#780: The Folk Festival Is About To Begin

These are the legs of a vendor from the festival two years ago.

There is a folk festival in town this weekend, and I am looking forward to lounging on the grass and people watching. Because the festival takes place in the heart of our downtown, during the first afternoon and evening, people wandering through the park, aside from the vendors, are mostly what you would expect in a mid-sized government town. There will be parents with children, glad for an excuse to go out on a Friday night, all dressed in the regular suburban uniform of walking shorts, sandals with velcro straps, and perhaps a fanny pack or two. There will be university and high school students sporting the early signs of the aforementioned suburban fashion and old people in shorts with elastic waists and support socks pulled up to their knees. The Park Kids whose summer employment is sitting out on the grass and getting stoned will be there as usual, getting stoned and selling weed.

I am generalizing, sure, but on the first night, most festival-goers will appear to be their everyday, average selves. By the second day, the transformation of some visitors is inevitable, and that is what I wait for. Women who rarely step out of their heels suddenly flounce through the grounds barefoot in flowing skirts and guatemalan tank tops. It becomes commonplace for people to have sections of hair bound in embroidery thread. Girls will have fresh, crusted mehndi on their arms and legs that they will regret as it turns a faded carrot orange over the coming weeks and sticks out of their sleeves at work. A solitary, young man with a bowstaff will free himself from his garage to practice his art in public.

(In the following video, Daffy Duck's quarter staff routine starts at about 1min45sec.)

Am I sounding crusty and old? I am not. I like to sit out and watch people try on personae for three days. It is a vacation from cubicles and cash registers and factories and delivery trucks. I wish that it would last a whole week.

The real hippies, the ones with dreads and armpit hair who are draped in crazy amounts of naturally dyed hemp fabric are of an elevated standing at the festival. Those of us stuck in this small, prairie city for the year's duration watch them with envy. They walk slowly. The women have quiet babies that sleep in cloth slings. They are often musical. They hug each other. I have heard people use the words "dirty hippy" as an insult, but at the festival, I know that we secretly wish it was okay to behave like them. They smell like human bodies and scented oils. If you lick them, you won't ingest forty different chemicals listed as dangerous to eat by government agencies. They don't iron their collars.

I will be of the sort who eats meat sandwiches from an offsite deli, wears my usual t-shirt and jeans, and smells like Ivory soap, men's hair pommade, and, perhaps, beer. Some vendor will share a cigarette with me on the grass when the traffic is slow. A few of the real hippies will nod at me, remembering me from ten or fifteen years ago. Late at night when the big acts play, this ticketless person will be one of many strung up on fences and benches around the park's monument to catch a glimpse of the main stage.

It is kind of nice to be slung between the end of my near two-month recuperation from surgery and my re-entry into cubicle life. I am in between slow rest and pressed clothes, feeling no rush to be in either place. It is my favourite limbo.

Comments

[jenn]

I can't wait!

[That Girl Who Blogs Stuff]

Now all I'm going to think about is licking hippies.

[Saskboy]

I'm pretty sure that hippy-licking is outlawed in Regina, and most citing in Saskatchewan.

[loren]

You should seriously consider going back to cubicle life draped in multi-colored naturally dyed hemp with dreads in your pits... kind of like an ice breaker for those awkward "how are you" conversations.

And I would love some pictures of THAT :)

[mcarenmc]

You captured something for me, something familiar and yet far away. I I love to watch people - and sadly that activity has been severely curtailed by having a toddler. There is something so relaxing in just watching it all happen.

[Abigail Road]

Hippie licking? Maybe that's why my mouth tastes like patchouli this morning.

[Day Dreamer]

"I am in between slow rest and pressed clothes"

What an excellent line. Love this!!

I don't lick enough hippies....

[Saskboy]

To make things even more strange, after I'd forgotten about this comment, I ended up buying a tootsie pop at the festival, from a woman with decidedly hippie style hair! I'm a little freaked out right now.