ANDIE:

What exactly was “Tip of the Iceberg”?

MELISSA: 

It was a 30-foot clitoris that was made to look like stone, fabricated in a way that it could be monumentalized like Stonehenge — in fact, my little nickname for it was Clit-Henge — because it is this awakening of this organ and pleasure inequities right now. 

This is a new version of a phallic symbol, basically. We have a birthright, a biological imperative, I believe, to have pleasure. 

STUART: 

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Burning Man LIVE. I’m Stuart Mangrum. I am here with my pal Andie Grace. 

ANDIE: 

Hello, Stuart.

STUART: 

Hello Andie, and we’re talking with Melissa Baron, aka Syn with a Y, S-Y-N

MELISSA: 

Hi you guys!

STUART: 

a Burning Man artist who made quite an impression this year. I’m not sure what the right idiom is there, but had a large and very talked about art piece installation on Playa this year called “Tip of the Iceberg.” I think we should start with that because it was formative for a lot of people. A lot of people came home with that as the one Burning Man art piece that moved them the most. Can you just describe what it looked like? 

MELISSA: 

It was a 30-foot clitoris that was made to look like stone, fabricated in a way that it could be monumentalized like Stonehenge. In fact, my little nickname for it was Clit-Henge.

And I purposely wanted to bring this anatomical structure to the Burning Man community. Number one, I feel very safe there to do something a little bit more edgy, but there’s so much misinformation, and this information was suppressed for hundreds of years, so I felt like her debut could be on Playa. 

ANDIE: 

Tell us about your moment of inspiration? Why this piece?

In 2016, I was at a women’s group and someone handed around this 3D anatomical model that had just been open sourced by a French socio-medical researcher, Odile Fillod. Because she open sourced it, someone had printed it on Etsy or something, and then this sex expert came to this woman’s gathering and she handed it around. There were 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds, and nobody knew what it was. And this was only in 2017 timeline. 

I got a model and I just showed people, “Hey, do you know what this is?” Nobody knew what it was. They thought it was a wishbone, they thought it was a sea creature, but nobody said “clitoris.” 

I like to say I’m part of the clit-aissance, you know, because it is this awakening of this organ and pleasure inequities right now. So I felt like if anyone might know what it is, it’s the Burning Man community. They’re always very sex positive and more aware and more experimental and more adventurous. I wanted to see, and I was surprised because again a lot of people had no idea what it was. 

STUART:

I’m sorry, how is that possible that people don’t know what it is? And what do you mean when you talk about the knowledge being suppressed? I look at this thing and I see a coat hook. This doesn’t look like any clitoris I’ve ever seen before. What’s the suppression part of that and why didn’t people immediately recognize this for what it was?

MELISSA: 

I mean the nuns taught me sex education in Catholic school so I was definitely not getting out a mirror and checking out my vulva. And there’s just a lot of taboos around sex in our culture, especially in the United States. What happened is it was recognized in cadaver studies in like the 1700s when French doctors were cutting open cadavers and trying to figure out the body. And then in journals in the 1840s you could find a sketch and models of the clitoris. They knew what it was and they knew it created this phenomenon, or what the French would call la petit mort, a little death.

ANDIE: 

It’s always the French, always the French.

MELISSA:

The French, the French get it! Well what happened is women’s sexual health is reduced to the sum of our uterus. Everything’s about reproduction and procreation. It’s the only organ in the human body dedicated to pleasure. The clitoris only does pleasure. 

But as I said in some of the information I put on Playa, and this caused some people to think twice and some people to push back, it’s adjacent to but not integral to reproduction. The clitoris, even though it’s homologous to a penis, I mean, it’s the same embryological material as a penis, it doesn’t have the same biological function, but it gets erect the same way as a penis. And what happens in the formation of a human is, the same structure — I mean it’s got the same names of the part, like crura, the bulb. It’s the same as the penis. 

This is a new version of a phallic symbol, basically. And what I want to do is get the conversation away from reproduction and talk about women as these complex beings and that we have a birthright, a biological imperative, I believe, to have pleasure. 

Orgasm is a gendered word to me. It tends to be something we think of with a male biological event. In other words, there’s a big event that happens with the man when they have an orgasm. But women, it’s more on a spectrum, it’s a little more subtle. We don’t know that much about it because, frankly, if you’re not identifying an organ, you’re not actually caring about orgasms either. 

Most urologists are dedicated historically to men because there’s a lot that goes on with men. One of my favorite books — besides “Sex at Dawn” — was “A Mind of Its Own” and it was just about the male penis. Read it, it’s great. But all the studies, the Viagra studies, everything is geared towards this organ. There weren’t many female urologists. Very few. There wasn’t really a doctor dedicated to a woman’s vulva. And most people call it vagina, but vulva is what it technically is. Vagina is this opening, you know, that things go in to be able to create reproduction.

STUART: 

And then things come out of. Yeah.

