i fell over my feet and landed on my back about three hours later in the middle of the most hectic festival ever, dominated by a universal feeling of disillusionment, a half-real memory living in everyone's heads of last year's festival which was much better, and this had the effect of inducing every single individual in attendance to seek the greener grass somewhere other than where they were, an entire festival in constant motion, walking mud from field to field. i made my way back to our campsite for some r + r, but was dragged off to see a band looking like something straight out of a spaghetti western and sounding worse, but somehow providing the perfect background music for a strange conversation which i lost once it moved on from dick van dyke's accent in mary poppins. the usual festival sensation of being closely worked into the fabric of my companions, and yet also very removed, looking on from some high and isolated pillar washed over me, so i did the one thing you can which is to get well wrecked until you're too apathetic to even see the bands, and watched the stars whilst everyone else wasted their eyesight on watching the stage. round the fire that night, i imagined meeting these people for the first time, but couldn't be bothered to fathom the uneasy stirrings this began in my mind. why are festivals lonely?
