I’ve made no secret of how there was a time when I fell out
of love with festivals.
There was a singular moment a few years ago when I was returning
from one and I was tired and dirty - and facing an early shift the next day - when
I had a road to Damascus
insight.
That insight was that I hadn’t really enjoyed myself.
In fact I had found it shockingly stressful in many ways.
And then I had to admit that I personally didn’t have much
fun the previous year either, or the one before that.
The rot hadn’t set in overnight, but instead crept up on me
incrementally over a period of years.
I had to accept that my ongoing attendance was really rooted
in habit and the expectation of peers to just go along with the flow rather
than any personal urge to participate.
It wasn’t that I was getting too old for sleeping under the stars,
or that I had changed that much, but rather that festivals across the UK had
changed in so many ways, and in the main most were becoming little more than al
fresco gigs with all the eccentricities that I had come to love about them relegated
to being memories from the past.
Maybe it was akin to how travelling carnivals started to
become increasingly sanitized and lost the freak shows and the hoochie coochie
girls only to be replaced by fruit machines and arcade games.
Heaven for some I suppose, but hell for others, and I’m certainly
with the latter as I’m more a freak show hoochie coochie sort of guy.
For me a big part of any festival experiences was never
about the standing centre stage and watching a band, but rather all the wandering
around meeting characters, the coming across talented outsiders entertaining
people in quiet corners, and basically immersing myself in a world that only
had a tenuous link to the stereotypical daily grind that we all live in.
Once that weekend of anarchic respite started to be usurped
by main stage acts booked to attract the widest mainstream audience possible I
was partially left behind and on that trip home the reality of all that came
crashing in and I hung up my festival boots.
That is until on a whim, and all very last minute, I ended
up attending the Eden
festival a few years ago and rediscovered the magic.
As I arrived I instantly knew that in a sense I was home.
Here was exactly the thing that I didn’t know I was still
looking for.
Here were my brethren that I had become lost from.
The people I would refer to as the backbone of any real festival.
The misshaped pegs that refused to be hammered into a
constricting hole, the dreamers and the modern day beat poets, the counter
culture warriors and more.
I was home and it was quite an emotional moment.
Once the last tent peg was hammered in I was off looking to
become lost in what Eden
has to offer and I discovered that it was a real smorgasbord of delights.
Everywhere I turned I was the magpie with another shiny
shiny catching my attention. From the stalls to the stages, from those
attending to the ales on offer I was swamped as my senses grabbed onto it all
and drank it in like a man lost in the dessert who has suddenly found himself
waist deep an oasis of fresh sparkling water.
I was in love again.
The best thing about it was that this was not just an
initially overwhelming rush, but an experience that was maintained all weekend
long.
Even better was that those feelings were recaptured the next
year and now I am feeling the buzz building for Eden as I have no doubt at all
that it will be more of the same again.
Basically what I am saying is that if you are old school
when it comes to festivals then Eden
will deliver 100%.
Way before festivals were being called bespoke and bijou Eden apparently had it
nailed and it was there right under my nose and I hadn’t even known.
Even though many friends had attended it and raved about how
much they enjoyed it I had been setting their praise aside and considering it
in my ignorance as just another festival.
I was wrong.
So very wrong and once experienced I came to realize that it has everything I
want and more.
So Vive le Eden Festival and bring it on.
If you see me there then please do say hello and watch out
for the post Eden
review on New Hellfire Club and ItsaXXXXthing blog
Mainy
Website - http://www.edenfestival.co.uk/
Facebook - www.facebook.com/theedenfestival?fref=ts
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