We humans
are contradictory messes sometimes. For instance, I've felt like a grocery
store saint lately with all my grain fed egg purchases and organic banana buys. I've been spreading the message of healthy eating by sharing my new hand-crafted
kale chips and refusing to buy that piece of salmon in the grocery store that’s “from the farm.” But
I’m the first person on a Friday night that will go in on a plate of nachos and
you had better believe all my drinks are doubled up with the poisonous venom
that is alcohol. It’s appears I’m always willing to toss away any semblance of
a healthy value I might hold in the face of a double caeser and a late-night
patio snack.
And we do
these kinds of things all the time. After I crawled into my house, emotionally,
physically and mentally exhausted from the four intensive days we just called
Boonstock, I swore not only to myself, but to my friends and mother that I was
to live a life underground for the next few weeks, all in the hopes of recovering
my voice, health and mental stability. But here I find myself just a week after
said event, planning for my weekend road trip to Calgary, which will follow my
Friday night dance-a-thon. All talk, all
the time.
Where I find
the contradiction so blatant, the disparity between our actions and words so
great, is at our beloved music festivals. Amongst the beautiful night skies, the
riverside beaches and perfectly constructed stages. Under the powerful flashes
of light and color we see during performance-ending fireworks, you will find us…
lazy “wanna-be” hippies, tossing our water bottles and sandwich wrappers to the
ground like ill-mannered children.
You see,
festival season in theory is amazing. Beautifully planned events, all over the
world, where fellow music lovers can come together to soak up the sunshine and
sound. It’s understood that everyone you meet is potentially a new life-long
friend. The instant connection you can feel with another person, in a certain
moment during a certain set is actually astonishing. The shared love of music
brings people together and when we've all bested our own set of circumstances
to arrive in that special place, the feeling of instant gratification is often
indescribable.
Girls wear
their intricately designed headbands, custom made with flowers and gems. The 13
trips that were made to Michaels Craft Store now all seem worth it, as they
pose for the hundreds of pictures being snapped throughout the weekend. We feel
free and beautiful, uninhibited and happy. Together we preach values of friendship and
love, peace and respect. We've all come together to enjoy this moment as
friends.
But the contradiction
is glaring. I first noticed it in a picture my friend took at EDC Las Vegas a few
weekends ago. It was of a friend and I as the sun came up, early that Sunday morning. There,
directly in the center of the shot, were two beautiful souls enjoying an
embrace, soaking up that special moment in time. If you look at our faces, our
smiles are so heartfelt and so genuine it’s almost impossible not to smile too, just by looking at them. But unfortunately, it wasn't our smiles you were left to look
at. It was the mounds of litter and the graveyard of plastic water bottles that caught the eye.
How funny it
must be to those of an earlier generation (those who began the tradition of
musical festivals that we now enjoy) to see such a blatant disregard for the
earth. You see, those before our time still met under the same sky, dressed in
their flowers and their beads, all in the same hopes; to enjoy a moment of
music together. But their actions headed the advice of their words and their values were not just seen, but felt. You see, it takes more than a flower headband and your best kandi to
be a hippie. Your fuzzy boots and t-shirt monogrammed with the words ‘peace’ and
‘love’ don’t make you an old, earth loving soul. We so often look the part, and
yet act so much different.
There’s
already a lot of garbage surrounding the events we’re attending this summer:
the 1000 Dasani water bottles you’ll probably have bought by the time September
rolls around, the $15 taco you had to buy at Shambhala (because all the ice
melted in your cooler and now your salad is swimming in a pool of dirty water)
and all the shuttle passes, cab fares and bus tickets you’ll eventually end up purchasing
just to get you to that $300-a-ticket dance floor.
Times have changed. There
was a time where music festivals were once Woodstock’s; events that preached
messages of anti-violence and peace. Where events didn't cost you your entire
winters savings and where outfits didn't take three months to prepare. Festivals
that didn't charge you $10 for a sandwich and allowed for areas to dance where
YOLO-swag wearing bro’s weren't fist pumping around your head. There’s already
enough change and enough garbage surrounding the festivals of our day. Why
then, are we all contributing to it?
I’m assuming
all of us want to make an impact on the world, in some way or another. Let us then
make a large impact in the lives of the people we find around us, not on the
earth we’re using as our festival grounds. Let the impact we leave be felt in
the hearts of our families, friends, and the new people we meet this summer.
And let the impact we leave at the Salmo River Ranch or the Las Vegas Speedway
be minuscule, at best. It’s sad that a picture with my beautiful friend does
not illustrate the love felt in that moment, but instead a disgusting
street of littered water bottles and thrown away trash.
I’ll be the
first one to admit that when I’m having a musical moment and in desperate need
of both my arms to flail, I’ll toss away my empty glass, forgetting about it
the second it leaves my hands. But I no longer want to be that “wanna-be”
hippie, my mouth full of preachy values while my hands clearly disregard my
surroundings. It’s something I never really thought about before and even as I
shuffled through the garbage left ridden across the raceways at EDC, it never
occurred to me that my four personal water bottles helped contribute to that mess.
We can all
dress like dirty, homeless hobos at Shambhala and most of us did dress like
flower-loving, peace-preaching hippies at EDC, but really in the end, that’s just
a costume. The real hippies will find a garbage can. The real lovers will walk
the ten feet to throw away their trash in a bin, not on the floor.
C'mon people, we're better than this.