MELISSA: 

and things come out of… babies and whatnot. And that leads into, you know, the cervix and the uterus. 

In this vulva area, you’ll find the clitoris, you find the opening for the urethra, and then you have the labia majora and minora. All of those are in some way directly connected to the clitoris, which has these neural networks deep inside women so that they can have pleasure. 

Most people think of the clitoris as that little button at the top of the vulva, but that is like the Tip of the Iceberg. That’s the thing you see. And that is definitely where a lot of the nerve endings terminate, and it’s highly, highly, highly sensitive, and that is where most women will have an orgasm. But many women could have orgasms from vaginal penetration. It’s a lower statistic, but you have to, some way, with some part of sex, whether it’s with your labia lips, whether it’s with your perineum, whether it’s with your vagina, you’re hitting a neural ending connected to this organ, however, your biology is set up. 

When people ask me “What your impetus?” It’s not like I’m some grand sex educator and sex positive person. In fact, everybody thinks I’m Dr. Ruth now. And I don’t know shit, but I do know that I didn’t know this organ and it’s important that it gets out there and it’s important it gets out this year. I wanted it before the election year. 

ANDIE:

It’s interesting because you say a Catholic upbringing. I went to public school and I remember distinctly, and this is just an example of what I’ve seen throughout my life. They took the boys to one class, they took the girls to another. The boys learned about masturbation and ejaculation. The girls learned about our periods. That’s it. That’s all we learned. And not even really that much about how the ejaculation and what the boys were learning had a connection to all of it. It took a long time to come together. And that information is definitely suppressed, and that is in our free country. 

But I wonder, you said ‘phallic symbols’ and that struck a nerve for me because this thing was very in your face and made of stone. I want to hear about your process for why you made it so weighty and in your face and why you made it out of the materials that you did.

MELISSA: 

Yeah, I got a lot of questions about that. When I was turning 60, I kind of went on this roots tour. And when you go to Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland, it’s all about stone circles. All I know is I’ve always had a thing about stones and I’ve done a lot of work on a smaller scale playing around with land art mosaics with stones, that you can create something that is a little bit more ephemeral like Burning Man. And then sometimes I’ll incorporate plant matter into it like you know flowers and things like that; so I’ve always worked with this medium.

Of course you guys know Zach’s work, Zach Coffin’s work, when he did the “Temple of Gravity” in 2004 wasn’t it the first year?

STUART:

Oh, big rocks. Big rocks!

MELISSA: 

Oh my god. Those granite hunks. And I’m like, “If I ever do anything, 100%, I’m gonna be doing something at Burning Man with stone at some point in my life.” 

Well, you said “Why so big?” Well, if you’re having your coming out party, so to speak, you want to go big. It monumentalizes it, it makes it important. It makes it this phallic symbol that you see in the world. We always see the pillars and the Washington Monument and everybody’s like, “Oh, look at that huge penis.” Well, it’s the same embryological material. “She’s as important as a penis” is basically the message, monumentalizing this. And I could just imagine like the sun rising…

Trust me, it was a technical, very difficult project because we had metal, steel metal armature. I ended up galvanizing it so it could be used in public art installations. Then I basically clad it in an inch thick of this vertical mix concrete and we hand embedded river rocks and pyrite in it, so it had a little sparkle. But it was laborious. I have all these cement burns. 

She’s not solid stone, but she still weighs about 11,000 pounds. It is in nine pieces. I’m talking two cranes, you know, to get her up. And everybody’s like, “Why, why, why?” My God, why not? This is her time.

And then also I made this pendant, Andie, that you have.

ANDIE: 

Yeah, tell us about the necklaces, one of my favorite possessions, honestly. 

MELISSA: 

Both my sculpture and this necklace are based on the open source model by that French socio-medical researcher Odile Fillod and I like to credit people, especially women, for their amazing work in the world. So I’m going to honor her. 

Well, this pendant is three inches and it weighs three ounces. This thing is heavy. Lightning, my partner, he’s like, “It’s a little bit heavy. It’s kind of going to hurt people.” I’m like, “Dude, how many penises have I been harmed by in my lifetime? I don’t fucking care if it knocks someone’s eye out dancing.” It could be a weapon or a tool, like most things, you know. A cell phone: It could be a weapon or a tool. A knife: It can be a weapon or a tool. The clitoris: It can be a weapon or a tool.

ANDIE: 

And how many giant penises have we seen in Black Rock City? All over the place, we can handle a couple of clitori here and there.

MELISSA: 

Oh my God. We’ve had vulvas and vaginas. We haven’t had as many clitorises, never anything 30 feet. So it was an intentional thing. 

The reason I wanted to do the three inch version, as an average clitoris is like 3.2 inches, an average flaccid penis is about a little bit bigger, 3.5 inches. So it’s the actual size. So I would tell people: wear this one because then it’s education. You can say this is essentially almost the average size of a clitoris, because that freaks people out because they’re like, where is it? And I’m like, “You only see the little teeny tip.” 

