I don’t often get this personal on here, but today I have to. It’s Monday afternoon and I have just come back from my first festival weekend of the summer. I feel exhilarated, emotional, loved, appreciated, and a little tired. This year was my second of joining the team at The Conjuring and there’s not enough big words to describe the feelings it brings.
The heart that is put into these three days of live music is absolutely incredible, Jack, who I met through his spoken word, brings all he’s got to these days, as well as a community he has built over the years and that community is like no other I’ve come across. This gathering of stunning souls welcomed me, a stranger, into their inner circle and made me feel like part of the family.
Together with Dave and Sally and a bunch of brilliant others I managed the stage at the festival on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, at a venue that made the entire experience even more incredible. I hadn’t heard of Pealie’s Barn before Jack mentioned it to me, and after he did it kept popping up on my social media timelines as friends and musicians were all of a sudden gracing line-ups at the venue. I instantly fell in love with the place, the parlour, the courtyard, the stage, the barn, every nook and cranny of it, and most of all; the people running it. I live and feel fully, everything that passes the revue, it all gets my full attention, so when I meet people that feel like sunshine on my skin, they will get my full attention too. They took care of the sound, manned the bar, baked pizzas, made coffee and breakfast, cleaned, organised and made sure the place was secure.
When organising events, working with a venue is always easier than against them, and the same goes for promoters, Pealie’s Barn got that. The team did everything within their power to accommodate all of those that entered the gates throughout the weekend and helped make the event what it ended up to be; incredible. Now here comes the part we don’t often talk about, something I’ve tried to speak about at a previous job, and got ridiculed for; the post-festival transitional depression.
For three days – in this case – time ran differently, the communal focus had nothing to with the day-to-day, and I surrounded myself with like-minded sunshine souls that all had one thing in common; their love for live music and the goal to use it as an act of revolution. Once I returned to my laptop to check in on emails, PR-campaigns, upcoming tours and life admin, I crashed. The sounds and smells of the festival site had gone, no more breakfast on a barn with a coffee and a book, no more sleeping in the barn, no more exciting buzz from the crowd, fire dancers in the evening, and jokes with the security. The sounds and smells had evaporated and had left me a little empty.
Now I will be back on a festival site again tomorrow, but no festival site is the same, and they all leave me with an emotional hangover and that bit of heartache for the new friends I’ve met who I wish I would see more than once a year. It’s not easy, but a friend of mine recently shared these wise words with me; “Life is a never-ending drama, that’s what comes hand in hand with knowing so many folk and being close to them, but I wouldn’t change it for the world”, and I couldn’t agree more. Although I know that I’ll be fine, and distracted, again soon, don’t underestimate this emotional struggle, and know that it’s not just you who deals with it, I’ve been told we all do. With the enormous highs, come painful lows, but the highs make it all worth it or I would’ve stopped working in events long time ago.
LLIVELY Music 