All My Friends

There’s an LCD Soundsystem song called “All My Friends” which begins like this:

That's how it starts
We go back to your house
You check the charts
And start to figure it out
And if it's crowded, all the better
Because we know we're gonna be up late
But if you're worried about the weather
Then you picked the wrong place to stay
That's how it starts…

The lyrics about persevering regardless of weather, of staying up late with a crowd seemed to perfectly capture the Burner experience, and the rest of the song follows suit, saying that even if life “…comes apart, the way it does in bad films…” it doesn’t matter as long as “…I could see all my friends tonight.”

Frankly, if that’s not a Burning Man anthem, I don’t know what is.

And so Right Aid and I decided that we needed to not only play that song out on the Playa, we needed to find a way to bring it to life and inspire people with its message of togetherness and friendship. In short, we decided, we needed an all-camp Sing-a-Long! We excitedly printed up the lyrics and headed off to Burning Man.

Done. Perfect. Genius. Right?

Well, what seemed like an “obviously great” idea at home began to seem less and less obvious out in the desert. We started second-guessing ourselves: “Are people really going to be into this? Will they be inspired by the song the way we were? What if this turns into some kind of bad, half-hearted karaoke thing?”

But it was too late, we were committed. And so, with some trepidation, we handed out the lyrics, cued the song on the speakers… and said a silent prayer to the Playa Gods.

Here’s what happened...

PS. With tremendous love and respect to Natalia Villalobos who took this video (and to Erica Berger who stepped in and allowed Natalia to dance!)