ANDIE: 

The Tip of the Iceberg.

MELISSA: 

The rest is deep inside you. 

Everybody’s like “Oh, feminist art.” I’m like “Whatever.” I love men. I really love men. If men aren’t the biggest ally of the clitoris we’re all in trouble! 

ANDIE: 

Right?

I have a some printouts of the material I had on the educational podiums. So I had these nine podiums with information on it, and you two know how Larry Harvey’s like “Artists aren’t supposed to sign their work at Burning Man. You can’t explain your art!” 

STUART: 

Yeah.

ANDIE: 

Right.

MELISSA: 

I said, “Larry, you probably wouldn’t have known what this is either, even though you know F-ing everything. It’s a missed opportunity for all of these people who want to know.”

So, I struggled with that. In fact, I worked with an amazing, and you know this woman, Arin Fishkin. I came up with the content, what I wanted the printing to be. I wanted original graphic representations with enough information and sort of playful and sort of fun colors. And I picked these up from the printer as I was driving to the playa, because I kept pushing back, like “Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Is this gonna be too pedantic? Is this gonna be too preachy?” 

People were telling me, they read it. First of all, everyone says, “No, everyone’s gonna be too messed up, like too drunk, stoned, whatever. They’re not gonna be able to read it. They’re gonna just have sex on these podiums.” Everybody read it. People took pictures. I was shocked. 

ANDIE: 

And then they had sex on the podiums!

MELISSA: 

And then they had sex, because they found the clitoris!

STUART:

Better informed sex! Yeah.

MELISSA:

The jokes about the clitoris, well that “Hey, I found the clitoris” one got really old the first time somebody in the Heavy Equipment said it during the build like the first minute I was there. But the best was this guy was like “Just drive your art car around in circles and you’ll eventually find it.” So Anyway… 

Three gay men came up to me from Comfort and Joy, one of my favorite camps, and they were like, “Tell us about what’s going on here?” And I was like, “Seriously, are you really, do you want to hear about this woman’s issue?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” And I go, “All right, I’ll just break it down for you in the elevator pitch version of this.” I said, “Okay. Imagine you yourself with your own body, and your sexual partner; Imagine if neither one of you could find your penis in your entire lifetime.” Obviously they were like, “What?” 

I go, “And it’s not just pleasure. It has a biological function.” It releases all these, you know, for women a lot of the oxytocin, a bonding hormone, a very important hormone. Men release it too, but women release it more. We release it during lactation, so we bond to these children who need so much of our attention for so many years. So I guess this is, you have a little bit of good sex and you’re like bonded. So, women, be careful with that! 

So it has all the feel good hormones that are released. It also helps people sleep. You know how men snore right away after they, you know, have this event. 

STUART: 

Nope, I don’t know that. 

MELISSA: 

Okay! It has a lot of benefits. 

STUART: 

There’s definitely a biological plus to pleasure. I mean, there has to be some kind of payoff for all the pain that is involved in giving birth to a child, right?

MELISSA:

You’re right, I think it is a biological imperative. To me, when Burning Man was asking me, how does this fit into our sustainability program? Well, in 2018 that book Project Drawdown, it got a lot of press. Andie, you read it.

STUART: 

Yeah.

ANDIE: 

Yes.

MELISSA: 

When you were saying, Stuart, “Where do you come from?” My undergraduate degree from University of California Davis, which I started in 1975. My degree was environmental planning and management and landscape architecture. So I’ve been in this space saying the same thing for so many years, right? So this sustainability thing has been around for a while, but of course it’s more dire every year. 

So when this report came out, they’re like “The top 10 reasons we can help mitigate climate change.” And of course there’s the obvious ones, like stop using fossil fuels so much. Number five was educating girls and women and number six I think was like birth control, because sometimes people put that together. But educating girls and women, because again we’re not talking just about the United States, we’re looking at the globe. There’s many countries where women have acid poured in their face for going to school. So women are closer to the environment, they’re closer to child rearing, they’re closer to buying things for that family like organic food, etc. They’re just closer to more of those domestic tasks. If they are aware of what’s happening, then the world is aware of what’s happening. Well, if they don’t know about this organ in their body, and they don’t know that they have a birthright to pleasure…

Imagine the pleasure gap. There are these charts out there. This is a chart about the United States. And again, one thing I said about Tip of the Iceberg, I’m giving you Tip of the Iceberg of information, so listeners do your own research. There’s a thing called Google. If you do “pleasure gap” or “pleasure inequity,” you’re gonna find eventually the number one group who has access to orgasms are homosexual men. They’re like 99% have had orgasms in their lifetime. That’s why when I was talking to this group of gay men on Playa, they were like, “Oh my God, my life would be miserable.” And then you go down and it’s sort of the obvious thing. I mean, it’s gay men, straight men, bi-men, gay women, but way, way down on the bottom is straight, cis normative whatever women. About 35% of women in the United States, this is in their lifetime, will never have what this word is, pleasure or orgasm. Now, that’s just the United States. Imagine if we go to the countries in the world where organs are cut off or there’s a cultural taboo. 

