A Spring Clean For the May Queen
From the top of the hill behind my cousin’s farm in Dorset, you can just see Glastonbury Tor. On a very clear day a few weeks ago whilst waiting out my 10-day quarantine period that would allow me to re-enter Great Britain, I made my way up there to look at it.
The hills of Dorset are low compared to the hills of California where I am from, but in order to negotiate them, you have to bushwhack through meadows of long, dew-wet grass, cutting catty-corner from stile to stile and avoiding things like nettles and cowpats, and if you have two naughty dogs with you, it makes it even harder. Below me lay all of rural England: golden fields and fens and dales, a checkerboard of green and yellow, the landscape of every BBC drama or Merchant Ivory film you ever watched. It was exactly like being stuck inside a book by Beatrix Potter, but because I am cursed to think of everything in terms of rock music, when a fox rustled by me in the bracken, what I thought was, not, ‘Hello Mr. Tod,’ but ‘there’s a bustle in my hedgerow!’
Similarly, the breathtaking sight of Glastonbury Tor, a historic ruin at the mouth of the vale of Avalon, didn’t cause me to think of faeries and druids, the Knights of the Round Table, or the body of the last Abbot of Glastonbury, who was hung, drawn and quartered there in 1539. Rather, I thought first of the Glastonbury Festival.
Established in the nearby town of Pilton in 1970, Glastonbury is the ur-Festival of music festivals — not the first, by any means, not the biggest, not even the one with the most memorable music performances, but somehow the one that has established what all other festivals strive to be like. From its stated purpose of raising money for non-profits (originally, the CND, then Green Peace and other environmental organization), to its controversial decision to let, and then not let Travelers in for free, it defines all the elements of which I discussed in my dissertation on the topic (later published as a book called “Half a Million Strong.”)*
In my book I argue that festivals like Glastonbury created the paradigm whereby many 20th and 21st century young people consider going to festivals a rite of passage. But it also defined those festivals as spaces of whiteness, places where the (over) use of drugs won’t get you busted and where free sexuality isn’t controversial or dangerous or manipulative, in other words, sites which are defined by, and cater to, an elite strata of kids who have privilege, money, and what I called in my dissertation “automobility.”
I think of automobility as an American thing, but looking at the site in Somerset from above, I thought how much harder it would be to get there then it would be to get to — say — Woodstock, Alpine Valley, or Bonaroo, or Coachella. One of the great cognitive disjunctions of Music Festivals is that they are always predicated on having access to transport. It’s striking how they create hellscapes of overpopulation and environmental destruction in the very name of environmentalism. From above, they look like nothing so much as refugee camps. Indeed, a Danish company called Rockwool tests out its urine-absorbent wall-making material for use in refugee camps in Africa at music festivals like Roskilde.
I certainly don’t miss music festivals, but I am not sure if that’s because of my age, or if it’s because lockdown has taught me how to enjoy solitude. I never enjoyed anything quite as much as I did those ten days in quarantine — granted, I was in a lovely place, but also, there was something so unique and special about being grounded; it is a time I could never recreate without the help of the NHS telling me they would fine me ten thousand pounds if I left the residence. It was a precious week cut out of my entire life, a bubble of perfection. Later, when I saw the Tor from the hill, it occurred to me that lockdown and quarantine were the very antithesis of everything I have ever written about, or craved; they are the opposite of rock. And it was weird how I felt more visible up on that hill in Dorset then I ever have standing in the middle of a sea of humanity at a music festival. I guess there is comfort in being a part of a crowd — comfort and safety and reassurance. But there is something sweet about standing alone in a field, something I never knew about.
I will probably never go to a music festival again, but it’s OK if you do: indeed, with climate change coming at us, perhaps it is useful for kids to practice living like that — camping in all weathers, surrounded by hordes of desperate people, short of water, short of food. In my book, I suggested that the appeal of festivals as a rite of passage is that they are places where young people experience history emotionally. If that is the case, I suppose they are even more powerful now, since we are living through an historical flashpoint. For a long time going to festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo was just a well-heeled giggle, but today, joining one of those crowds is edgy and dangerous, a genuine expression of nihilism. What could be more appealing?
Full disclosure, I’ve actually never been to the Glastonbury Festival though I’ve been to many festivals like it. Gazing at the site from the hill behind my cousin’s farm may be the closest I will ever come, but I’ve been thinking about music festivals even more lately since last week’s photos of Lollapalooza and the Sturgis bike rally in South Dakota broke. The two things aren’t exactly alike — you had to show proof of vaccination to go to Lollapalooza -– but still, it was odd to see that so many people were still eager to rub their sweaty bodies up against one another in the middle of a global pandemic. Indeed, nothing has really convinced me of the importance of music festivals more than the sight of that happening.
The appeal of shoving yourself into the gaping maw of a crowd of mystery people is elusive at best. But the success, and the return, of festivals right now, even in the face of the Delta variant, shows that these experiences are essential to the well-being of large swathes of the public. Thinking back, they certainly were to me. But they sure aren’t any longer.
**The history of the Glastonbury Festival is quite convoluted, so if you’re interested you should go to Wikipedia and look it up.
A Spring Clean For the May Queen was originally published in Fools Rush In Again on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.