I might be done with Burning Man.

There’s this thing with altered-reality experiences: they don’t last forever. You gain some new perspective through them, you acquire an expanded sense of what is going on in the world, but repeatedly pursuing those experiences doesn’t continue to expand your perspective. It has something to teach you, but once you’ve learned the lesson, what do you do with it?

I’ve been to nine burns, starting in 2001. The first was difficult, stressful, not a lot of fun, but it planted a lot of seeds. The next couple of burns changed my life and I would not be the person I am today without them. Those experiences stretched out my awareness of life possibilities and gave me a sense of purpose around the creative arts. Then there were a few years where I ran with that, throwing down the best I had to offer each summer.

Now… why am I going back? It seems to be a cycle of diminishing returns. As the event develops, it gets bigger, thus more civilized, thus more limited, and the sense of possibility I feel when I crunch across that old dry lakebed fades into memory. I know what I can do out there, and I’ve taken that back home and done my best to build a life where I can do that all the time. When I go to the burn now, more and more I see the scaffolding, the stage set, the limits of the illusion, and the less I feel any expansion of possibility.

Time to blow it all up and start over. Innovation becomes repetition becomes tradition. Time to strike out on my own. Floodland 2013.