The Vanishing Festival

I'm at a festival site, in a field somewhere in somerset, and all the crew members are getting the stage and the set ready for the big performance tomorrow night. Me and a whole bunch of us are preparing a special performance of a story of battles and freedom, fought and won. Kev the poet is playing Nelson Mandella, and the robe he has to wear is quite spectacular.

What is more, is that his costume doubles up as Nelson Mandella's wife, who, in this play, is an african queen and spirit medium.

Me, jude and mike are working on kev's costume meticulously, as we know it will blow people away. It is looking quite fantabulous. He is wearing an enormous egyptian style head dress of blue and gold, which we spent ages trying to get to stick; kev had to stand very still for a long time against a wall, which we pinned and glued the head dress to, so that it could stick. The rest of his robe was gold and red; the colours of a king. All in all kev looked nothing short of an egyptian god; a force not to be messed with.

Attached to the back of the costume we had to work on the costume of the wife; during the performance, kev would transform miraculously into Nelson's wife, so the costume had to be embedded into the main costume. Her costume was silver and blue, and was like a water goddess from atlantis.

We spend a long time over the costumes, as its hard to get them right; so much seems to go wrong, bits falling off and not sticking. Yet finally we seem to have done a good job. Me, jude and mike are all stood in front of Kev, admiring the work we have put in.

James and Radick have been working on the music, and have got it together, so we decide to do a little dress rehearsal, as the main performance is tomorrow.

During the rehearsal kev begins to embody the spirit of the parts he is playing. All of a sudden, he is no longer acting, but IS the parts he is playing.. As the music continues, the costume he's wearing becomes two characters, Nelson, AND his wife. She separates off and becomes her own automated self, while nelson continues to give speeches, and lessons. The characters have come magically alive.

This scares us a bit, as we didn't realise the power of what we were making. Will we ever get kev back? We hope so, but right now he is off in a merged state, not himself but two other characters simultaneously. He seems quite gone, lost, in a trance state, its almost worrying. Anyway, now the music dies down, and everything is back to normal, and people leave the stage in an ordered state, instruments, costumes, and tools of the play all in position, ready for the big performance tomorrow, starting in the morning and carrying on into the night. The dress rehearsal is over, and people are wrapped up in there sleeping bags dropping off to sleep.

-

I wake the next morning, and immediately something feels wrong. In fact everything feels wrong. Its too quiet. Where has everyone gone?
I get up and go to the theater tent. No one is there, and what is more is that nothing is there. Everything has disappeared. There are no instruments, no costumes, no stage; just an empty tent.

I go outside and look about the field. All the tents have disappeared, other than this performance tent. There is simply nothing around other than the old shepherds hut, which had always been here before the activities of the festival began.
I go inside the shepherds hut to see what might be in there. I find mike, getting up out of bed. I tell him that something has happened over night. He gets up and I let him discover the situation for himself.

After a few minutes he comes back to the shepherds hut.

"My keyboard, all my music equipment, everything, gone." He continues, " I need to stop this happening in my life; every time I find myself in a situation of abundance and plenty, I should settle, and not ask for anythinf more. This is a recurring theme in my life, it has happened a number of times before. Just when I think I'm sorted, the fairies and spirits come and take it all away."

Jude now walks into the shepherds hut. She is amazed at what has happened. She empathizes with mike as she is aware of how much he has lost, she has lost a lot less in comparison. Much of the music equipment was mikes that he had bought through hard earned cash.

Jude talks to mike about what he means about the fairies and spirits.

"Its as if I'm inviting it in on some level", mike continues, "its like they know that this is just another lesson to learn; that one day, when we die, we have to let go of everything, so why not learn it now, today in this moment?"

"Jesus was a bit like that", jude comments, "and you were playing the Jesus role, so in a sense, you are inviting it in. Jesus has that heroic quality to him."

"Indeed, I just wish I could control a bit more when I want that quality to be invoked and when I don't. Right now I wish I had my stuff, but I guess on some level its all for the best. Well, at least we are still alive!"

I'm in awe of how he is coming to terms with such a big loss. I think that maybe this is all a dream, or a magic spell we are under, so I tell him and jude that I think this may be the case, and say that I will look around for signs of fairy magic.

I wander out of the shepherds hut, and look around. The field is empty, but I notice a little spray can in the middle of the field, so I go to pick it up. Just an old graffiti spray I think, but then I notice the words "SPRAY THE STONES" on it, so I take the can and spray a bit of leftover paint on each of the stones dotted around at the edge of the field.

Grey Horse now appears, walking through the gate of the field. "Horse, help us" I ask.

Grey Horse tells us to travel, so we hook the horse up to the old shepherds hut, and travel along the road.

The road winds and turns along country lanes, and we feel we will soon catch up with the fairies who took our stuff. After a little while, the road comes to a dead end, and leads into a field full of bulls. The path goes through the field, and out of the other corner. We must travel through, there is no other way round.

We begin moving cautiously towards the bulls, as they are blocking the path, and they get angry, and start walking towards us, as if to charge.

Horse gets scared, and I try to reassure her, and tell her it will be ok. Whatever happens, we must not run through fear, confidence is the key with bulls.

The bulls see we are not afraid, and so they themselves are stopped in there tracks, and make passage for us to travel through. We feel we are safely through the herd, but as we think this, one of the bulls makes charge at us as we are heading away from them, scaring Horse. She starts to gallop in fear towards the gate at the other end of the field, and now all the bulls are chasing us, moving as one organism.

We race in panic to get to the gate. The leading bull has now turned into a grizzly bear, and has huge fangs, and demon eyes, and is chasing at an alarming speed. We know that we can't escape. I tell jude and mike to keep Horse going, while I try to make a distraction.

I jump off the shepherds hut to the edge of the field where I can get a large stick from a close by tree. I find one, and shout to grizzly bear to come after me. This distracts him, and now he's coming after me. I attack him on the nose with the stick, hitting him as hard as I can. It slows him, but its barely a scratch. however, I see that this has caused just enough time to get us to the edge of the field, and I now run with all my life to catch them up. Its a lost cause, however, as they are moving much too fast for me.
Ahead of me, the shepherds hut wheels break, and Horse comes loose, and, now freed, she gallops off at a great speed into the distance. Mike and jude get out of the hut and start running into the woods close by. I see them and follow. The bear and bulls will struggle to follow us into here. I catch them up, and we stop for an instant to get our breath back. Now we really have nothing, and the bear is closing in. We must act fast or we will be caught.

I ask the spirits to help us, and in answer to this call, White Wolf and Brown Dog run up to meet us. Mike jumps on the back of Wolf, and jude on the back of Dog, and we travel on them faster than ever before. For some reason, I am able to keep up with them, I know not how.

We travel through woods and fields all the way to the sea, at st Ives. My brother Simon is by the harbour, listening to the song imagine by john lennon. Its good to be back.