My wife, Anna, sees Burning Man up close for the first time...and is not impressed

The look on my wife’s face said it all. We had just arrived at Burning Man, that hard-to-define cultural event in the Nevada desert that’s part party, part pagan celebration, part cultural Petri dish where memes are free to multiply like bacteria on warm meat, nourished by the removal of such sterilizing influences as commerce and conventional propriety.

Free, as well, of modern conveniences. Like toilets and showers. And, for us this year, solid walls, as we would be setting up a tent. All these facts, previously abstract, now etched their dirty, sweaty realization in Anna’s face. We had left the comfort of a San Francisco hotel to ride more than seven hours on a bus, most of it sleeping awkwardly in a hole about the size of that cupboard under your kitchen sink, where you cram anything small enough to sneak past the plumbing. We, being small, were like those bottles of cleaning supplies that just fit. We were cramped and tired. But rather than the promise of rest, Anna now realized, we faced the certainty of a 24/7 party, in 40-degree heat and dust, for five straight days.

I had seen it before. But not like this. In 2007, after many years discussing it with friends, I finally joined a few for a trip to Burning Man in an RV. It was an old RV, with a rented generator that broke a few days in, robbing us of liberal air conditioning use. But it was the Taj Mahal compared to the tent we brought this year, staked to the ground with back-breaking (I threw out my low back driving in stakes…on our first day) effort, and at the mercy of 100-mile-an-hour dust storms.

But the differences went deeper. From both a psychological perspective (being a veteran, you approach things differently) and a practical perspective (bringing someone new to Burning Man makes you feel responsible for their well-being), this year’s festival showed me that experiencing the event just once is like becoming celibate after losing your virginity; your first time may have been great, and impossible to top for the novelty, but there are indefinite layers of experience you’ll miss if you do it just once, or the same way every time.

You never know who you’ll see

My first year, for example, I went in with the common naive newbie assumption that you can see everything at Burning Man if you just try hard enough. I had a bike, and I was going to use it to see all the art, sample all the “clubs,” see all the theme camps. A few days in, I realized that was impossible. A few days after that, I left the bike at our RV along with responsibility for not losing it, and walked with greater freedom. This year, we chose to go bikeless, in part to save money and hassle, but also to experience the event by walking and hitching rides on art cars. The verdict: I prefer being bikeless, although I’m open to trying a bike again.

This year also opened me to the incredible speakers and live musicians (as opposed to DJs) that gift their talents each year. With Anna floored by the heat, we spent most afternoons at Center Camp (the main Burning Man pavilion, and one of few managed by the event’s organizers rather than participants). There we witnessed a parade of entertainment and education, with highlights for me being a talk on behavioral economics by who I later learned was researcher and author Dan Ariely, and an ass-moving one-man world music jam session by the multi-skilled (he plays over 50 instruments, as well as various electronics) Eric Mandala.

One of my Burning Man favorites, this "ferris wheel" made from old oil wells drove around the desert and stopped to give people rides

In fact, one talk in particular was probably my top event highlight overall. That’s saying a lot, because there were many: getting to experience Burning Man with my wife, to whom I’ve long tried to describe the event; witnessing the incredible art, structures, music, people and outpouring of creativity and strings-free giving; hanging with my little sister Leora, her boyfriend David, and their friends, all of whom made for many laughs and are eager to return; this year’s temple, which was one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen, complete with a tornado of fire and intricately detailed walls; watching with sadness as that temple burned a few nights later, while skydivers streaming fire parachuted down from the sky.

Eben Pagan fights “penis eating” with “conscious business”

With all this, perhaps the biggest highlight for me was seeing a talk by Eben Pagan, a celebrity internet marketer who’s gone from strength (he’s also known as David DeAngelo, godfather of the dating advice industry) to strength (he’s recently launched entrepreneur-assistance programs such as GetAltitude and Guru MasterMind). I’ve long written about Pagan as, in my experience, he’s one of the few people in internet marketing or business who really get it. Don’t let some of his company’s cheesy (yet effective) landing pages and pitches (and there are many) fool you. Pagan’s a gigantic nerd—and I mean that as a positive—who’s mastered the art of communication (including, of course, to sell product). He’s ridiculously well read, and possesses a rare ability to synthesize, simplify and convey information in a powerful way. From everything I’ve seen, Pagan is one of the keenest practitioners of balancing purpose and profit.

So I was thrilled if stunned to see him blog about a free talk at Burning Man. I’ve previously seen tickets to his two-day live events sold  at $10,000. Rumor has it that an hour of his consulting time costs the same. Never mind the peculiar combination of seeing a celebrity internet marketer talk at Burning Man—a place where the gift economy rules, corporate brands are banned, and online sales tactics would get practitioners mocked if not mobbed. I simply never expected to catch him free anywhere.

So I was excited when we arrived at the “Purpose Circus” tent, where he would be holding the talk. Anna and I got there early and grabbed some cushions to lounge on. The heat was punishing, with the tent acting like some massive convection oven to raise the temperature about 10 degrees above the already grueling 40-degree heat outside. A few minutes after we arrived, Pagan walked in, naked from the waste up, wearing a leopard-print  cowboy hat and carrying several cases of wine. It was a far cry from the suit-and-tie-wearing guy many people are used to seeing.

Eben Pagan peacocks while delivering a talk on "conscious business" at Burning Man

Pagan stacked the wine cases to create a makeshift lectern, wrapping them with plastic wrap so they wouldn’t shift, and plopping his laptop on top of the pile. As he set up, more people arrived, with eventually about 100—including, to make a strange juxtaposition even stranger, several topless women dressed like Egyptian princesses—joining the audience. With some fiddling of amplification equipment, and after Pagan distributed gifts of dried fruits and nuts, as well as sprays of cold mist (which were widely welcomed), the talk got underway.

The theme was “conscious business,” and the thrust was, essentially, using personal passion and strength to develop profitable businesses and solve today’s (and tomorrow’s) complex problems. Yes, I’m summarizing. And also putting my own spin on it. But I don’t have the space in this post (and, to be honest, don’t remember all the details) to write much more. But I will say that it was a powerful, inspiring talk that has prompted me to start a new venture on a related theme. I’ll also say that Pagan is as engaging in person as in his information products—despite a harsh environment for talking, including having to overcome the emcee at a neighboring pavilion called the “Orgasmatron” screaming such obscene phrases as “I like to eat penis!”

And so, add another dimension to Burning Man that I hadn’t anticipated. Combined with Anna’s first-timer impressions, this year gave me a new appreciation for Burning Man’s possibilities, as well as for the parts I can do without (did I mention the tent?). I’m pretty sure I’ll be back. As for Anna, she’s a good wife for making the trip, and would come again if it meant a lot to me. But for the foreseeable future, I think she’s off the hook.