As festival season approaches ...... ' Rotating the Herd '

text update august 2017

The festival fest of uber festivities Remember when Glastonbury and woodstock and the isle of white pop festival were benchmark occasions .... in some instances they were actually callings and/or happenings to the extent that people who didn't even have a ticket came along fast forward a couple of decades and the 90's sort of took place and reading festival and a few others started popping up for those who felt that their genre of music or branding weren't being represented in the mainstream festival festivities Fast forward another decade or two and I really don't think you culd throw a stick without it landing in the overlapping perimeters of some half baked poorly headlined gathering or another where the happenings of the past were about inclusion about community and a new generation casting off the societal expectations of their predecessors and attempting to forge a new way , now we have mtv crashing places fucking advertisement saturated coca cola sipping MTV ...... Jeremy bloody Corbyn appearing on the pyramid stage .... and even bloody lu lu supposedly headlining the most local of the local festivals in my parish this summer ( and correct me if I am wrong .... but no one really wanted to see lu lu even when she was on the radio in a contemporary fashion in her own era ) but hey who doesn't still want an excuse to be charged hundreds of pounds to attend a space that has free access the whole rest of the year ?? who doesn't want to get all covered in glitter or battery operated devil horns / rainbow flags ..... and what used to be referred to as vintage clothing , while paying through the nose for some hearty ' vegan ' nutrition from the back of some burnouts van ( but only because that burn out paid all the applicable fees and insurances ) well me actually ...... I have no interest these days in listening to some millennial lost soul in a mankini spouting some guff rumi quote about how its all going to be fine and dandy if we just love each other a bit more !!! ( and hey I am all for the love ) just not the semi diluted with a solution of mandi / ketamine and coke spoused by some halfwit with more student debt than acumen, whose parents probably brought the festival ticket for by selling insurance or as acting as some ghost in one of our failing administrations ..... no .....nope ..... sorry but no dice Aldous Huxley's book a brave new world is brought up as a common reference to todays ' culture ' ahem ....... and I think with good reason , although most would site the Orwellian matrix of the artistically represented society as being the main noteworthy topic .... personally I think its in the lesser mentioned connotation of the book ..... the hippy reservations that our main character comes from ..... that is what for me at least holds the darkest and starkest example of what is really at stake from all of this revenue driving ( and collecting ) revelry ...... you can be as free as you want , just so long as you have brought the ticket ........oh dear x