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MAY KINDNESS AND LOVE PREVAIL! On a personal note… Last weekend I went to a festival. It was a magical experience and I’ve spent the past week digesting it. It was called High Vibe Fest - an alcohol-free 800ish-person consciousness x bass music fest. If you know this culture, you know. If you don’t, it could take a lot of explaining…but this is the culture I grew up in (that is, in my early adult years) and is some slice of california spirituality meets burning man (although there are so many different expressions of that coupling…) Even though every moment in life is made possible by every single moment and relationship and experience that came before, I get a lot of pleasure from tracking the standout connections … “if i hadn’t met ___ or gone to ____ then ____ wouldn’t have happened!” My trip to High Vibe was activated by a meeting 9 months ago. After many moments that led up to one particular moment 9 months ago, I was driving home from Joshua Tree, and made an impromptu pitstop at a festival on the way. I was there for 5 hours. I wrote about it here: (desert retreat + my long awaited return to festival culture) That evening 9 months ago, I stumbled into a clothing booth to use the mirror, struck up a conversation with the guy in the booth. His name is Max. He takes vintage textiles like blankets and tablecloths and makes them into clothes, under the name Sacred Imagination. I now have several of his pieces and have joined the club of his number one fans. That fateful quest to check myself in the mirror leads to present day: Max and I have become close friends, and this past weekend I joined him at High Vibe to to help him vend in his booth. Excluding the 5-hour field trip I took to that festie 9 months ago, High Vibe was the first full weekend festival I’ve attended in EIGHT YEARS. Festivals are intense. That’s one reason why I haven’t been going. The last one I’d attended was Oregon Eclipse (put on by Symbiosis)- it was one of those big ones (50K people or so, huge property, so much walking, so much dust…) High Vibe was more my vibe across the board. LOVE a small festival! For the ease of experience and also the tone of intimacy. LOVE the no-alcohol vibe, love the robust array of workshops and experiential offerings aside from the music. Temps were in the mid 90s each day, and I had many moments where I thought to myself “happy to be here, so glad this exists, but I just can’t do this anymore. it’s too hot” … or “yes love this, but I’m just in a different place in my life now…there are other things I want to prioritize in my life”… and then as festies do… Festie Did. :) THE MAGIC AND BEAUTY UNFOLDED WOW! WHAT A GIFT!!! I needed that. :) About My Experience: I really loved working the booth - It was my homebase in the heart of “downtown” and also was the easiest breeziest launchpad for playful banter with passersby… I often do prefer to have a perch / a role at an event rather than being “just an attendee”…and my fave are opps like I had this past weekend where I could freeform freeflow between booth support and gallivanting freely at my will. Lucky me! Aside from the playful banter with more people than I can count, came the deeper more present moments with a special few, and then a few more, and then just so many moments of breathing with the multidimensional tapestry of beings that came to spend the weekend together, with our feet on raw earth, in a playground of free self expression. One thing that was cool about my experience now, was feeling how much more relaxed and confident I am in myself than I was in my 20s - it was easily palpable being that it kind of felt like I teleported “back” to such a familiar environment from a prior chapter in my life. Festival world: Thank you! and I’m not done with youuuu!
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