what's with the center camp music after the man burns?

daniel · Post by **daniel** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:00 pm

After the man collapses, there's this flow of energy into center camp and people stretch out, decompress and discover new burners...there's opera, there's the mermen and on and on...it's incredible to slide in and ride the wave of the place...but in the predawn hours the vibe gets very strange.

First time I felt it I thought it was just the drugged out, wasted energy of the night...but in the last few years I've become convinced it's the music. I'm sure everyone knows what I'm talking about...it's that creepy souls dragging you down to the depths of hell sort of shit. There's little doubt that the music was created to illicit a response and it seems pretty clear that the people playing it are digging on creating that feeling a discomfort.

If the people playing this stuff were trying to show the power of music and its effect on people or if they have some distorted sense of street theater...well fine...my hat's off to them. Tell them they succeeded in destroying the vibe in center camp. Music is powerful. People controlling the music have power over how people feel. Now that you've proven your point please stop, or take your experiment to your theme camp.

Center camp is an oasis. We all share the space. It seems terribly ironic or misguided that after a week of encouraging people to stretch out of their normal-world-defences that they get slammed right when they are the most vulnerable...allbeit drugged out. In short its exploitative. It reaches beyond center camp 4 or 5 blocks back...so if I choose to go to my camp and lay down I still have to listen to this shit that makes me feel bad and is designed to make me feel bad...why is this OK?

helitack · Post by **helitack** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:14 pm

There is music at Burning Man? Since when?

LeChatNoir · Post by **LeChatNoir** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:46 pm

Put an empty PBR can up to your ear, Heli... listen closely. There's magic down in there.

And daniel... There's all sides of life and then some out there in the desert. Sooner or later you're going to run into a side that makes you uncomfortable.

Just the way it is... try to use it as a learning tool.

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:50 pm

FINALLY someone else spoke up that noticed the same thing!!! It literally sucks the energy out of you. I avoid center camp after the burn now.

Post by **Eric** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:02 pm

Kinetic IV wrote:I avoid center camp after the burn now.

I avoid it before the Burn as well. Other then to worship Tisha, of course.

Last year we had the most horrendous spoken-word performance art dreck ooozing into our camp at all hours. Maybe if they took the mic's away it would be nicer.

If you don't like the music in Center Camp after the Burn, don't go there. Wander the backstreets and see what you can find. Go to camps you've discovered and had fun in during the week and see what they have going on.

I like to use the quiet time late at night after the Burn to just bike around & explore one last time.

daniel · Post by **daniel** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:02 pm

Thanks for the suggestions. Like true burners you've responded how I can have a better experience...but my question was not how do I manage but why is this OK?

One of the beauties of BM is the live and let live...freedom to express yourself ideals. I support that 100%. But on the other side of that is a value system which (generally) doesn't allow people to fuck with others. We don't need cops to police us we do it ourselves...for example last year a guy in our neighborhood offered free showers to women then secretly took their photos...so once we figured it out we passed the word around and no one took showers there...he left by Friday.

A few years ago, I camped between an S&M camp and a kareoki bar...classic. I went to sleep listening to people being spanked or people singing so bad they should have been spanked. I didn't like either scene but they didn't bother me because both groups were simply doing what was important to them. They weren't fucking with my head and if I had a problem with them, it was exactly that...my problem. Same philosophy extends to some of the horrible acts at center camp...I don't care how bad they are they should be allowed the time to do their thing.

I don't know what's in the hearts of the people doing the mind-fuck sounds after the man burns, but I think it's exactly that...there trying to fuck with peoples heads and emotions. I think that because it happens year after year. The proof that they are effective is what happens to center camp. So my question is why are they allowed to do this year after year?

If 'mind-fucking with people" is their trip...let do it in their theme camp. They can put up some cheap tie-die and put a sign out front, saying "free glow sticks" then lay the heavy music on all the ravers when they come for the bait...problem is the ravers would immediately catch the vibe of the place and not go in there, even for free glow sticks...which of course is what happens to center camp...they clear the place out.

Center camp is not sacrosanct, but it is public space...why do we allow people to run us out of the space...this isn't about art-freedom, this is about people deliberately trying to disrupt the space...ask yourself this, do you think these people sit around their living room listening to this "music?"

Sure, I can avoid center camp...shit I may never leave camp once I get that PBR can singing to me...

LeChatNoir · Post by **LeChatNoir** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:11 pm

Alright... you've got me curious now. I've got to check this out this year.

Post by **Eric** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:51 pm

daniel wrote:I don't know what's in the hearts of the people doing the mind-fuck sounds after the man burns, but I think it's exactly that...there trying to fuck with peoples heads and emotions. I think that because it happens year after year. The proof that they are effective is what happens to center camp. So my question is why are they allowed to do this year after year?

Did you ever think that they are part of "the public" as well, and Center Camp is as much their space as yours? What to you is "mind-fuck sounds" may to them be exactly what they need to hear after the Burn.

Why does your personal choice of what is the "right" music or mood for Center Camp after the Burn take precedence over theirs? You talk early in your post about letting people do their own thing, but then only want your thing done in center camp post Burn.

