No Spectators -- (?)

Today I went to No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man.  Walking through the Renwick humming the sounds of the gongs, writing remembrances on the wood temple, lying on floor pillows to watch colored lights, I was more than a spectator.  We all were.  It turns out the exhibit's title "No Spectators" comes from a Burning Man tenant that states no one's a spectator when the line between audience and performer is blurred; everyone becomes a superstar.

Though it fit the experience, something about the tenant nagged at me enough to photograph the wording and revisit it again now.

My sister got married in June, and the year leading up to her wedding, she and I journeyed all over southern California searching for the dress.  The two of us would be hours from home, rifling through gowns and snapping pictures to analyze later (since she loved *every* dress she put on and hated *every* dress the day after).  Afterward, we'd go to lunch and have a flight of mimosas, or discover a whimsical floral mural, or order lattes with our (to-be) husbands' faces on the foam (LA after all...), and snap selfies.  Something subtle shifted between the taking pictures of her in dresses and taking pictures of us with our whatever-props.  I couldn't put my finger on it, but each time we posed, I felt a hair further from her -- even though our shoulders still touched.

A month or so later, on my way to Kaia Joye's bachelorette party, I stopped in LA at The Happy Place I'd been reading about for months, a pop-up museum of happiness.  The temporary building housed huge rooms of playful yellow everything, giant signs, music, mirrors, balloons, upside down rooms, candy, enchanted gardens -- the stuff happiness is made of -- so throngs of people could playfully walk through and snap pictures along the way.

So we did!  Carrie and I peeked expectantly around each corner, climbed in the m&m covered shoe, danced in the tinsel, played in the mirrors, grabbed balloons, ate candy -- all of it.   (And jumping into the yellow ball bit at the end of the rainbow *was* pretty much perfect 12-year-old-fun).

      

 

But even while we were walking through, while my brain kept yelling this is awesome!  look at this room!  you're having so much fun! my heart wasn't quite with me.  It was the same subtle post-wedding-dress-shopping uneasiness I'd felt before.  I felt a little... lonely.  It made no sense:  I was with Carrie; we'd just played for a whole morning; but.... something felt off.

I thought it over for the rest of the day.  

The entire museum was oriented around taking selfies -- yes, I knew that.  In fact, the purpose of the museum was to capture yourself surrounded by colorful whimsy-joy.  

The thing about a selfie, though, almost always, is that it implies an audience, someone who is not present.  So instantly, when the masses of us doing the happy things whip out our phones, we cease being in the room where we're holding the strings of balloons and instead pose for the faceless (or very face-specific) audience we plan to post our pictures for later.

Selfies disrupt the present.

So when I'd take scenery selfies with my sister -- to show Ben later, or post, or send to our mom -- in some slivered way, I'd leave my sister's company.  

Instead of actually being with Carrie in the museum, climbing ladders to a land of magical marigolds, I was trying to figure out how to capture the spongy yellow carpet under our feet or the threaded blossoms though my phone.

Reading it again, the Burning Man tenant is actually admirable: let's all be present and participate rather than holding back to watch.  

But the message is also so familiar, it's the insistence of our culture to forever blur the line between audience and performer -- why sit back if you, too, can be a superstar?