just gotta make it work, right? 

So for me to pitch in the way that I did with the mentality that I had and all that type of stuff, it just, I fit in so well with that type of environment because I was predisposed and highly trained and experienced in that very thing. People don’t understand in combat and in war, you might fight 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time it’s exactly like Black Rock City set up, where you’re just working your butt off for the survival of everybody around you, and you gotta kind of put your own inhibitions to the side, and just get in and do the work.

And I didn’t realize how much that would be appreciated. The people that were there were showering me with praise, and I had no idea why. They kept saying like, “Oh my gosh, you’re so great. You’re so kind.” And I’m like, “Guys, I’m just happy to be here. This was a gift that was given to me that I didn’t deserve. I don’t even know why you know my name.” 

And they’re like, “Because, man, you’re just here to work. And that’s so beautiful.” 

I’m like, “Isn’t everybody?” 

And they’re like, “Well, yeah, but that’s something that we don’t see very often, the way that you’re just picking it up and running with it.” 

And I’m like, “Well, that’s what Burning Man is, right?”

And they’re all like, “Yeah, but, you get it. That’s really cool that you get that.” 

My experience is probably a little bit differently unique just because it was just for the build, but I really, really appreciated the amount of humility that it took and the work ethic that it took to create the miracle that is Black Rock City every single year. And that’s what got me hooked on Burning Man, to be honest with you. 

I don’t know if that answered your question or not, though!

STUART: 

And every good question leads to more questions. I mean, what are those survival skills? I know what they were for me. And honestly, going through Air Force Mountain Survival School was my first transformative experience. I learned a whole lot about myself. 

SAM: 

Yes.

STUART: 

I learned a lot about radical self-reliance, and I learned about communal effort, both of which I hadn’t experienced a lot of growing up in Southern California.

And so, back in the old days we went into it with, well, we wrote something called a Survival Guide, and we still call it that, even though it now has lots of other stuff in there. But it began with, top line of escape and evasion school. Number one most important thing you can have is a positive mental attitude, right? 

SAM: 

Right.

STUART: 

If you have the attitude that it’s going to be great, that it’s going to work, then you’ve taken a huge first step. 

What other skills do you think that you brought with you to the playa that helped you shine there and step into leadership roles with a lot of people who really don’t expect that, or expect more to be provided for them, right?

SAM: 

Right. So, when you remodel a house, a lot of times, you know, somebody will buy a house and it’s completely dilapidated. There is no set of blueprints. You have to start deconstructing. I mean, we call it demo, but essentially you’re deconstructing things to learn the language of the people that built it, so then you can translate that language into what you need it to be, so then you can add on and correct the things that have failed since they’ve built in the first place. 

That unknown, the lack of being able to look at a plan and execute that plan, a lot of people get really frustrated and they kind of flounder in that situation, and they just want to be told what to do. “Just tell me what to do.” So people will typically withdraw and retract in those types of scenarios.

Then when you add all the elements on top of it, it’s 110 degrees out, you know, the wind is blowing in your face, your eyes are stinging you’re, it’s just sometimes even a life threatening scenario when you’re out there because if you’re not consuming for me, I had a Camelbak that had 100oz of water in it, and I drink two or three of those in a day. And if you’re not vigilant about that, then by noon, you’re kind of getting a little lightheaded and lethargic; and then by two or three in the afternoon, you’re face down in the playa, you know!

So I think the reason why I was able to assume those types of leadership roles and that type of stuff was not only was it the military training, where I’m very used to being hyper vigilant about my own well-being and the well-being of the people around me, where I’m constantly checking on them. But then you add that skill set of remodeling where you just don’t really know what you’re going to do that day. You show up and you start solving problems, and building solutions for those problems that you’re solving. I was like a key into a lock; custom fit to go into that scenario and thrive. 

I think that was probably the skill sets that were honed that allowed me to interact the way that I did with the guys for the build crew in Burning Man. 

STUART: 

Ray, how about you? You were there last year for the rain event. I’m wondering if any of your NCO leadership skills kind of kicked in automatically when things started to get bad.

