Chapter 6 Dream

I wake up in the early hours of Thursday morning, and strangely for me, I remember my dream. I’m in my home, but not any home I recognise, when I discover a door I haven’t seen before. I go through the door to find lots of other rooms that until now I had no idea existed. This is not the first time I’ve had this dream. I wonder if the house stands for my mind and if somehow my subconscious is trying to tell me to broaden my horizons.

I fall to thinking of Funki de la Muerte, the party in Paris on the previous Saturday night. It was reminiscent of my early Planet Angel days when I would dance all night while my good friend Ersin played the social butterfly. This time Molly was playing the Ersin role. This being a party with strong burner connections, it is somewhat different to those old Planet Angel club nights.

Burners, basically participants in the Burning Man festival or similar events such as Nowhere, often adopt the principles of these events outside of the festival. (see The 10 Principles of Burning Man or Nowhere’s 10 Core Principles. Here Radical Self Expression is getting an airing and for the burners, and maybe others present, this has meant getting your clothes off and dancing naked.

For me there has always seemed to be a tension between the burner principles of Radical Self Expression and Radical Inclusion and on this dance floor I’m now feeling a little excluded. The room is a long underground tunnel and the acoustics at the back are not great. As I make my way to the front, the sound improves but does so in proportion to the level of nakedness. I have to stress, I have no problem with the nakedness, I’m happy for people to be dancing around me in whatever they want. My problem, and this turns out to be key for just about everything that happens on this trip, is how I am viewed, how the naked dancers see me.

As it is hot in the club I am wearing trainers, long shorts and a waistcoat, I have no desire to wear less clothes, but to dance here clothed, amongst a majority of naked people, I will seem like a voyeur, which is something I’m not. Early in the night I make a number of attempts but I cannot dance in a way that I feel comfortable, either the sound isn’t good enough or the level of nakedness too high. Eventually I hit on a solution, right up at the front, though the speakers are somewhat behind me, the sound is tolerable and I can face away from all but the DJ. With this cunning plan I dance until they throw me out at the end of the night.

I wonder now though, in the darkness of Thursdays early hours, if my cunningness, that systemising side of me that develops solutions to the dilemmas like the above, is exactly what prevents me from seeing the door to the other rooms in the home of my dream.

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