THE CLOSING OF THE BURNING MIND: New Yorkers Back from Burning Man Won’t Stop Whining:
“You have cars honking at you, subway doors closing on you, and people’s MO is to serve themselves and not you. It’s very harsh — it’s very hard to leave Burning Man,” says Kaplan.
Who’d ever think that joining a self-sufficient outdoor “camp,” using baby wipes as a pseudoshower for a week and, for some, taking copious amounts of drugs would be so hard to give up?
A number of New Yorkers, dissatisfied with their lives, flee westward every year for the weeklong festival known for its constant hugs and no-money mandate. But upon their return, many are experiencing palpable withdrawal symptoms as the transition proves tough for those who continue to see the mirage of Burning Man, even when back in Manhattan.
“You’re trying desperately to hold onto the good energy [of] Burning Man, but it is so hard to do that amid the bustle of NYC,” says Kaplan, who recalls an episode at the airport in which a fellow “Burner” jumped the cab line and hissed, “We’re not at Burning Man anymore.”
To cope, some Burners are hosting support groups masquerading as “decompression parties” around the city.
Who could have predicted such a thing?
Rock music provides premature ecstasy and, in this respect, is like the drugs with which it is allied. It artificially induces exaltation naturally attached to the completion of the greatest endeavors–victory in just war, consummated love, artistic creation, religion devotion and discovery of truth. Without effort, without talent, without virtue, without exercise of the faculties, anyone and everyone is accorded the equal right to the enjoyment of their fruits. In my experience, students who have had a serious fling with drugs–and gotten over it–find it difficult to have enthusiasms of great expectations. It is as though the color has been drained out of their lives and they see everything in black and white. The pleasure they experienced in the beginning was so intense that they no longer look for it at the end, or as the end. They may function perfectly well, but dryly, routinely. Their energy has been sapped, and they do not expect their life’s activity to produce anything but a living, whereas liberal education is supposed to encourage the belief that the good life is the pleasant life and that the best life is the most pleasant life. I suspect that the rock addiction, particularly in the absence of strong counterattractions, has an effect similar to that of drugs. The student will get over this music, or at least the exclusive passion for it. But they will do so in the same way Freud says that men accept the reality principle–as something harsh, grim and essentially unattractive, a mere necessity . . . As long as they have the Walkman on, they cannot hear what the great tradition has to say. And, after its prolonged use, when they take it off, they find they are deaf.
— Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987.