The real value of festivals comes down to one thing. One possibility. The possibility of imagination. For just a weekend, people are free to become the person they spend most of their life hiding from. Free to express daemons and angels of their inner desires. Some people need drugs to achieve this ‘becoming’ and others (like myself) probably take them vicariously - for this I think society has conceited debt of gratitude for the substances we put to work. However, I must provide two caveats with my theory, and that is the following; 1) When we go down the rabbit hole, our imagination is collective, not singular and therefore can be both gloriously divine and disastrously hellish; 2) It’s simply not real life, it’s imaginary. It is these two lessons that I feel were my greatest learnings from my Splendour weekend. They were the two giant rubber bumpers that threw me from one side to the other as I careered my way through the giant Woodford pin ball machine. The collective consciousness Arriving in Splendour, the horizon of a motley patchwork of tents seemed to remind me of the visions of the slums in my mind that I had from the book Shantaram. I was looking at this mass of canvas sprawled across the ground and thought to myself how grateful I was to not have to live like this, which inevitably sprung the question within me as to why I was choosing to actually stay here at all? My answer to that question took me home for both Saturday and Sunday night. One Friday night was enough madness for this old soul. I am frightened by the fickle, yet incredibly beautiful swarming nature of masses of people. I think it frightens me in the same way mainstream media frightens me. Like a powerful torrent that has the power to move both my ship to untold places at untold speeds, yet just moments later, sink it without remorse. I sometimes feel consumed by the ecstasy of the collective, lifted to a level of consciousness and connected with the other in a way that I never dreamed possible. The way the crowd felt as we danced to Hot Chip or the sharp silence of awe that followed Jonsi’s performance - these were moments of sheer divinity. The gift you can only recieve from a festival like Splendour. However, the sublime also has a price. The feeling one gets standing in a line for the communal shower as the group yells abuse at the girl who was unfortunately sick in the sink before us or being crushed by the madness of audience desperation (Love Parade) or watching a group of people verbally prey on the weakness of others for some sort of ‘Lord of the Flies’ sport. These moments are the price we pay as a crowd, probably forever. It’s not real life It is this point that is impetus for the title of my post. There is an artist in Melbourne, Eli Smith, that completed a collection of work that seemed to really resonate with me more than nearly any other painting I have ever seen. The premise of the art is simply portraits (this one is a self portrait) of people and what they do in the mirror when they are by themselves. The reason I bring this up, because it really made me think about the conversations I have had with myself in the portoloo mirror at festivals over the past five years. The small gap of personal space that they afford, the tiny piece of real life that anchors me down from the throws of the collective imagination. That unflattering, dirty, sweaty, sunscreen’d, mugshot of who I am at that moment was a truth that I always seemed to like avoiding at festivals. I used to avoid that little mirror in favour of the fantasy that was beyond it’s truth. Kind of like the way you can’t find a clock at Casino, try and find a mirror at a festival. These days, I think I’ve come to appreciate the hard, steely truth I see looking at me in those 6 square inches. Since doing my HSM, I don’t think I can drop into that imaginary head space as quickly and as easily as I used to with drugs and alcohol but I think I’m getting better at it. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” (Henry David Thoreau)