It encourages awareness of your own potential for creativity. We are all performers, on stage or off. On stage you just tend to attract more of an audience. But of necessity we are all spectators too. Performance and art make up the heart of Burning Man, and taking it all in can occupy most of your days.
Every day is different, with so many new people coming in and new camps going up.
One day I applied for a soulmate at the Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet. I rode a giant spinning seesaw. While several costumed people on stilts paraded by, I watched a bald man stick five knitting needles a good five inches into his nose. No cars, no camps, just art springing up from the desert. It's amazing, seeing these complex structures and beautiful works of art that may have taken a full year's work to achieve - and so many, as the week concludes, burned at the hands of their creators.