Spark: A Burning Man Story

[no sound]

[mysterious drum and flutes, ]

[Drum and flutes continue, ]

[MICHAEL MIKEL]

I drew a line on the ground.

And I said, "On the other side of this

line, everything will be different."

And everything has

been different.

[ "Feel the Love" by

Rudimental]

To a lot people who aren't here,

this is just a big party

in the desert.

But really it's a place where

you can explore

the possibilities of what we

would create on this world

if we weren't so busy with

our 9 to 5's.

[TOM PRICE]:

The place is an idea.

And that idea is that people have

permission to be whomever they want to be.

That's so powerful

and so alluring,

that people go to the

worst place in the world,

just to get a little

taste of it.

[WOMAN]:
Burning Man is all about

"Why not?" overwhelming "Why?"

Why not dress differently, act

differently, think differently... why not?

[LARRY HARVEY]:
We use the word

ethos, and ethos means a way of life.

This is all about identity.

It's hard to belong.

And that's really, in creating a city here...

talk about a powerful sense of place.

A cosmic sense of place.

[MARIAN GOODELL]: We had drawn all

these people like moths to the flame.

They were having these

transformative experiences.

But what if they were more

than we could handle?

[HARLEY DUBOIS]:
People say, "What,

you do Burning Man all year round?

Which is insane, of course, because I feel

like I do five or seven people's jobs.

And if we do our job well,

no one even knows we exist.

They don't see

the infrastructure.

[CRIMSON ROSE]:

There is no book on

how you do an event called

Burning Man.

We sort of made it

up on the fly.

Is this going to work?

Let's try it.

[WILL ROGER]:
I did have some

advice from circus carnies

and designers and architects

and people like that.

[GOODELL]:
The ten principles

are guidelines.

You know, it's

something to work with.

It means...

Everyone is invited to come

and play and build and do.

Helping each other find that

little spark of creativity.

It means being responsible for

yourself,

and also being

responsible for others.

I am holding the

decommodification.

Gifting.

Pick it up,

even if it's not yours.

You brought it in,

you can take it home.

[GOODELL]:
You know, we have very intimate

partnerships, you know, the six of us.

Michael Mikel met Larry in 1988.

And then Larry briefly

dated Harley.

And then Crimson came along

and brought Will in.

And then I came along and was

brought in by dating Larry.

So then what you have are, you

know, intimate relationships.

[LARRY HARVEY]:

I'm not really a joiner.

And I like to stand off

and watch how people behave.

See I never had to

join anything, people join me.

You know, that was

my solution to that problem.

[TV static]

[Man]:
Your first...

Well, I've had enough!!

[man laughing]

[HARVEY]:

I really wasn't an artist.

I had a very, very modest, small

landscaping business.

I was hanging out with

a lot of people,

all of whom were,

in their spare time,

writing novels or painting

pictures or playing music.

So it was sort of a

Bohemian scene.

We had a friend who was

a carpenter, you know, and uh...

I just called him one day and said,

"Let's burn a man on the beach."

That's all it amounted to.

I think he may have asked me

to repeat my statement.

[drumming and jingling]

And along the way,

we called a few friends.

[drumming and

jingling continues]

[people chattering]

[woman] Stay back!

[MIKEL]:
In 1988, I heard

about a group of people

who were going to go

down on the beach

and burn this wooden figure.

And at the time I was involved

with The Cacophony Society.

We did things like

parties in unusual places,

stage plays in

abandoned buildings,

We'd do pranks.

[JOHN LAW]:

Anything could happen.

You don't know-you have no

idea what's gonna happen.

Not necessarily fun, or great,

but it could be.

[LAW]:
Could be frightening, could be

transformational, you just don't know.

That's the spirit of Cacophony.

[MIKEL]:
We loved to dress

up in all kinds of costumes.

And Burning Man takes a lot of

that from The Cacophony Society.

[HARVEY]:
Michael Mikel and John Law

attended some of the beach burns.

That crowd were

connected to others

who'd been out in the

Black Rock Desert.

And using it for

artistic purposes.

It sounded to me like

an ocean you could walk on.

[Mysterious desert music]

[LAW]:
We drew a line in the

dirt and stepped across it.

And it was entirely

transformational.

[

And it was primarily the

environment and...

and a set of free spirits

that made it so.

[HARVEY]:
The diversions available

were very modest in number and scale.

[chuckles]

[drumming continues ]

[engine roaring]

[gunshot]

Real slow, perfect, real slow.

Keep coming,

right at that speed.

Hold that pose.

[people yelling, cheering]

[drumming ends with

cymbal crash]

[cheering and howling continues]

[welding sparks]

[KATY BOYNTON]:
I have a degree

in child development.

And I was a nanny

for years and years.

Burning Man definitely

changed my life.

Once I got on the playa,

I remember, we hopped

on our bikes.

and I practically slammed

on my brakes and went,

"Oh my god. What is this place."

I walked away from

Burning Man going,

"I need to learn how to weld

'cause I've got ideas."

[MARCO COCHRANE]: There's so

much work involved in it,

that I needed people who were

just tenacious lunatics.

Katy was one of the many

miracle people who showed up.

And worked, just full-on,

10 hours a day, 7 days a week.

[sparks buzzing]

[BOYNTON]:
When I was coming

back from Burning Man,

I had this

vision in my head.

I had this idea of this

heart that had been

exploded and pieced

back together.

There's so many things that

break our hearts.

And that's what we do.

We pick up the pieces

and we put them back together

and we keep going.

I want to take large

pieces of sheet metal

that will lay over top of it

and be welded together,

riveted together.

In my head it's going to be

about 12 feet tall.

So, that's it.

OTTO:
How's it going, Avis?

It is going very well, sir, we're

getting a lot of work done.

Okay. Are you helping

with the muralists?

Or are you out

painting out there?

Right now, sir, I'm just

trying to locate a cigarette.

Here's a cigarette.

[OTTO VON DANGER]:

I'm a veteran.

I've put my life on the

line many times

for people of this nation

and I really hate seeing it go

down the toilet

like it is right now.

Wall Street has affected a lot

of people in a lot of ways.

And I figured,

if I'm going to do this,

I'm going to do it right

and I'm going to do it big.

Burning Man is a great venue

to build giant stuff

and blow it up.

[VON DANGER]:

There's five buildings involved.

They range from 50 feet tall

to 72 feet tall,

so it's a huge piece.

Think about building a block in

downtown in a major city,

that's basically what we're

doing out of wood.

So this is the bull, this is going

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