Burn, Baby, Burn

By Ray Garraty

I work at a firm that is small in size but nonetheless steeped in tradition--by which I mean it's filled with old white guys in suits whose idea of diversity is employing at least one associate who voted for Barack Obama. I don't mean to be too hard on the old birds--and some of them aren't even that old--but life in a law office gets pretty dreary sometimes, especially for someone like me, who never exactly aspired to work in one.

Like many, I fell into law after running out of other options. I was a theater major in college, but the closer I got to a life of squalor, the more a legal education appealed to me. I had always heard that a law degree would "open a lot of doors." Little did I know they would all be doors to law firms.

One day, though, just days before my second anniversary on the job--and moments after talking with an opposing counsel who managed to really piss me off--my phone rang. It was an old college friend calling to see if I wanted to go to Burning Man. I hadn't taken a vacation since I'd been hired, and I was desperately in need of one. So, without hesitation, I barked, "Yes!"

For the uninitiated, Burning Man is an art and counterculture event that takes place in the Nevada desert every year the week before Labor Day. On the Burning Man website they say that trying to describe it to those who have never been there is like trying to describe color to a blind person. I know that sounds like smug B.S., but I believe there's an element of truth to it. Burning Man is one of the few places on earth where tens of thousands of people can come together to celebrate both creativity and chaos, with little concern for propriety or logic. In short, it's the exact opposite of a law firm.

As I looked forward to my sojourn in the desert, I felt increasingly restless at work. I also started to spend a lot of time obsessing about my neckties. Don't get me wrong, I understand decorum--and I actually think it's a shame that our country has degenerated into a mass of disheveled, open-toed-sandal-wearing slobs. But why, I began to wonder, do I have to show up with this piece of fabric around my neck every day when, more often than not, I'm hidden away from clients? But here's the twisted part, the part I found particularly depressing: No one ever expressly told me to wear a tie. I just assumed I had to wear one because all the other male associates did.

So when the day finally came for me to jump in the car and head toward the Black Rock Desert, I felt as if a great weight had been lifted not only from my shoulders but from around my neck as well. That is the best way I can explain how liberating it was to enter a community that not only wouldn't expect me to behave in a certain way but would actively encourage me to act in whatever way I chose. It was as if, after breathing through a straw for two years, I was finally able to take a deep gulp of crisp, clean air.

One thing I picked up on very quickly when I arrived was that the craziest-acting folks were the ones who came from professional careers. Perhaps it could be chalked up to the "work hard, play hard" ethos that is so often espoused at big firms, but it also occurred to me that we professionals may suffer from more repression than nonprofessionals do. For example, a caped woman with whom I became acquainted early on turned out to be a prominent white-collar defense lawyer. What struck me wasn't so much that she was wearing a cape, but that she was wearing only a cape. I guess, like me, she really needed to cut loose.

In fact, during my five days in the desert I saw many things that were entirely divorced from my everyday existence: a 30-foot-tall teeter-totter that only topless people were allowed to use; a duck the size of a Boeing 737, with eyes that shot laser beams into the night and hundreds of reveling, dancing passengers; an arcade-style shooting gallery that let participants fire at a diorama inspired by David Lynch's Blue Velvet ... you get the idea. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you just had to be there.

People often ask me, What did you do at Burning Man that was so great? Actually, I don't think that's the right question. Rather, it's: What did I not do that was so great? Like not having to wake up to a clock, other than the one in my own body. Or not having to wear anything I didn't want to wear; not having to read or write a single email; not having to cringe at the sound of my phone ringing (no service in the desert); not having to talk to a single person I didn't want to talk to; not having to squabble with someone on behalf of someone else who paid me to squabble. And, best of all, not having to feign interest in something I had no real interest in.

Of course, not everyone has to go to Burning Man to experience the kind of release I'm talking about. For some, camping or fishing does the trick. But for me, only the most radical reinterpretation of civilization, I felt, could serve as an effective antidote to the dispiriting cloud of professional gloom that had come over me.

So, you ask, did Burning Man really have a lasting impact on my life? I wish I could say that I came back to my firm refreshed and focused, ready to tackle new assignments with a rested, razor-sharp intellect. Perhaps I could boast that I had some kind of Zen-like desert epiphany I could share with a stubborn client to make her see the futility of her litigious ways. Or maybe I could say that Burning Man taught me not to sweat the small stuff and just let the stress roll off me, like raindrops from a leaf. But none of those things happened, and on my first day back I found it even more difficult than usual to tie that damn tie around my neck.

Still, the experience reminded me that there is more than one path to travel on, which is something that I had somehow forgotten between college and law school. This is not to say that I have any plans to run away with the circus any time soon. Nor do I have any idea how long I'll keep doing what I'm doing now. Judging by my debt-to-income ratio, it will be at least a few more years. But as my five days in the desert made clear to me, life truly is what you make it--regardless of what your bosses and clients say. And for that I am grateful.

Ray Garraty is a pseudonym for a young associate at a Southern California law firm. California Lawyer welcomes other associates' writings about their experience. Send submissions to associateslife@dailyjournal.com.

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