I am a festival person. If you are a festival person, too, you already know what I'm talking about, but if you're not, well, then I'm a little bit sad for you. It's no secret how I feel about film festivals. Or that I will absolutely gladly attend the Fringe Festival without hesitation. And that the Fair, well, the Fair is the festival that is perhaps the most sacred and dear to my heart of all.
I believe, perhaps, that in previous incarnations I was a traveler, a gypsy, a girl bound to the festival life. I may have been a performer, but am thinking that more likely I was the one organizing everything and making the event truly festive. I'm good at that. The festive part. I one of the people that puts the festive in festival.
There's a festival that I've yet to attend (but just may attend this year!) called the Glastonbury Festival. Perhaps you've heard of it? I'm sure most of you have. It's legendary. And it surprises me, actually, that I've never gone. Especially since I've spent all that time actually living in England and trying to convince those good people of the United Kingdom that I was one of their own.
I obviously did not do a very good job in the convincing department since I'm living in exile in Utah. However, there are plans underway for me to pack up the dogs and head home. There are other plans underway that will have me dancing front and center at Glastonbury, as well.
Tonight I went to see a very rudimentary documentary about Glastonbury that was screening here in Salt Lake. When the credits started to roll at the start of the film, I was disappointed to see that it had not been funded by good friends at the UK Film Council, but by the end of the more than two hours of what wasn't much more than home movies, I was quite glad to know that it was not funded by the UK Film Council. It was funded by the BBC and I'm wondering just what funding was provided?
The film is a historical look at Glastonbury. The festival spans a 30 year period at this point so that's a lot of ground to cover. However, the documentarian forgot that a good documentary still has a story arc and doesn't just show us a conglomeration of home video shot by all the folks who've attended the festival over the years. A good documentary gives us a reason to care. I kept wanting to care, but soon realized that I was going to have far more fun searching for the people that I actually knew in the film.
The surprise?
I knew way more people than one might surmise given that I'm the American festival girl and this is a festival in England that I've never attended. It is, however, a music festival. Of the largest and most awe-inspiring proportions. 130,000 people attended last year! And we must also remember that I am that girl among us who followed the Grateful Dead around until they told me I had to pack up my bags, grow up and actually get a real job. Or in other words, until our dear sweet Jerry departed.
I couldn't believe how many folks in those home movies I actually really did know. Oh what joy it gave me to see them in all their naked hippie glory there on the screen. I had not seen a lot of these folks since I hung up my own tie dyes. Nearly 15 years. But there they were. It was like a reunion, only not. But sort of. My heart definitely did a little flip and pitter patter of happiness.
These are my people. Festival people. I can't wait to embrace them, to dance with them, and to tell them exactly how very much they make me who I am.