So imagine if 50% of the world, and I’m guessing, has never had access or very limited access to this pleasure and the benefits from this pleasure. Is that why we have all of these problems in the world? 

STUART:

Yeah.

MELISSA:

Our masculine and feminine energies, not men and women, this isn’t about bashing men. They are harmed by this as well as women. All of us are harmed by this. If we get away from men, women, and all that, and we just look at energetically, we have way too much male energy. But maybe if we have this collective female release of all this pleasure, maybe we could heal climate change, stop war. Hey, we don’t know, but it’s worth a try. 

ANDIE: 

It may not be the literal lack of orgasms in individual lives, but the information that women are as important and on the same playing field would indicate a lot of other social availability to women that we may not have in our society today.

MELISSA: 

Exactly, Andie. 

ANDIE: 

So you told us about gay men on the playa, their responses and straight men, but what did, what about girls, women, trans women? What did your sisters have to say about the piece?

MELISSA: 

Good question. Across the board, women were, I just felt a lot of gratitude and a little bit of disbelief. Sadness. There was a certain amount of empowerment, like, “Oh, this is something that we can have in our tool chest.” 

I was still surprised how many women were like, “All of this information is the first time I’m seeing it, hearing it.” It really hasn’t been out in general circulation. Like this clit-aissance I was talking about, which has really been going on mostly since about 2016. So I can understand that. 

Our granddaughter, she had just turned 10. I said to her, “Listen, when I was growing up, my parents really emphasized that my teeth were going to be my permanent teeth and with me forever,” and, you know, I needed to take care of them, so brush them, floss them. But no one mentioned so much about all of my other body parts, and definitely not this body part. So let me just keep it simple. “Your teeth are for chewing. Your clitoris is for pleasure. And pleasure can be with sex or not with sex, and it has a lot of different meanings we don’t even know about because it wasn’t studied.” I just kept it simple like that because she is 10. If we start out of the gates with comfortable discussions and just human health conversations more accessible, then it doesn’t have to be this whole huge weird discussion.

Women had a tremendous amount of questions and about their own bodies. And I encouraged everybody to just do their own research. There seems to be a lot of sexual dysfunction between couples, especially heterosexual couples. There are people who make this their life’s vocation. We shouldn’t be embarrassed about these discussions because it’s not always intuitive, especially if you were never exposed to it. 

I did have a lot of women express frustrations. I was shocked at the confessions about how many women still had said, “Oh yeah, I’ve never had an orgasm,” or, “What’s an orgasm like? Maybe I had an orgasm, but I’m not sure.” But it’s changing. And I think it was pretty, pretty fresh. 

What did you think?

ANDIE: 

I studied human sexuality in college and I don’t just mean the way that we all did. That was my major I was pursuing when I dropped out to work for Burning Man, as a matter of fact. And even I came to it with a what did you call it? 

MELISSA: 

Clitaissance?

ANDIE: 

Clitaissance. I feel like that’s true. I feel like the understanding that we’re coming to about its role in the female human experience is still pretty poorly understood. So my experience of seeing it, I wanted to stand by it and see what other people’s experience of it was, especially women and girls and, you know, “What’s that? I have one of those? I don’t see that.” You don’t see it. It’s subversive, it’s mysterious. But I found it affirming and cathartic and beautiful because of the way it was constructed. It was visually an homage and an honoring of this incredible, mysterious thing. But I was very curious about the experience of women as you saw them experiencing it.

MELISSA: 

Well, I like what you said about, I loved being a fly on the wall out there. I would just sit on the little stones and just walk around. Sometimes I was dusting off the podiums and people would be like, are you part of this project? I’m like, yeah, I’m maintaining it. Only if people knew me and knew I was an artist and they said it and someone else came up. But what I liked more was nobody knowing that I was the artist.

Those were my favorite times. At like sunrise, just going out, making sure the lighting or other things are okay. You know, just checking on the piece. We had a team who were the Clit Ambassadors watching out for her because you know, weirdly I was maybe expecting sort of vandalism. I don’t know why, I guess because women are attacked more frequently. I thought maybe someone would be offended and do something. So I was a little bit more vigilant than I have been with other art pieces, just checking in. 

And when I would overhear the conversations, I was crying too, because the discovery. It’s rare nowadays that you can have someone say, “I didn’t know that,” with the internet and with everything right out there. 

I mean, information is so accessible. When I was young, we had to find an encyclopedia or, you know, ask your parents or go to the library, or go to the library and find the librarian and say, “Can you get me a book on sex health?” But then if you read it and the person next to you saw you read it…

ANDIE: 

True. 