RAY: 

Yeah, that probably was the most direct I probably had to do anything leadership wise, because I was already cautious since I retired from the Army, and how you deal with people outside the military is different; a little softer on some things. 

One of the things that was brought to me was, the camp lead was going “Okay, Ray, you were in the military. We need somebody, you know, to snap these teams together, get ‘em working. And what is that? How’d y’all doing in the military?” And I told them, “Yeah, I did that in the military, but I think that if I tried doing that shit to these people… People come here to party and relax. I can’t work them like that. We can’t dog ‘em!”

SAM: 

No! 

RAY: 

That’s not… If somebody says, “I don’t wanna.” I can’t kick them in the ass. We can’t cuss them out. We can’t court martial ‘em. So you got to be a little more… and I was trying to explain to him that I know what you want me to do, but I’m not going to be out here on a playa yelling at people and threatening them. What do I do, make ‘em do push ups?

So that required a whole lot more being understanding that where I am in this environment, who these people are. People aren’t showing up to work like slaves, even though that contribution is important. So that kind of changed my leadership because I was a little bit standoffish until the rains. And I didn’t have a choice but to step up because a lot of people were in damn panic mode, unnecessarily so, actually, in my head. 

STUART: 

Yeah.

RAY: 

I had to be kind of loud with a couple of people almost to say, “Chill out! It’s going to be alright. Chill! It’s okay! We got this.” Because there were people like, “What am I gonna to do? I gotta get out of here. Help!”

“Calm your ass down!” 

And I created a party. We gathered up wood, found it everywhere, built a big ass fire. People I saw walking around going “I don’t know what to do!” 

“Man. Come on over here. Drink some liquor.” And we were just bringing in people, I don’t care where they were coming from. And then a couple of other camps started doing the same thing, just going “Yield into it. It’s fucked up, but we can still have a good time. Who’s going to forget this, that we were here?”

So leadership wise, I just started doing stuff myself. You know, I came out going, “Let’s get some wood together. Come on. Who wants to help me get wood? Let’s find some food.” I actually found two frozen pork butts, the source of which I can’t reveal, but they were acquired. And man we had…

STUART: 

You mean they weren’t requisitioned from the normal supply chain processes!

RAY: 

Yeah, we wrapped it up in some acquired foil and put it on the damn fire, fed all kinds of people, you know, just giving them out slight chunks of meat to eat. And it was wonderful because I had experienced that in the military so many times when we had been in a really crappy, bombed-out wreck, piece of crap house or building. Man, we turned that thing into home; sweeping dirt, sweeping sand. You know, you got to go to the bathroom in close proximity to other people. I mean, we joke, people are farting. You’re naked. You got a level of comfort. 

So I felt, like Samuel, that I was built for that environment. I was so used to sleeping in the dirt, and waking up having to go out to pee, and all the normal stuff of being outdoors, that that was not a real issue for me. 

But I did notice, which I was surprised my first time, there were several people that just tapped out. They got into like day four or five, they were either… they had fell in love, and they were heartsick, homesick, heat exhaustion. “You know I think I need… I need to be back home!” 

“What’s wrong with you, man?” You people are doing too much, you know, on day one. 

I made that mistake. I went out with some party animals the first day. Big mistake. Good God almighty. Who were these like the partiest fool! I was broken. I went on a bike ride with five of the just… Yeah, they had to take me home. Every place we stopped was offering up something good, and I took it. After that night I knew, okay, I can’t be the leader at partying. They got me. I met the masters. They were really hardcore party animals. And I thought: “20 years of the military, What you got? “What these civilians got? Man, I got drunk all over the world.

STUART: 

Bring it. Bring it.

RAY: 

But, I was brought down, I was beat. I yielded, man. “Come on, Ray, let’s go tomorrow.” 

“No! That was it.” I couldn’t ride with them no more. I saw the limit at Burning Man. How far can you go? A lot farther than you think.

I saw a lot of people it was their first times like doing a lot of stuff, and it was too much for ‘em. That’s what age had that advantage for me and just being in the military, because I already had those experiences of drinking too much a couple of decades ago. So I already know: you need to get some sleep. You should probably drink more water. I was just, the military had just beat you into that. It was surprising to see people suffer from heat exhaustion. “Get your ass in here and drink some water or something. What you doin’?!”