So they drive some people off. Most of the performers in Center Camp drive me off, but you don't see me whining that they're recking "my" space. I go somewhere else. Maybe these DJ's attract others who are in the same space they are in, and if you Know it's going to be there and make you unhappy, why do you keep going back?

If you don't like what they're playing, talk to whover sets up the DJ slots, and see if you can play something at that time yourself. Don't whine and expect it to change because it makes you unhappy- either do something to change it or don't go to Center Camp when you know it's going to happen.

Ah, the simple choices of the playa.

daniel · Post by **daniel** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:14 pm

Ahhggghhhh...the dreaded "whiner" label. I retreat with my head hung low and my PBR can held high...

dragonfly Jafe · Post by **dragonfly Jafe** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:34 pm

(stealing the can of half-full warm PBR from the dude with his eyes looking at the ground in shame)

"Thanks, dude!"

(fleeing center camp, while drinking the warm PBR, and avoiding the drunken Mutant Vehicle drivers)

Post by **Eric** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 12:03 am

daniel wrote:Ahhggghhhh...the dreaded "whiner" label. I retreat with my head hung low and my PBR can held high...

Don't retreat- think of it as an even more dreaded "life lesson"
(joke- really)

Like I said- the simple choices of the playa.

If you really want it to be different, work towards changing it, or realize that if it really is always this music you hate after the Burn, maybe it's time to find another wonderful place to go at that time (I love deep playa after the Burn, out near the trash fence)

Give yourself the freedom to enjoy Burn night in a new way.

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 3:14 am

I really have only one problem with the thing at Center Camp. That is the people who seem to live there. They apparently don't have a camp, don't have a tent, and squat on the furniture for the week. Go in there at 4am any day of the week and the same people will have the same spots staked out and are crashed with their packs next to them. In other words, they are BRCs homeless population. You can't grab a couch and sit down and talk with your friends because these pigeons have claimed the space as their camp.

We need a few hundred of these to invade center camp at about 3:30 am every morning:

Post by **AntiM** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:03 am

Eeeeee, the stuff of nightmares.

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:09 am

Hmmm...an interesting observation. The antithesis of radical self reliance existing in proximity to one of the two oxymorons on the playa.

I always wondered about some of the characters in there late at night.

dragonfly Jafe · Post by **dragonfly Jafe** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:36 am

geekster wrote:We need a few hundred of these to invade center camp at about 3:30 am every morning:

Camp Happy Morning Yellow People, sounds like a winner. What drug do you think they were on (besides caffeine - I've never experienced butterflies coming out of my mouth from caffeine!)

Oh yeah, I avoid center camp entirely when possible...

capjbadger · Post by **capjbadger** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 9:39 am

geekster wrote:I really have only one problem with the thing at Center Camp. That is the people who seem to live there. They apparently don't have a camp, don't have a tent, and squat on the furniture for the week. Go in there at 4am any day of the week and the same people will have the same spots staked out and are crashed with their packs next to them. In other words, they are BRCs homeless population. You can't grab a couch and sit down and talk with your friends because these pigeons have claimed the space as their camp.

We need a few hundred of these to invade center camp at about 3:30 am every morning:

I'm really tempted to gift Graham with a Peep cannon (think have held pants cannon) and let him go nuts in the cafe... mwahahaha..

Lassen Forge · Post by **Lassen Forge** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 9:50 am

geekster wrote:We need a few hundred of these to invade center camp at about 3:30 am every morning:

One of my BRC costumes is all yellow. Goes with my all yellow (and yellow el-wired) bike. Scary shit. Even the tires match.

Just when you thought the end had passed you by, we bring doom to you. In a happy, sunny way....

blyslv · Post by **blyslv** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 9:59 am

Maybe they're just trying to clear out center camp after the burn night so they can clean it up the next day. Sombody put it up, somebodies got to put it down, and hippies sleeping there makes it that much more difficult.

And it's not a "public space." When you buy the ticket you purchase an ability to sit there at the BMOrg's pleasure. They can kick you out any time they want.

I have to say, I am a little fond of cener camp. One time a woman with no pants sat in my lap.

Fat SAM · Post by **Fat SAM** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:58 am

Dammit, why does everyone wtill fuck with the ravers? "Put some glowsticks out, mmmkay..." Nobody talks about the uptight yuppie motherfuckers out there. "Put some quiche out, mmmkay..." or the goths "put some pretend blood out, mmmkay..."

On another note, I don't really like hanging out in Center Camp and never have. I do other stuff all week. The homeless population thing never occurred to me, but it's completely true and I think that's part of why I do'nt hang out there. I also think it's kind of hard to find a relaxing vibe there with so many people mingling and stuff going on and I'm not there to feel tense...so I don't go. Which seems to be the resounding answer to Daniel's trouble. Stay somewhere that's easier for your head.

Last year after the Burn, Jake and I went to Thunderdome and had the first fight of the night after some lady sang the opera piece from fifth element...It was intense and the whole night, all the way through dawn, was one of my best that week.

See you guys in a few minutes.

skygod · Post by **skygod** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:36 pm

I know the music you are talking about, It's different, and I kind of like it and I kind of hate it.
I feel it's the sound of the Droogs coming to drag me out of my house and beat me to death like in Clockwork Orange.