Roll Call-Emily “EMU” Miller

Way past midnight on a hot August night, a northbound truck trundled up US-95 pulling behind it a trailer filled with everything a father and daughter could need to stay sheltered, watered, clothed and fed for a week in a desert, hours away from any creature comforts. Except there was one mishap. They had packed about eight gallons of water per day in 5 gallon jugs stacked floor to ceiling in the back of the trailer. The combination of the jugs having just enough empty space to slide around and the ill-informed weight distribution caused the trailer to fishtail as they made their way down the road. Stopping for a complete repack wasn’t practical so they pressed on through the night, the rig continuing to zig-zag the whole time. And so it went as they drove further away from civilization, eventually pulling off the road at a lighted sign reading only “Ticketed Event.” They soon merged with a stream of fellow exhausted travelers and finally slowed to a stop in a line of red tail lights a mile deep surrounded by nothing but dust and darkness. When the sun rose, they found themselves surrounded by cars, trucks, buses, RVs and mysterious vehicles unlike any they had seen before.  

Burning Man was Emily’s idea. She presented it to her Dad as an opportunity for adventure and he happily agreed, purchasing their tickets as a gift to her. As it often does for a first year Burner, the mental expansion began almost as soon as they left the pavement. “The first thing I saw when I got there blew my mind”, she recalled. “We were so tired and stressed after driving such a long time without any rest.” They dozed off for a bit in line but were soon awakened by someone jamming on an electric violin standing atop a double decker bus. Eventually everyone got out of their cars, headed over to the bus and started dancing. “It was like moths drawn to a light!”

After entering the city proper and finally finding the BLD (their foster home on invitation from Ted the Weatherman from the Big Green Shade), Emily stepped out of the truck in urgent need of a place to sleep. With no shade of her own yet, she ended up in the camp of Captain Henry and his children, our very own EKE and PSST! Not wanting to take up couch space that might be needed by people in the camp, she lay down directly on the playa and fell immediately asleep. When she awoke four hours later, a tea party was in full swing all around her. That’s when she knew that she was going to have the “transformational experience” so many people had promised she’d have in Black Rock City.  

During this virgin Burn, the BLD embraced Emily and Joe, and in the process created a foundation for new life-long relationships. She credits the BLD family with teaching her and her father how to be great Burners by sharing tips and tricks, and food that didn’t come from a can. “Now, not creating a crisis for anyone else is part of my gift” she joked in reference to how much more self reliant she is today than during that first Burn.

After a few years of focusing her on-playa participation as a volunteer for Center Camp Cafe, Emily stumbled upon the opportunity to join a crew that was bringing a new big art project to the playa. Having just moved to the Bay Area from Arizona and wanting to make new friends, she accepted an invitation from a fellow BLD resident to an Easter themed garden party. When the day arrived, she put on her Sunday Best, stopped at a bakery for a box of macarons and headed over. At one point that afternoon, she wandered into the house and started talking with some folks who had a model of the installation they were building. 

“The vision of Biotronesis was that an alien came to earth and landed in a cocoon type shell and then went through a metamorphosis leaving behind the cocoon which then became an ecosystem for many little glowing critters,” Emily explained. As a lover of biology and especially bioluminescence, she felt an immediate pull towards getting involved in the project. 

The concept reminded her of her favorite childhood story, Cactus Hotel. After that, she started making the drive from Mountain View to San Francisco to work on the build every Wednesday night. 

The finished work was huge, leaving enough room inside the cocoon to fit around 20 people. The floor was made of memory foam covered with fake fur. Within the space, participants were led on “sober trips.” called Entrainment Sessions.  They utilized Binaural BeatTherapy to bring participants on voyages brought on not by drugs, but rather by using sound and light to harness what each of them already held in their own minds. “The light and the sound would pull your brain from right to left and right to left,” she said. “It was wild!”

In addition to expanding her artistic skills at Burning Man, Emily has seen an expansion of her father’s creative output. “Dad wanted to bring coffee to the masses. He’s always had this drive to caffeinate people, and he eventually engineered a propane powered espresso machine. This machine has been the centerpiece of his own project, Shots Fired, which he’s run for years as an artist support camp during Build Week. One year, they even teamed up with an ice cream camp and served affogatos! Working with her Dad over the years has brought the two of them together in a deep way that’s rare for parents and their adult children. Emily takes great pleasure in watching her dad’s growth. “Dad has always wanted to be an artist, but he’s always been an Engineer. Providing artists with quality coffee during build week allows him to be both.”

Emily’s experience bringing multiple projects to the Burn was instrumental in Word Play Cafe’s success, especially in creating a place where participants could choose their experience within. “I’ve always wanted to create spaces where people could come and be comfortable…(At Burning Man) you’re on the surface of the moon, the environment is incredibly hostile and if you were just out there (on the playa) you’d be suffering. But the magic of Burning Man is spaces where you go inside and it’s a completely different vibe.” 

During the months leading up to Burning Man 2022, Emily delighted in combing the internet, fabric stores and the like to build out a ground plan, and then sourcing the furniture and decorations and fabric for Word Play Cafe. She fondly remembers finds such as the giant modular couch that provided cozy relaxation space and the giant disco ball that delighted participants from the ceiling of our dome. 

Helping to create Word Play Cafe was exciting and motivating for Emily throughout the year. She appreciated that the crew adopted a team-based leadership style that contrasted with installations run by a single individual. “It was organic. Everyone had something from the real world that they could bring to the project and everyone was there because they wanted to be and that energy was infectious!” 

The project also gave her a sense of purpose and she looked forward to the weekly Sunday meetings where we could collaborate on decisions ranging from determining what structure we should use for the Cafe to minutia like what color the sign warning passersby about the dangers of climbing should be. “I made progress on my allergy to spreadsheets,” she joked, referencing the level of detail our team went into during the planning stage. “The Burn is only a week but the Word Play Cafe was months in the making.” This attention to detail meant that there was no stone left unturned when we arrived on playa which meant that there were no curve balls we had not anticipated.

Because of all that, Word Play Cafe had a stellar virgin Burn, and our next big step is to get to a sustainable place where we have a cadre of volunteers to keep the dome open throughout Burning Man, perhaps including evening hours. With the interior design complete, Emily is excited about a leadership role in defining exactly what volunteer skills and positions will be needed for build, event week and strike. The effort is a natural fit for Emily because in addition to being skilled at determining which tools and people are needed to manifest ideas, she is also an evangelist for volunteering both while on playa and during the “off season”.  Towards this, she’s been talking to other puzzle loving friends about the possibility of a Word Play Cafe cameo at the UnScruz Regional Burn in May. Many of the WPC team are planning to attend UnScruz this year and we hope to have our Spring game party there. Not only would it be fun to bring Word Play Cafe to a larger audience than at our usual quarterly parties, but we also see UnScruz as a big stage we can use to recruit more volunteers for That Thing In The Desert.  

In fact, the intensity and difficulties of planning logistics for large scale projects have come to be part of Emily’s joy as a Burner. Like many of us, she wishes fewer attendees would come only to spectate and feels that participating is the key to experiencing the magic of Burning Man. “People like us rant and rave about Burning Man but people (potential Burners) need to understand that it’s not about the voyeurism of looking at other people’s art. It’s about the trials and tribulations of doing something hard, of being able to look at yourself and say, ‘I can do hard things.’ That is empowering and I love it!”