I had a lot of encounters that are unpredictable. I was walking one night toward the Man. And, this lady just skipped up to me. She just danced up to me, and she said, “Do you mind if I walk with you?” 

“Yeah. Why not?”

Then she started telling me this story. She said, “My husband, he’s been to the Burns like 15 straight years. But this may be the last year he can come.” 

“Why is that?”

“Well, he has cancer, and he’s dying, and he could barely get out of his camp.” 

And right then, this like cool breeze came in the air, you know, and I just got a little chill. And I remember saying to her, “Man, this feels like cuddle weather, doesn’t it?” 

She said, “Yeah.”

I said, “You know what? I bet your husband would just love to be cuddling with you right now.” And I walked that woman all the way back to her tent, and delivered her to her husband. 

And when I did that, I felt good. I held… my ass was skipping. And how do I explain to people? Burning Man gave me that multiple times a day. And that I will always stick with me and it’s such a small thing, it was only a few moments, but I had moments like that several times a day, unpredictable, just some random person who says something, and they’re so damn interesting.

I got a thing for interesting people. And Burning Man is, there are so many… If you’re a people gawker like me, you could just sit down in one place and that would have been a party for me. 

STUART: 

Well, that also brings up the notion of… There’s a certain camaraderie that we know in the military and that I have experienced at Burning Man that are not really that different. In fact, I think back to my crew that I used to fly with, you know, 40 years later they’re still some of my best friends, wherever they are in the world, because we were so goddamn close looking after each other’s asses all the time. The closest I’ve come to that outside of the inside of an airplane is at Burning Man in Black Rock City. I’m wondering if you guys have developed any close relationships like that.

RAY: 

I probably met a dozen people who I will never forget. I mean, I would consider them close friends just from that little bit of time we had together, and I still communicate with them. And I would not have met them were it not for Burning Man, absolutely impossible because that’s not the peer group that my world gives me on a daily basis. 

I live in rural Appalachia, very conservative. I totally was wanting to get out of this environment. And, I met a lot of beautiful people that I wouldn’t meet in rural North Carolina, that I was cool with. 

I love people from California, by the way. I’m so jealous of y’all. Damn it. You don’t know. Y’all got everything, man. That’s why California’s gonna fall into the damn ocean.

STUART: 

It’s got too much stuff? It’s going to tip over?

RAY: 

It’s got too much stuff, man. Your kids move to California, man, and they’re hair will be pink, and then they, you know, they’ll just be doing stuff. That’s what southern preachers say: “Don’t let your kids be going out there to California!”

STUART: 

They’ll never come back. 

Related to camaraderie is acceptance, inclusion. One thing a lot of people report more than the so-called transformation is a sense of belonging. And I’m just wondering, Burning Man has a reputation, I don’t think very well deserved, but of being an unfriendly place for anybody who’s not white. The military, on the other hand, has a reputation, I don’t know, deserved or not, for a place where color of skin doesn’t really matter. If you’ve got the chops, you can rise through the ranks and excel. I’m wondering how it’s been for you guys as men of color kind of navigating, you know, threading the needle between those stereotypes.

RAY: 

Well, you can’t be Black in America and not have no contact with white people. It’s just not possible. In the Army, I mean, I worked for white people. White people worked for me. They’ve been my best friends, and my worst enemies. But I’ve had a whole range of those experiences. And living here in rural North Carolina, I’m almost always the only Black person. I’m flexible in that way, so I wasn’t expecting, you know, a bunch of open arms. Just to be respected was good enough for me. But I got more than that, actually. 

I probably tried to nod, wave, or acknowledge every brown person I saw, if no more than just a nod of the head.

STUART: 

Yes. I’ve heard about the nod before.

RAY: 

“I acknowledge you. What’s up, man? How you end up in Burning Man?”

SAM: 

Was it a downward nod or an upward nod? 

RAY: 

Ahhhh. Yeah. 

SAM: 

That’s right. 

RAY: 

That’s a brown thing.