MELISSA:

It was hopeful overall. Across however anyone identifies or was born, overall, it was just 100% I felt support. When you said, how did the trans community, how did other communities respond? I did try to take a more inclusive approach with the information working with inclusivity experts. They helped me and guided me because just being inclusive that not all women are born with clitorises and not all people who have clitorises identify as a woman. I think people appreciated that. 

I had one person say that they had a very triggering time with the whole idea of this concept and making an issue so much about sex. And I said, “Well, you know, that’s why I went into the health aspects of it, because there’s a whole community of asexual people out there that don’t necessarily identify with having sex or want it as part of their lives, and they’re not weird for that; that’s just how they are and how they’re born. But it’s a good sleep aid, you know?” 

So there’s other reasons to want to tap into. It’s for mental health, physical health, it doesn’t just always have to be about sexual health. Use it or lose it and we don’t wanna lose it. 

So of all the art pieces that I’ve been part of or helped create. I never had so much interaction. That’s something about Burning Man. The interaction part of it is like, oh, can we get it to do fire and can we get it? No, no, no. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like I rode a bike and she did something. But it was the conversations were of such a level that I have not, and I’ve had a lot of incredible conversations on playa, but they were going at another level that I hadn’t really experienced ever before and that made me really happy.

I was just talking with my friend today about what’s next, and I told you my dream about getting her on the National Mall for the election and I’ve gotta pursue that because I kind of went into hibernation after Burning Man because of the enormity of bringing a piece of Burning Man. And this year, with all of its more complexities around the weather patterns. It was a big thing. It was like giving birth. But I am now ready to get her out there more. 

ANDIE: 

We’ll see what she wants to do next.

MELISSA: 

Yeah, it’s her choice. 

ANDIE: 

It’s her choice. Perfect.

MELISSA: 

Perfect, Andie.

STUART: 

Syn, I want to zoom out a little bit here while we’re talking. 

MELISSA: 

You’re done with the clit? Come on, she needs more attention.

STUART:

No, we’ll come back. We’ll come back. We will always come back to female pleasure. I’m a huge fan. 

Now I want to know more about you because if we flashback 15 or 20 years ago, as I understand it, you were living a nice suburban life in the Oakland Hills with a couple of beautiful children. What’s your path been like? How did you get to Burning Man and turn into a radical feminist artist?

MELISSA: 

Well, I’ve always been this radical feminist. I mean, I started high school in 1971 when radical feminism was, you know. You remember.

STUART: 

Right. I remember. And did we ever pass the E.R.A.? Oh no, never mind. But please, go on.

MELISSA: 

No, it’s still not ratified, which is another thing in this country. Women still are not equal to men. And, you know, the younger kids don’t understand that. I’m so sick of this conversation. We are literally not equal, and we’re humans. 

So anyway, I was always this person because it shaped me. I also walked in the first Earth Day, so that shaped me sort of in this environmental… I’ve always been more predisposed to feminism and also environmentalism. I was just a little too young for the hippie movement, although it did touch on me.

I moved to Oakland because I could afford a house. So I was a single working mom for a decade before I met my partner, Lightning. I met my partner, Lightning, in Casual Carpool in Oakland, driving, commuting, and…

STUART: 

What? Wait a minute. What’s a casual carpool?

ANDIE: 

It’s the cutest meet cute in the whole world!

STUART:

This is before Uber when you would stand around next to a freeway on ramp and say, take me across the bridge? OK.

MELISSA:

Yes. It’s unofficial, but people queue up and the cars queue up and you have to get two people and you cross the bridge you get to go through the diamond lane and in the old days you didn’t pay a toll, but you get to the city faster, San Francisco. I was the breadwinner of my family and I always worked. 

So I meet this magical person named Lightning in 2000 and he’s the lawyer for Burning Man. A couple of years later he asked me “Have you ever wanted to go to Burning Man?” And I’m like, “Yes!” At that time I was the Senior Vice President at a company named salon.com, which was the early days of the internet, you know when content was king. I always wanted to go because my whole tech and prod department would leave and go to Burning Man every year and I couldn’t go. But I thought it was only if you were an artist and you were in tech or whatever you know because at that time I think Google was so small I think they were having like their off sites at Burning Man or something. So he made it very easy for me to go and I went.

I sound like the cliche, but the freedom I felt there, and as a woman, it was the first time I had gone to something where I could just be a woman. Nobody asked me like: What’s your name? What do you do? Where do you live? How much money do you make? Do you have kids? It was so liberating. I was hooked. I was like, “I’m in!” So I really, really just dove deeper into Burning Man. 

Around 2005, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and that’s a whole other story about women’s health because I did 17 years of successive mammograms and it never showed up. So obviously by the time it showed up, it had metastasized and I needed to do surgeries and aggressive chemotherapy. So anyway, I went through a transformation at Burning Man. Then cancer kicked my ass. When everybody talks about ayahuasca ceremonies, my medicine, whatever my teacher, it was F-ing cancer.

I thought about my life. I thought about things that I was doing. I did need to make money, but I was also getting deeper and deeper into my relationship with Lightning and we decided to move in together. 

