There's been so much discussion, speculation and misinformation going round about the man who set fire to the Man during the Lunar Eclipse, that I thought it was time to set the record straight about who Paul Addis is and why he did what he did.

In one of the tribes I belong to, Greening the Burn, there's been a few threads about Paul and what his actions preempted at this year's Burn. I hope Mello does not mind that I've taken one of his posts to illustrate what was being offered at the Pavilion, before the fire took place:

"I heard Mr. Addis did it because Burning Man was letting the Corporations invade with the Green Man theme, because of what Burning Man had become/lost over the years, because it needed to be reclaimed/redefined in the true spirit of radical self-expression.

I was gifted a ticket to Burning Man in exchange for hosting discussions on natural building systems and resources for the Open Source Green Lab. I even got on the playa two days early to help set up the Green Man Pavilion. On Monday the whole Pavilion was closed because an artist was still building a tree. I had been looking forward to hosting my first session that day, as well as a couple that showed up just to be in it. It opened up to the public for the first time later that evening, only to be closed down again seven hours later. On Tuesday the rebuild crew had rearranged and condensed the Pavilion to make room for making the new Man. We thought we could resume the Green Lab the next day, but weren't able to until finally on Friday. We had to have the whole Pavilion cleared out later that night so that the Man could burn again the next night. Over two dozen open learning discussions on a plethora of 'Green' issues and technology could have transformed the paradigms of burners, only two actually happened on the only day it was open. How many people went to see the Pavilion and participated that day?

Aside from the setup crew, how many people actually got to see the entire Pavilion in it's original state before the eclipse? To be able to walk up to the pyre and caress the bark on those giant timbers while gazing directly up at the Man? To hear all these beautiful animal sounds, and to be told by someone nearby that they are all recordings of extinct species that a biologist had recorded during forty years of field work? To witness the power of algae to digest generator fumes into oxygen and biomass? The atmosphere was powerful and serene at the same time. Everything under the Pavilion was art. There wasn't any branding or logos or ads that could be seen there, not even for the non-profit that had organized the Open Source Green Lab. How much interaction with those art pieces and visionaries was lost because one man had an overwhelming desire to impose an early burn upon everyone else?

To me that whole experience was frustrating. I knew that the Green Man was just an art theme and not an ideal to meet while creating a temporary city of Americans, but it might have had a chance to become manifested into so much more than an illusion in the desert."

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For the record, I know Paul Addis, and his burning the Man had NOTHING to do with radical self-expression or a desire to give BM back to the people, or for any activist stance. It's amazing the rumours about him and his actions that I have heard... he is a long-time Burner who is disgruntled with the corporate take-over of the BMORG.... he is a childhood friend of one of the founders... he is protesting the war in Iraq...

None of those are true.

Paul attended BM for only a couple of years, I believe 1996-1998. And he is definitely of the "it was better in '96" people, because back then, he could set fire and blow things up at will. And after guidelines were implemented for what was allowed to take place at BRC, he stopped going. Or maybe he was banned, I can't recall which, as Paul has a propensity for telling stories about himself that often have little basis in truth, to create an impression of himself as being such a badass that cops and bikers alike fear him.

Since he had not been to BRC in almost a decade, how could he possibly know what BM has become? And of course the event has changed... nothing stays the same, and does anyone really believe it was better to have drunk and/or high people burning and blowing things up on a whim in the desert? That just because it is held in the desert, that it's okay to scorch the ground and leave all that MOOP behind? While I did not attend BM back then, I don't think that kind of environment was as conducive towards fostering community as what we have now. Can BM as it is right now be improved upon? Of course it can, and I do think there are some key people in the BMORG who are working towards that with each successive Burn. I know there are people who run some theme camps who try and bring a consciousness and intention to the playa that did not and probably could not have existed in the mid-1990s heyday of radical free-expression without limits

So many people talk about the principle of radical self-expression, and often use it to rationalize behaviour that is generally unacceptable, on the playa or off. I am sure Paul is using it to justify his own actions, but he and a lot of other people seem to willfully ignore the last part of that particular principle:
"Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient."