“What’s up? I see you, but I ain’t gonna say nothing. I ain’t gonna put no pressure on you, you know, while you’re with your white friends; I’m just going to give you a little, you know… Because I don’t know what your space is, you know? I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to blow nothin’ for you, man. Maybe you’re incognito or something!”

I did encounter some people in a group that I would say were way more conservative than I would have expected at Burning Man, but of no real consequence. But I heard things that are like just stuff that I would hear at home. 

STUART: 

Right.

RAY: 

Not generally, but that sticks out in my mind of how unusual that encounter was, this group of people who were way, way more conservative than I would have expected at Burning Man, but very isolated. That was just one group out of the thousand six hundred…

SAM: 

Right. 

RAY: 

There was one that came to my attention. I went “Hmmm. I deal with this at home; I didn’t come to Burning Man to have to deal with anything.” But nothing that had me, like, worried looking over my shoulder, or I’m surrounded by racism. If anything, I had more people try to be friendly to me, to acknowledge that I was Black, almost to the point of irritation. That happens here, too. 

You know, it’s like, “Hey, man. How’s it going?! What’s up buddy?!?!”

STUART: 

“Hey bro.”

RAY: 

“I’m good… I’m good.”

The only like more negative pressure I got was to be more military so we can get these people to do stuff? No. Can’t do it, man. You gotta find somebody else for that. I don’t wanna roll like that, because that would trigger me. You know, I did not want to be out there orderin’ people, standing them up, put my finger in they face, none of that kind of stuff.

So the negative was them thinking I wanted to do that, or that’s part of my character, and I really wanted to push back, you know? “Yeah, man, I’m a military dude, but we’re not doing that. If I started doing that, you guys would want to go home.” 

SAM: 

Yeah, there’s no place for it there.

RAY: 

You want the military order and the structure, but you don’t, you don’t want that.

SAM: 

It changes the whole vibe. Yeah. It’s really interesting hearing what you got to say about it, because there’s a lot of similarities and there’s still some differences. I’m half Black and I was raised in northern Michigan, and in a school of 3000 kids, I was the only one with any color in my skin besides my sister, you know? So I have a very similar experience.

But I was raised very different in that my mom actually was raised in the inner city during the civil rights movement, and she was white. 

RAY: 

Right.

SAM: 

So she had the opposite experience that most Black folks had in their own communities. 

RAY: 

Right.

SAM: 

So she always raised me. She’s like, “Look. Don’t ever try to pretend or think that you’re a victim.” And I was like, “Okay.” That’s kind of a, you know, we say that so much it loses its value. 

One of my favorite stories to tell about my views on racism and all of that is: There was a point in time where there were these kids that we called, me and my sister called them The Carhartt Clan. And they were supposedly, you know, they were white supremacists and they had spiderweb tattoos on their elbows, and every spider that was in there was a Black guy that they had done something to, and earned their stripes basically, you know. And they’re supposed to be pretty intimidating. 

One day, two of them cornered me in school, and it was clearly a racially motivated thing. So me being the 110 pound kid that I was in high school, nicknamed them Dinky and Doofus. 

In my school at the time, in the lunchroom, all the seniors, my sister was a senior, I was a sophomore – all the seniors sat on one side of the lunchroom, all the sophomores sat on the other side of the lunchroom. Right? 

So I stood up on a table and I yelled at my sister across the lunchroom. I was like, “Hey, Grace. You hear about this race war that these guys are starting?” She’s like, “Sam, please just sit down. Stop. Just stop,” you know. 

I was like, “I got an idea. I think I might go out and I’m going to burn a cross in Dinky and Doofus’s yard. I’m not going to be the victim here. I’m going to take the fight to them. What do you think about that, Grace?” So she’s like, “Shut up and sit down!” 

I said “Or better yet, what if I go out there and I spray paint the N-word on their car? I can’t think of anything worse than a white supremacist that’s gotta run around town with the N-word spray-painted on their car. I think it’s hilarious!” 

And by then my friends are pulling me off the table, you know. And I got in trouble because I dropped the N-bomb and I was like, “What are you going to do? I’m the only guy around here that can really say it and really gonna get in trouble for it,” you know. 

