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BU M n Black Rock Desert to bid the millennium farewell ____ --' and to torch a 4O-1oot man. Thousands of free spirits will converge in Nevada's b 1 ~ ~ You've heard the buzz about Burning Man, the orgiastic, pyrotechnic affair that erupts in the middlelrf~¥IZi:~!ii: of nowhere, Nevada, each Labor Day. And if you haven't-well, perhaps you've been living on Pluto, which absolutely okay. Because Black Rock City, the do-what-you-will arts civilization that morphs from the moonscape Black Rock Desert every year, welcomes Plutonians, Neptunians, Venusians, wandering aesthetes from Europe, industrial machine artists from San Francisco, voodoo-opera composers from Argentina and circus freaks from god- only-knows-where. From August 30 to September 6, the whole motley crew will converge in the desert, bringing everything need to survive, settling like bedouin art bandits at the feet of the 40-foot neon-emblazoned man-whose soul is to beam his primal-futurismo energy across the tented reaches of Black Rock, then go up in a mesmerizing fury flames. It's like New Year's Eve and Mardi Gras rolled into one big, surreal blow-out. The festival will take on a particularly contemplative tone this year, celebrating the mystery of time itself: the desert floor, a one-mile diameter ' clock' will circle the Man, fanning out in a spatio-temporallandscape that a particular time on the clock to represent a physical place. Festivities begin at dusk on Friday, September 3 with a funeral for the 20th century-a procession in participants cast off old demons (and in which there will almost certainly be a Bill Gates lynching, according to Man creator Larry Harvey). Although every moment is a sensory minefield in Black Rock City (fashion shows, cocktail parties and caravans unfurl across the desert), the ticking hits a crescendo on September 3 and 4, when a series of nA"fnrmnlnrl'" will create an interactive tableau of time-travel, leading up to the burn. On Saturday night, the man will burn. Which brings up an important point: traditionally, the burn had Sunday night, but after last year's traffic jam on the playa the torching has been set for Saturday. So, now you know what to expect, atmospherically, from Burning Man '99. What you can expect, logistical to share the desert floor with 20,000 to 25,000 people, who caravan in from all over the US. As Harvey says, to miracle a city out of nothing in four weeks, and then whisk it away like a rabbit in a hat in about two that's something that other (societies) haven't dealt with. It's an effervescent caravanzary:-Shermakaye Bass •.