Paul has no respect for the recipients of his very questionable "gift". He was not working in collaboration with an alleged network of people as he claimed in his statement to Laughing Squid. He is not part of the mythical Black Rock Intelligence any more than he was a policy analyst for a quasi-covert government organization, as he told me when I first met him almost two years ago. He's told me many stories about himself that largely have no basis in reality. His life is much more mundane than he would have the public believe. For whatever reason, Paul feels a pathological need to be thought of as extraordinary and above the rest of us, and I guess this act of radical self-expression, which in fact could have endangered many people, is systemic of a personality who is losing touch with reality to the point where the rights and safety of others are of little consequence. So for all of you who think Paul is brilliant or cool because of what he did, would you think so if you knew he did this as a fuck-you to a community he despises, and that by attending BM in it's present incarnation, you are little more than a mindless sheep? What if he had burned the Temple instead of the Man?

His Laughing Squid interview reflects his true feelings are about the matter, and about present-day Burners. I am sure once he realized that he was actually in serious trouble, facing felony charges for arson, he decided he'd better do damage control and spin his story to make it sound like he was a man with a cause. But Paul loves nothing more than to hear himself talk, and his self-aggrandizing comments in that interview are what I've heard him voice for some time now about the BM community.

To be honest, BM is not and did not begin as a green event. How could it, when one of the focal points of the whole thing is to burn stuff? But I think as the event evolves, so do the ideas behind it... what can those of us who visit Black Rock City do to lessen our environmental impact not only on the desert, but on the world at large? What can LNT camping teach us about LNT living?

2006 was my first Burn, and as someone who attends a lot of sustainable events and festivals, I was shocked at how much waste people generate, and how careless many can be about being responsible for it. But I have to realize, the environmental movement *is* gaining momentum, and there are differences being made. And I can help that along. I can teach my campmates about how to camp with consciousness. And it may take a couple Burns to get that message through, but I think it will eventually. Burning Man is an event that changes many people, often for the better. Weekenders aside, many of us return again and again because there is no place on earth like that temporary community in the desert, where everything is magnified times ten... relationships, experiences, even the highs and the lows are more sharply delineated than in our "default" world. But so many of us bring back those playa experiences and try to make them manifest in our daily lives, and I do see change... maybe not as rapidly as is required, but it is taking place. People who have felt alone most of their lives find a community of like-minded people and acceptance that changes who they are and what their perception of themselves is. How radical is that?

That is something that Paul Addis can never understand, because he is stuck in a space where his ability to act in selfish and destructive ways overrules his desire (if he has one) to preserve this beautiful planet and connect with the people who live on it. And for that, I pity him. But I have been witness to what I believe is a disintegration of his personality in the last year. When I was still in Texas taking care of my mother, he called me one late night, very distressed and reporting that he'd been unable to sleep for some weeks. We've had an on-again/off-again relationship for a while, and when I left, I didn't feel compelled to tell him I would be out of SF for a few months. I know I am one of the few people who can ground him, but part of the reason I have gradually disconnected from him since the New Year is that I felt our dynamic was increasingly one-way and actually a bit vampiric, and I don't care to have that in my life anymore.

Is Paul intelligent and talented? Yes, he is... I read an early draft of his play about Hunter S Thompson, and it was really good. I saw the play when it was finally staged in SF, and was able to honestly be supportive of his desire to take it on the road. But I have also seen a disturbing metamorphosis in the last year of a HST-like persona replacing his own innate personality, and I don't like it. I think it's self-destructive, self-absorbed, and no good will come of this downward spiral. The fact that Paul has possibly jeopardized his future by this act of .... well, it's not subversion, but more of a way of getting attention, and boy, is he getting it. Yet it's no different than when a child acts out in negative ways to get the attention of a neglectful parent, like my sister did when she was a teenager, actions which eventually landed her in a psychiatric hospital, in lieu of jail. I worry that people in the BM community, who misguidedly condone Paul's actions under the impression that he had a "good reason" for doing it are feeding into a negative mindset that is only going to make his disconnection from reality worse, or encourage people like Paul to do some fucked up and dangerous things to get their 15 minutes of ill-conceived fame.

I technically don't care about the Man and when he burns... he is such a small part of my playa experience, but I do care that considerable resources were allocated/wasted on what Paul's actions caused. People worked hard on building the Man and the Pavilion, and all that was fucked up so some needy person could get his rocks off at the expense of others. What about that is worthy of accolades or hero-worship is beyond me... but I guess that kind of faulty logic in assessing the personality of a person you don't know is how Bush got elected not once but twice. And Paul is fucking lucky that no one got hurt, because it was very possible that his actions could have caused more than property damage. Two of my friends were under the Man when the fire occurred. But his recklessness, his selfishness, and his utter contempt for the Burning Man community are why I am radically excluding him in my life from this point on.