I had a whole different mentality when it comes to that kind of thing. And it was really just to like, throw it back and, you know, like, “You’re ignorant. And if you’re ignorant, I’m going to treat you like you’re ignorant.” It has a much different connotation with me.

So as that pertains to Burning Man, that being my mentality, I just don’t respond in a traditional sense to it. But my experience at Burning Man was very much the opposite of anything like that. Burning Man is very tribal. 

RAY: 

Mm-hmm.

SAM: 

In the military, we’re also very tribal. And that tribal connection transcends skin color; it transcends culture. 

Here I am, I got $3.50 in my bank account. The ticket that I had was given to me. It was a gift. And I’m dealing with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies that are like, “Hey, we’re taking your lead on this.” And I’m like, “Why are you even…?”

They’re like, “Time out.” You don’t understand. All right? This isn’t about anything that we are outside of this. This is about us right here, right now. And our tribe needs you. So I don’t care about your skin color. I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care much money in your account. What matters is you know how to do this. So we’re going to get in line behind you and we’re going to do this.”

And that was actually reinforced by Marian. I call her mama Marian. 

STUART: 

Marian Goodell, Burning Man CEO. 

SAM: 

Marian, one time she stood up in our little food area, and she was like, “Look, I don’t care what status you think you are, the next one of you that tries to cut in line to get your septic pumped from your little trailer, I’m kicking you out of the camp. This is not a thing that’s going to happen, okay? You’re in line just like everybody else, and we’ll get to you when we get to you. But don’t go thinking you’re special just because you’re something outside of this. What we are here is a tribe where we all work together. So figure that out.” 

RAY: 

Yeah.

SAM: 

And I was like, “I love this woman.” Good lord, this is incredible. Because that essence and the sense of family and tribal-ness that’s there was just so strong. And I appreciated it so much from that.

RAY: 

Mm-hmm.

STUART: 

All right, so if there are other vets out there on the fence, thinking of going, thinking about not going, heard shitty things about Burning Man, or good things about Burning Man. If you could offer advice to a younger soldier-self of yours, what advice would you give ‘em?

RAY: 

Come on out, man. It’d be the best tactical exercise you have ever dealt with in your entire life. I hope you have a kind of an open minded perspective. You’ll see things that you don’t normally see, but it’s all good. It probably took me 48 hours to get used to naked people. It became not a thing. After two days, I was just like, “What else you got?” You got to wear something to impress somebody out here. You know, being naked alone is just not doing it. And I seen all kind of bejeweled genitals. In my mind, I was having a laugh, hoot. You know?

SAM: 

Yeah, the nudity isn’t sexual.

RAY: 

That’s a good way to put it. No, it wasn’t sexual. It just was. It’s not a thing because everybody around was cool and that made me cool. You know, the environment. If people were probably acting weird, I don’t know how that would have affected my thinking. I just loved the open… everybody just being wide open. That was probably the comfortable, because I knew that where I live, that would not be possible. 

Some people I met came from backgrounds that I wondered about because I know that where I live, I can’t be that here. And some people had characters of themselves that I wondered: How could you be that at home? 

I met somebody, I’ll just call him Cat Man. Now, Cat Man had cat ears and Cat Man had a cat tail. Okay. It’s Burning Man. Costume, right? Furries, I think the kids call them, but Cat Man was a cat every day. 24 hours a day, he’d be “meow meow,” scratching, reaching for them little balls, all day, every day, all night. And I was thinking, he could be schizophrenic, but it’s Burning Man, so you can’t make judgments about people’s psychology. But I was curious to know: How do you live in the default world? You can’t… What is your job that you could be Cat Man 24…? But you know what? I didn’t pose questions to people like that. And I’ve met lots of people that I was going, “What do you do?” 

Look, I got drunk with two psychiatrists, and I told them, “Who would have thunk it? Who wouldn’t think this?!?!” So it’s like, damn, the damn interesting people. 

Most of the people I saw having a good time were very successful. It was beyond age. Anybody that I saw with people who pretty much were accomplished in some form, they were artists or they were in business. Very interesting people. And some people I met that for sure, they don’t function that way in the default world because they can’t. So for them, it was an opportunity to be loose, no judgment. They couldn’t do these things, or be as loose at home. That kind of is something you can bond around people about too, you know. What do you do? 

