On Splendidness

I: In the Grass

At Splendour in the Grass there’s a small stage, no more than 10 metres wide and 7 deep, tucked off to the side of the crowded path that rises to the main tent. A small, grassy slope runs partway around it in a truncated hemisphere, not quite succeeding in sheltering a tiny, bare dance floor, a few hay bales and boxy seats and the meagre audience scattered between them. Twenty or so people lie on the hill, chatting and dozing, seeking refuge from the dust and noise and activity in the peace of shade and stillness.

Underneath the shelter of the peaked stage canopy is a small band. They play accordions, flutes, strings, soft drums. Nothing is electric or synthesised. The singer’s voice is swift and strident, barking and ululating in Hebrew or Arabic, punctuated now and again by stomping and handclaps. This isn’t like the bands that play beneath the huge tents or in the immense amphitheatre: no one sings along and wolf-whistles, there’s no sweaty jostling for space. Three women dance. They are different, remarkably so, but they dance together, then apart, then together again. It’s hard to tell whether they know each other in the real world or whether they only know each other in this tranquil side-place.

One, the most arresting, is willowy and blonde. Long, clinging dresses, pink and brown and blue, cling to her slender form. Her hands weave elegant patterns through the air, as if she’s strumming music from the wind. Even when she moves to sit on the hill her booted feet skip her along with assurance and grace. She leaves behind a brown-haired woman in a feathered cap who occasionally interrupts her arrhythmic dancing to admonish two small children terrorising some of the sleepers on the slope. Both kids are shining-haired and barefoot, and when they pass nearby I see that their blue eyes are beautiful and clear, rich with a frightening vibrancy. It delights me to discover that such purity can exist, crushes me to know that it can’t last.

Or maybe it can. There is a touch of innocence, a childish energy and glee, to the third woman who dances. A touch of innocence, or a touch of drugs – either way, there’s something touching about her as she kicks off her Crocs and glides through motions that are more worship than dance. ‘Elegant’ isn’t the right word for her. ‘Dumpy’ is closer, but then, she’s pushing 65. She resembles a flesh-coloured beanbag filled with jelly. But there’s quietude, a serene self-assuredness to the old woman, and she radiates unconcerned nobility. ‘There’s a hippy from way back,’ say the girls. The other women, apparently, are fakes, faux-hippies in clothing expensively tailored to look cheap and homespun. They seem a bit tawdry now, the ethereal Maiden and the free-spirited Mother, outshone by the saggy-breasted Crone. They’re imposters. They don’t quite deserve this stage, this hemp-tinted spotlight.

The irony is lost on me as the singer announces the band’s last song and I, my $5 hippy headband perched above my $200 Oakleys, run with the girls to the dance floor. We wave our arms and fling ourselves into the air, propelled and surrounded by the swift vacillating whine of the Middle Eastern melody. Our muddy shoes thump down onto the wooden floor, and each time we jump and spin there are more feet stomping, more bodies twirling, more souls winging and swinging through the cool clean air. Some of the people trudging up the main path look around at the noise and movement and a few point, peel away from the pack and run to join us. We dance together, hippies and hipsters, shaking it and faking it, and we’re all chums, we’re long-lost friends, we’re brothers and sisters, we’re dancing to the same pulsing of the blood and that pulsing is the beat, the beat, the euphoric beat.

.

II: The Splendour

There are other, bigger stages too, where thunderous music vaporises thought and you rise and fall to sweet loud voices amongst sweaty waves of flesh. In the press of the ecstatic crowd there’s none of the unity that the smaller stage offers. Unity is the joining of disparate things, and there’s no space for that here; individuality is simply eradicated, swept away by the devastating roar of the music that beats at the throbbing masses beneath the cloud-tattered sky.

They must feel godly, the bands and artists who can command such a feverish response from the legions of jaded youth. My pulse beats faster just thinking about it: imagine looking out over a horizon of flailing arms, camera flashes, open mouths screaming out the lyrics that you wrote and rewrote and crossed out and salvaged in your bedroom or hotel room or the cafe or the train. Pausing to hear your own words flung back at you from 30 000 throats that tighten and burn from the strain. In my mind it feels like cresting the highest rise of a rollercoaster with that sickening excitement stirring deep in your belly. In my mind it feels like perching on the edge of a monstrous bluff and hearing the wild sea sing. In my mind it feels like flying.

Image courtesy of Vinni123

The Bluejuice tent is packed, and we’re right in the middle of it. The air is thick and hot, and we sweat and don’t care. There’s a charge running through the crowd, a taut thrumming thread that binds us all with excitement. When a song begins we holler and jump, we slip against the slick skin of our neighbours and don’t care. Lights flash chaotically on stage. It’s hard to see anything in the confusion of darkness and radiance, between the bobbing, swinging heads of those in front, and we sing and dance and don’t care. We know this song! We only need to see our friends around us, to see them singing and thread our voices through theirs. It’s primitively, crazily exhilarating to sing and scream as loud as you can and hear not your own off-key warbling but the frenzied howl of the entranced swarm around you.

Every performance is different, every performance incredible. A handful are so phenomenally awesome that at times I feel something deeply essential within me shift and change key. Temper Trap. Florence and the Machine. Passion Pit. Mumford and Sons. They send me reeling, leaving me off balance for days. We all feel it. That’s what makes it so powerful. That’s what makes it okay, sort of, to go home again – because it’s not just me, because we all know it and sense it, and there’ll always be conversations and Youtube videos and texts and Facebook status updates and we can live it again, or at least a fraction of it, and we won’t let each other forget.

.

III: After

I feel adrift for a little while. A little while – I haven’t even been home for three days. It’s not only coming down from Splendour. There’s a new semester, new things to learn, to do, there’s new people around. It’s one of those shifts you go through where it seems everything is changing all at once and you panic and lament the way things used to be until you realise that things aren’t really all that different and they’re probably actually a bit, or even a lot, better than they were before.

I miss it. I miss the bad food, the expensive alcohol, the obnoxious trendsters, the dust, the mud, the exhausted drives to and from the hotel inevitably interrupted by a police RBT. I’ve been listening to Splendour music for so many months that I find it hard to lever myself from that rut, and I don’t even know if I want to. I hope they announce next year’s line-up soon so I can start preparing.

But I’m also happy to be home, where there’s fruit and vegetables in abundance, clean clothing, air con, warm beds, a dog, a family, normality. I’ve always been pretty content with normality, and that contentment hasn’t changed; if anything, normality has. There’s a new element to it now, a different flavour. It tastes a bit like a small piece of awesome. Nowadays I like to think I take a bit of Splendour everywhere I go, injecting it randomly into those I encounter, like a surprise flu shot.

Image courtesy of Vinni123

In reality I probably go around rubbing people’s faces into the fact that I was there in the first place and demanding sympathy for having to return to my pretty fun life after such a ridiculously good holiday.

It’s okay though. This kind of behaviour won’t last. It’s only 12 months til the next Splendour, and I’ve already got my hippie headband packed.

Til next time, Splends. Til next time.

P.S. I love you.