It’s amazing what people don’t know about Burning Man.

Exhibit A: this past weekend I was visiting some friends of mine, and when one of them found out I’m involved with Burning Man she asked “Are there any women there?”

Exhibit B: This week Yahoo listed Burning Man as an “essential” music festival. We’re number 3, after Bonnaroo and Bumbershoot (making me suspicious that they just listed them in alphabetical order), but ahead of Lollapalooza … which is apparently still a thing … and Orion.

Granted, the piece does acknowledge that Burning Man is “more like a makeshift city than a festival.” But it’s also pretty clear that the author hasn’t been there. Also, is it just me, or do music festivals all sound like they’re named after obscure Gilbert & Sullivan characters?

Exhibit C: Every year Media Mecca gets dozens of requests from publications asking “who’s playing” at Burning Man this year. Nothing we ever do seems to persuade them that we wouldn’t know. Honestly, I think we ought to start telling them “Your mother” and demanding they print it.

It’s natural that people who are unfamiliar with Burning Man immediately look for something they do know about … the men’s movement, a music festival … to compare it to.

But given how much of what happens at Burning Man is aimed – sometimes explicitly – at frustrating expectations, it’s really not helpful.

This is especially the case as more and more events and festivals try to piggy-back on Burning Man’s success, claiming to have a common ancestry, philosophy, or “vibe” with us. To be “authentic” representations of whatever it is we do. Yet generally the more they claim, the less they represent.

It’s not just that those organizations would love to get sponsorship from Krug Champaign while we regard it as unfit to urinate on our enemies. It’s not that our “events” are better than their events, or that they are centered around bands while we are most definitely not.

It’s that there is a fundamentally different mindset at work. And if you don’t understand that then nothing you think you know about Burning Man is going to make any sense.

Ironically then, it is our poor imitators who are likely to define who we are in the media, as at least what they do (there are bands, you watch them; there are yoga sessions: you do them; someone gives a talk: you listen) is easy to understand with a cursory glance.

Most people, including media and kids wearing fuzzy boots, have a hard time understanding the “no spectators” concept.

This fact was driven home to me almost exactly a year ago when I went to Lightning In A Bottle – an event so obviously inspired by Burning Man that one of their mottos is “Leave A Positive Trace,” which is practically Freudian in its simultaneous identification-with-and-rejection-of its mom and dad.

“You can’t tell me to Leave No Trace!” Lightning In A Bottle shouts while wearing a t-shirt of its favorite band, which you just wouldn’t understand. “I’m going to leave a POSITIVE trace!” Then it slams the door and runs to a friend’s house. It tries to open up about how hard it is to live in its parents’ shadow, but his friend always says “Dude, Burning Man is so cool!” And that hurts.

But where Burning Man is definitively not a music festival, Burning Man imitator Lightning In A Bottle definitively is: it has three official music stages, which have lists of prominent bands playing there every night of the festival. It has food vendors. It has a vending area. Sure, there’s also a “temple of consciousness” and a little art and a whole section on their website devoted to “sustainability,” but … look … they have yoga at Lollapalooza too.

But it’s not just the stages and the line-up that make LIB a music festival and the lack of them that makes Burning Man unique. It’s something else, and that something else is often hard to describe. My best efforts have led to language like “engine of possibility” and “creating a liminal space.” And I think those still apply … but they’re admittedly problematic.

Here’s my story from Lightning In A Bottle that explains it.

I woke up one sunny morning, waited in line for a coffee, and drank it glumly (I hate mornings) on the upper causeway. Lots of people were walking by.

So far nothing that couldn’t have happened at Burning Man.

I saw Chicken John. He was also drinking a coffee, and he was also in a bad mood. He was wearing a red clown’s nose and holding a ukulele case. I went over and grunted at him. He grunted back.

So far nothing that couldn’t have happened at Burning Man. In fact, I’m pretty sure it has.

A little kid walked over and pointed at Chicken’s red clown nose. Chicken opened his ukulele case and pulled out bag of balloons. He blew one up and made a balloon animal for the kid. The kid walked away, delighted, and Chicken tossed the bag of balloons on the ground next to the case.

So far nothing that couldn’t have happened at Burning Man.

Then, inspiration hit me.

I leaped up from my perch and began barking at the passers-by. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege to introduce you to the world’s most cynical clown!”

I pointed at Chicken.

“That’s right, the world’s most cynical clown! Right here! And, today only, the world’s most cynical clown is making custom balloon art! That’s right, any balloon shape you want from the world’s most cynical clown! Tell him your heart’s desire and he will give it to you in cynical balloon form! Step right up! Who wants a piece of cynical balloon art from the world’s most cynical clown!”

Chicken stared at me, and then just sat there, grumbling, while I went through my spiel, over and over again. “He’s played for princes, kings, and the dictators of small nations everywhere! He’s the world’s most cynical clown and he will represent your dreams in cynical balloon animal form right here, right now! Who wants a cynical balloon animal!”

When people sopped, Chicken was a genius. Somebody said “Love,” so he blew up two balloons and tied them into a heart. Then he popped one of the balloons and gave her the surviving half. Brilliant. “That’s right, folks, he’s the worlds most cynical clown! Tell him your dreams and he will produce them for you right here in cynical balloon form!” Somebody wanted a car so he made a balloon steering wheel. Somebody wanted to rule the world, so he blew up a balloon … and then let it go soaring through the air and over the causeway until it ran out of air and fell over a ridge.

Brilliant – and it could have happened at Burning Man. It was pure Burning Man. But, here’s the difference: Hundreds of people passed by at LIB, and yet it took us … swear to God … about 15 minutes before one of them actually stopped to participate. In total we did this over an hour and we barely got 10 people to step right up.

That wouldn’t have happened at Burning Man.

At Burning Man we would have been mobbed by people naming their heart’s desires. At Burning Man a tribe of clowns would have wandered by and challenged Chicken to a cynical-clown balloon off. At Burning Man, a glass blower would have set up shop nearby and pretty soon a whole informal “cynical crafts district” would have sprung up.

Get the difference? It’s hard to quantify what that is, but it’s a real quality that exists strongly at Burning Man precisely *because* there aren’t well defined stages with events; precisely because there isn’t a set agenda; because Burners are actively responsible to make sure anything can happen, and does. Even if it’s cynical, or mean, or aggressive.

Nothing against festivals … I happen to be very fond of the Aspen Music Festival and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival … but they are not comparable. Anything that happens at one of them can happen at Burning Man, but it will be floating in a very different sea. Festivals encourage you to be spectators. Burning Man refuses to acknowledge the category.

What sets Burning Man apart isn’t the desert (though sure) or the Man burning (though yeah) or the lack of official stages (which are more than made up for by sound camps). It is that Burning Man is an engine of possibility, and Burners are its agents, and if you go to Burning Man thinking you know what you’re going to do every day … you’ve never been there before.

It’s interesting, in this light, that the Regional events – which are directly descended from Burning Man and run by Burners – are spending far more time and effort developing their own identities than trying to be Burning Man clones.

The most successful ones are, indeed, completely different from Burning Man – except that they keep some degree of that engine of possibility.

Really that’s all you need … and past a certain point that’s all we’ve got. A simple concept that we haven’t yet got a good elevator pitch to explain to a media with 30 second attention spans.

It’s amazing what people don’t know about Burning Man.

Caveat is the Volunteer Coordinator for Media Mecca at Burning Man. His opinions are in no way statements of the Burning Man organization. Contact him at Caveat (at) Burningman.com