In 2006, I went to Burning Man and I was totally bald and very sick and I did this art piece called Crowning Glory. I covered an art car with wigs because again I’m bald. I don’t have eyebrows. I look totally different. And Burning Man’s always been a pretty — to me at least, and then this was the olden days — a highly sexualized event, but also there’s a one note about Burner Babes, and I wasn’t fitting it. I used to fit it! Six months earlier I fit it, but when you’re bald and you don’t have breasts, and you look sick, you’re not exactly attracting male attention. So it was a wake-up call for me for the beauty myth and all of that. 

And so I did this performance art piece where I put all these long colorful hair extensions in my very short hair the year after I finished chemo. I shaved it in front of the Temple, gave everybody my hair, burned it in the Temple. And I did a video around that, about how we are not our hair. That sort of opened up this volcano of creativity. 

I had really gotten into meditation and other things when I was trying to heal from cancer because, you know, I was raised Catholic, but when you think you’re dying and you want spirituality, you’re grasping at straws. I was like, what does this mean? What is life? Big questions. And mortality knocking at your door when you’re in your late 40s, you start paying attention. 

STUART: 

And what about the Temple? You were part of the crew for the Temple of Whollyness, which was actually the first Temple I ever saw. I took a lot of years off of Burning Man, and 2013 was kind of my return. And I was knocked out. There were rocks involved in that. Weren’t there some large stones in the center of that? Tell us just a little bit about that project.

MELISSA: 

Larry Harvey really liked this idea of the way Gregg Fleischman’s way, building solutions of interlocking wood and these connector nodes. He really loved…

ANDIE: 

No fasteners, right? No fasteners at all.

MELISSA:

No metal fasteners, no glue, no nails. It’s all router cut to precision.

We were asked to do something in the Man Base, and then, we’re like “Let’s put in for a Temple.” 

STUART: 

Sure!

MELISSA:

Gregg, Lightning and I sat down, and a structure that’s very strong obviously is the pyramid’s shape. We wanted to create sort of a different Temple, still honoring this ascension and still honoring how people would react, interact, but you mentioned the stone center. Of course, I said, “I’d love to do an altar, but I don’t want it interlocking wood. I want something stone.” Stacked rock cairns are the simple — do you know what a cairn is? When you stack rocks up? People will balance… Well that’s been going on since there’ve been humans. And usually it’s a way to either mark a sacred site or mark a trail. I was inspired by the Inuksuk up in Canada, by the Inuits, where they stack them so they look more like human effigies. 

I found a wonderful stone fabricator named J.L. LaFemina, and we just fabricated that. It’s basalt, solid basalt that was hand carved, then sanded. It was hundreds of hours to get it to that highly polished finish. 

STUART: 

Beautiful. Like a giant river rock in the world’s biggest river. 

MELISSA: 

Larry used to always like to say things like the Axis Mundi, the origine du monde, the center of the world. And that really grounded the space because as you all know from the Temple, you’re only really framing the space and grounding a space for people to gather and make it their own, whether they’re celebrating, mourning, or whatnot. We had a colonnade that you could walk around to kind of, if you didn’t feel like going right into the center, you could spend some time on the periphery. 

And it’s funny that year the decomposed granite was really chunky. I don’t know if the listeners know this, but like you have to put a decomposed granite base down so you don’t scar the playa surface with your burn.

STUART: 

It’s a gravel layer to keep the playa from burning. Yes.

MELISSA: 

Our gravel layer had like five-inch pieces of granite in it. So because we had that stacked rock cairn and I had some river rocks around it as well, all the big pieces of the decomposed granite, everybody stacked up all along these shelves. It was so beautiful to see people spontaneously key into that.

STUART: 

Larry, I know, was a big supporter of everything you did. I think everyone was a little surprised that he was in favor of the performance piece that took place in the Temple of the Golden Spike that involved menstruation. Tell me about that piece.

MELISSA:

Oh yeah. Larry was a very interesting man and I was fortunate to have very interesting conversations with him. And he was interested in women and women’s perspective. I mean, he was interested in everything. He was also very interested in the trees. He studied at San Francisco Community College and when he first moved here, gardening and whatnot. 

STUART: 

And he was a landscaper. Yep.

MELISSA: 

I said, “I know you say this Man is all about humanity and it doesn’t represent a man, but he sure looks like that bathroom sign that means MEN. How is he representing woman?” Larry was like, “It’s not the literal, it’s humanity.” And I said, “Well, what if he had his first menstrual cycle? You know, his menarche, his first?” I think one year it looked like the Man with neon looked like he sort of had ovaries. And he’s like, “What? How would you do that?” And I go, “Well, you know, like the aerialists who have that red fabric and maybe someone could come down and they could be born. Wouldn’t that be neat?” And he said, “Yes, do it.” 