STUART: 

Sam, what about you? And any advice?

SAM: 

Yeah, two things, really. One of them is to kind of hit on what Ray was talking about. and just speaking again, from my own experience, and the guys that I know. 

A lot of times you walk around in this world and you feel like people can’t understand you. You feel separated, isolated, and that you can’t really express who you really are. So you put this mask on, so then you can try to be successful in what Ray calls the default world, or what we might call the real world, right? And in a place like Burning Man, that mask can come off. You are free to be who you are. 

For a lot of combat veterans, they’re not going to want to do it because it scares them. The person who they were or are really, you know, they’re convinced, “I’m a beast. I don’t know if I deserve happiness. I don’t know if I could interact with an environment where if I see someone dressed like a cat, you know, or a dude in a dress, and I don’t necessarily agree with that, how am I actually going to react to that? And is that going to be something where I put myself in a scenario where it’s going to turn out to be a net negative thing? I just don’t want to do it.”

What I would do is I would encourage you to come because the environment there is love, it’s acceptance. 

RAY: 

Mm-hmm.

SAM: 

So you might feel that way, but then you also might find yourself in a conversation with that person, and then find out that that person has an inexplicable acceptance and love for you. And they’re helping you out. And you’re learning things from them. So long as you can open your mind and be aware of it, and receiving of it, that person, they might change your life. 

It’s a very real possibility at Burning Man that these people that we would typically judge on their face are extraordinary people. And that’s a lesson not just at Burning Man, but you can take that into the real world, and say, you know, I understand that I have these thoughts, I have these reactions, I have these presuppositions and beliefs, and this modus of operandi that I do on a daily basis. And that’s how I just learn to get along. But going to a place like Burning Man is going to break all of that open, and it’s going to challenge those things. Trust that the result is going to be beautiful because it was so unexpected that it was going to be that beautiful for me. 

RAY: 

Yeah. 

SAM: 

I had no idea what to expect, but I didn’t expect it to be that beautiful.

The other point that I wanted to make is that being in combat, you experience the worst of humanity. Alright? And because you experienced the worst of humanity, it pulls the veil off and you no longer care about the facade. You’re not willing to accept that you’re supposed to work your nine to five, that you’re supposed to have your white picket fence, that you do all the church boy answers for everything. You know, like if you disagree with somebody, do you really disagree with them, or do you kind of try to fluff the words and try to tiptoe around things like everybody else does? 

You get raw about it because you’ve seen the extreme. 

Burning Man is the opposite of that. It is also extreme, but it is the very best that humanity has to offer. The way I described it to a friend of mine was: It’s the height of human experience. You’re not going to experience anything more stimulating, more accepting, more exciting than Burning Man, because everybody there has coalesced and converged on this area to express their art and their love for the celebration of the human experience. 

So if you feel like you’re disenfranchised and separated and isolated because you’ve seen the worst of humanity and you’ve experienced the worst of the human experience, which is wholesale slaughter, Burning Man is the other side of that spectrum, and it’s going to break you. It’s going to shatter a lot of the belief systems that you’ve had. 

You’ll be breaking down, crying and hugging people that are dressed like a cat!

RAY: 

Yes, man!

SAM: 

And they’re going to be there for you. And you’re going to walk away from it going, I’ve had it wrong this entire time, and I’m ready to change, and I’m never going to be the same. 

RAY: 

You’ll love it. 

SAM: 

You will love it. 

STUART: 

Thank you guys for showing up. I really, really appreciate your time, Doctor Ray Christian, Sam Williams. 

RAY: 

Alright, we’ll see each other on the playa, then, huh? 

SAM: 

Sounds good. I look forward to it, Ray. 

Thanks again, Stuart, I really appreciate it, too. 

STUART: 

You have been listening to Burning Man LIVE. It is the one and only authorized podcast of the Philosophical Center of Burning Man Project, made possible by lots of gifts of love from lovely people, occasional gifts of money at donate.burningman.org. Thanks to everyone who put this show together. Thanks, Larry. See you next time.

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