I am suffering from a deep mystical malaise of the soul. The wolves are gathering in packs, as I feel the first bite of the dark night’s drawing in. The celebrations of Samhain, or summer’s end, has passed. I am feeling a fervent desire to go to ground, hibernate from life, and insulate myself from these seasonal winter demons tapping on my left shoulder and scratching the door to my spirit.
I wonder whether I should reach for the downers now, to drown out the incoming Voices, or wait till the waxing crescent moon buries itself behind the looming black clouds.
Flicking through a buried treasure trove of streaming entertainment menu on the box, I frenziedly search for something to raise my vibration, to blot out the darkness visible consuming my being. So, I scan through a rising tide of romcom’s, serial killer docs, and supernatural anti-hero box sets.
Close to frustration, weary of soul and spirit, I keenly sift on a gold nugget whilst panning through this gloomy glut of televised streams. Glastonbury: The Movie – hidden in a dark corner of the digital archive dungeons.
Powered up, as the title’s roll, I realise this festival documentary, filmed over the year of 1993, was from the same year I popped my Glastonbury cherry as an impressionable teenager. And, as the old hand-held camcorder footage fires up on screen like a dated black and white silent movie, I begin to relive my misspent youth, from the faded glory days when the world was a pearly white oyster begging to be shucked from its shell.
The footage commences, and so begins an anarchic weekend pogo dance of freedom, excess, and abundance.
Standout frames from the film highlights includes: people scavenging firewood in packs of hunting and gathering droves; dreaded sunburnt crusties passed-out from acid and scrumpy cocktails, in a ceaseless river of festival pedestrian traffic; and wide-eyed ravers throwing goofy shapes outside the Joe Bananas clothes stall at nightfall.
And feeling the clouds of doom lift in this dark November evening, watching a girl in a tiny red polka-dot dress build a make-shift tent from a cardboard box and silver foil, I am convinced back in the day the Glastonbury festival was more ‘Mad-Max meets Apocalypse Now’ than its well-polished corporate successor today.
As the dark clouds retreat from the forefront of my mind, I feel energised by the festival sunshine and glad rags on show, in the halcyon days before the mass psychosis of social media, smart phones and big tech bots cast its own long spectral shadow.
Here was a wild, uncensored tribal gathering, tripping the light fantastic under the little fluffy clouds of the Orb, living, breathing armless resistance, rebellion, and a raucous revolution of the consciousness.
And, as the credits roll and Glastonbury ‘93 shuts its wide-open doors, so the girl in the polka dot dress packs down her temporary carboard home and drives off in her battered old motor, with a smashed back window and crazy head full of festival dreams.
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