The theme that year was Rituals, and I said, “Well, the first ritual we all really have is birth.” And he really just let me do whatever I wanted, but it was only for the opening ceremony. 

So I contacted my friend Bianca Sapetto, who is a famous aerialist. We worked together to collaborate with this choreography and this explosive opening where we had like eight people suspended in these womb-like sacks. And then the Man had this umbilical cord and a womb around him. And then they did this dance. I remember afterwards this man came up to me and he goes, “Can you explain that to me?” And I was like, “No, I can’t. It’s like birth.”

STUART: 

We don’t have docents at Burning Man. Sorry. Figure it out yourself. 

I don’t know if you’re aware that we had an opening and blessing ceremony for the Temple a year or two later. There’s a sentiment among the Numu and they actually put out a request that menstruating women not participate in the blessing ceremony. So there is still a bit of conflict of culture even right close to home over that, right?

MELISSA:

Yes. The clitoris was part of a triptych. The first one to me was the beauty myth. Then it’s like, women are always defined by the sum of their uteruses, whether you have one or not, whether it bleeds, whether it breeds. This one was all about the bleeders, the bleeding. Because I had chemo I stopped all this menstruation stuff and went into early menopause. Thirty-one years of my life I was menstruating. So a woman is only viable when she’s menstruating? It’s just so ridiculous. 

But I think you’re talking about the Paiutes. And in fact, the first Dean Barlese came out, we invited him out in 2013 to do a blessing ceremony for our Temple. We were the first Temple to do that. It’s obviously sacred land for them, the Black Rock High Rock Desert. It was a little bit interesting because they hadn’t done it before. And I was a little bit unsure because it’s sort of like what hubris me saying “Will you bless our Temple on your sacred land?” you know. It felt a little wrong, too. But Dean Barlese wanted to do it, and at the time, the Tribal Chair from the Paiutes came out as well, and it was so beautiful. 

Now the whole blessing ceremony is part of the Temple. It makes me so happy because it’s such a beautiful ceremony. And now they’re blessing the whole event, you know, at the Golden Spike. 

But Dean and I were talking about the clitoris this year. I had asked some of the Paiute elder women to come out. There is something in many cultures, like the Jewish culture, about when you’re bleeding you’re, I don’t want to use the word unclean, but that’s basically the word that keeps coming up. And apparently in some of the Paiute traditions as well, even though they honor it and let the woman sequester themselves away, they’re considered too powerful in that time. That’s what Dean explained to me. 

STUART: 

Yeah.

MELISSA: 

But I’ve been in Chiang Mai and not allowed to go in a temple and I’m out there with the monks saying, “Wait, I’m not menstruating. I’m an older woman. Let me in. I can go with my six-year-old granddaughter. Let me in.” And they’re like, “No.” So it has to be more than just, I don’t even have a womb or ovaries or boobs. I mean, right now I am a “they.” I’m a crone, but I still can’t get into these things because I present as a woman. So I’m not really sure. I think it’s more than just bleeding. Again, we go back to: women are not treated the same as men.

STUART: 

And back to being a crone, I’ve noticed you use the handle ‘Crone of Arc’ occasionally. Now that you’ve completed your triptych, what’s next? Does it perhaps have anything to do with aging?

MELISSA: 

What’s a quadtrich? I think I have a quadtrich in me.

STUART: 

Fair enough.

MELISSA:

I don’t know if that’s a word. 

ANDIE: 

You’re just gonna keep making up new words every year, right?

MELISSA: 

Exactly. When I went through menopause in like 2005, there was no Instagram where everyone was talking about how aging is so beautiful. I had no help trying to figure it out.

I was walking around this lake by my home and out of nowhere, I don’t want to say it’s a download because then we’re getting into woo-woo territory, but you know we all get our own downloads, we all get our own things that come in fully formed and we don’t know why. But “Crone of Arc” just dropped on my lap. 

And I remember Lightning my partner saying “Oh, don’t say crone. It’s like this old hag.” And I go, “No, it doesn’t have to be.” The most powerful time for a woman because if you’re not using all your energy menstruating, which takes a shit ton of energy, and if you’re not using all your energy raising kids, and if you’re finally free, and you’ve lived through all of your lifecycle, and you have some sort of life experience, shouldn’t you be giving back at this time? This is when you are in your most creative and fertile years. 

And so I was like: that’s going to be my handle on Instagram, and so I’m Crone of Arc. Everyone hated it, now everybody loves being old because they’re getting old. You know I’m 66 now. So I am officially old even by Medicare standards. 

Am I thrilled with sort of the aches and the pains and that I don’t look the same? Yeah, I kind of miss some of that, but you know, honestly, this is my super bloom time. This is the time. And if we could harness that energy, just letting women be free and tap into their pleasure, but also not thinking we’re so time-dated. 

I’m going to be out here building art, traveling the world and getting shit done because we need to get shit done. I have stuff to do in this lifetime. I want to be free to be who I am. So that’s the crone part. 

But how is this going to go? I think it is about the life cycle and aging. And it could resonate with some people hopefully like the clitoris did. So stay tuned is all I can say. Stay tuned. 

STUART:

Tell us about Art for Trees.

MELISSA: 

When we were doing interlocking wood pieces that have to fit together, you can’t be using recycled wood because it’s warped or irregular. I’d never burned an art piece before. I told Gregg in Lightning I wouldn’t build it, and burn it unless we did something like putting the exact amount of trees back in the ground. So there was a gentleman on our crew, David Shearer, who many of you are familiar with because he founded Black Rock Labs. I reached out to him and I said, “Do you know anyone who could help me figure out our board feet wood that we’re using for construction and back that into trees?”

And he knew a forester, and he calculated that it was 982 trees that we would need to plant. I was shocked it was that many trees. So we decided to plant 2000 trees and we raised that money and I partnered with a tree planting service in Appalachia and I’ve worked with them now for 10 years because they’re not just throwing trees in the ground. You have to do it with intention and you have to know what you’re doing. 

We’re doing mountaintop remediation mostly in coal country where we’re either saving the watershed, helping migratory birds. There’s people monitoring it. We’re planting actual trees and I wanted our money to go directly to that. So we’ve planted over 110,000 trees. Some of them are 10 feet tall right now, the ones we planted in 2014. And it’s really beautiful to see how the community gets involved. I just do it every year where I’ll design a necklace because Burning Man people love swag, and do a fundraiser and just say, let’s help plant trees.

So here I am, I said this to a little girl at the Smithsonian because some of my necklaces were in that exhibit at the Renwick, No Spectators.

ANDIE: 

No Spectators.

MELISSA:

I was talking to this little girl. Her mom was like, “Oh, look at these pretty necklaces, and she plants trees,” and I gave her one because I was gifting because I wanted to show the people who came how gifting works. She’s like, “Wait, you do this?” And I go “Oh, yeah. You can do this too.” It doesn’t have to be this big, huge, grand thing. All of these millions of acts of kindness put together will amount to something. Yes, we have to work on fossil fuels and other things with our gathering. Yes, we have our Leave No Trace policy. I’m not saying anything against the beautiful ritual of burning that is very important in many cultures around the globe. I’m saying it’s radical reciprocity. 

And instead of getting overwhelmed and crying about it or ranting about it on Instagram, just go plant something, but do it intentionally and with people who know what they’re doing. So, see, I’m just this little old woman planting trees. 

That goes back to the Project Drawdown. Women kind of do stuff like that. It didn’t occur to a lot of people on the crew over, what is this, 11 years ago. People were like, “Look at your ticket lady, it says burning. If you don’t want to burn, leave Burning Man.” And I was like, “Wait, that’s not the point. I love burning. I love Burning Man. Do we have to burn everything? No. Are there key pieces? Yes. And how do we do that consciously? And I realize that’s not most of the carbon footprint at Burning Man, but it’s more than a performative gesture. It’s a real thing. And why not do more real things?

ANDIE: 

What’s going to happen to the piece now?

MELISSA: 

As I said, I wanted her out in the world by the election year, which we’re in right now, like I’m like, I need to drop her right by the Washington Monument on the Mall. How can I do that? I decided sometimes when I try and force the flower to bloom, so I decided like, take a break. It was a big effort to get it to Burning Man. And my contact at Burning Man, Peter, in the art department, Peter Plattzgummer thought that I should try for the Patricia Green Hayes Valley proposal, so I just put that in last week. 

STUART:

Oh, great. 

MELISSA: 

Send it some good juju. I feel like San Francisco, it’s a pretty progressive city…

STUART: 

Let’s hope that it still is.

MELISSA:

Maybe they’d want a 30-foot clitoris. And then the merchant association has to vote on it too. They might not want to sell eyeglasses and clitorises, or maybe it’s a good marketing ploy!

ANDIE:

I appreciate you!

MELISSA: 

I appreciate you so much. Thank you for what you do. 

ANDIE:

Thank you.

That’s all the time we have. Thanks so much Syd Melissa Barron for joining us today. Thank you listeners for your support and for tuning into Burning Man LIVE, which is a production of the non-profit Burning Man Project. It’s a labor of love. We make it for you and it’s available wherever podcasts are found. 

You can get in touch with us with your feedback and ideas and inspirations at LIVE@BURNINGMAN.ORG. Find our back episodes at BURNINGMAN.ORG/PODCASTS. And of course, if you’re feeling generous today, drop over to DONATE.BURNINGMAN.ORG to make your tax deductible donation. 

And I am grateful today for all the people that make Burning Man LIVE go round and round: my co-host Stuart Mangrum, our story editor and senior producer Vav-Michael-Vav, kbot, Ali W, our engineer Tyler B, our administrative magician and resident geologist DJ Toil, the communications team for getting the word out, philanthropic engagement for keeping the lights on… 

And as always, as we say, thanks. Larry.

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