Tag: 2019

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#MYLDN (1329) – Carnival ’19 – 99.9% Joy

99.9% of all attendees at the Carnival are just there to have as good a time as is humanely possible and being present at such an uplifting unifying experience means it is not that hard at all. It is beyond joyful to be a part of and to see people from all over London, all cultures, all backgrounds, all areas coming together to spend two days dancing on the streets as one.

And yet the media still continue to focus on the arrests. Around 300 odd this year which equates to 0.06% of the amount of people there, roughly a million odd. It is virtually nothing, same arrests as Glastonbury and they only have 200,000 people in attendance.

All the shots above were taken at the Disya Jeneration sound system which for 99.9% of the weekend was the most chilled beautiful peaceful atmosphere and nothing but positive vibes. It kicked off at one point on the Monday, apparently started by a girl scrap and it quickly turned sour as more and more people got involved and the street rapidly descended into aggro. What was joyous turned sour in a second. The police moved in to break it up but exacerbated it to a degree as hostility turned towards them. The sound system responded by shutting down the street completely which ended it and they told everyone to come back in an hour which they did and everything carried on as before.

Crime and violence is an element of society that cannot be completely eradicated. It exists and always will. You can reduce the societal forces that propel people into anti-social behaviour but most attempts to deal with crime is focussed on the symptoms rather than the causes so it can only be effective to a degree. But it is not the story of Carnival, it is just a miniscule part of it. And it isn’t the story of our society, it is just a very small part of it. But the incident showed how quickly things can go bad and how just one person can alter the entire vibe on a street full of thousands of people having nothing but a good time.

The majority of people, no matter where they are from, have no interest in anything but getting on with their lives and trying to have a harmonious existence. The news will make you believe different but that is just their focus. That is not to say there isn’t a rising crime element in the U.K which desperately needs dealing with but not in the way they are doing. 50% of youth clubs have been closed in London in the last 5 years due to council cuts and knife crime has increased double since then. These two stats are completely intertwined and we need to provide safe and available places for young people to go so they are not lured into a negative whirlpool they cannot escape from.

I will leave you with this photo to show the Carnival masses in action, dancing in the street, having the time of their lives. This is the main story of Carnival and always will be.

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#MYLDN (1328) – Carnival ’19 – Balloons & Selfies

At Carnival this year, wherever you looked there was someone doing a balloon. Usage is definitely up on previous years. For the uninitiated balloons are filled with nitrous oxide and when repeatedly inhaled create an intoxicating feeling that last a matter of minutes. As highs go, its pretty lame and yet, it is being done seemingly relentlessly.

One of the main reasons for its growing consumption is that it is legal. No other reason. And for the record, it is not safer than illegal drugs, its actually more dangerous than even a lot of Class A drugs as it pushes all the air out of your lungs (which you def need for breathing) and can, albeit rare, kill you. But I think it just shows that this human ‘need’ to get ‘out of it’, to alter your mind state, to reach levels of intoxication where normal thoughts no longer reside & are subsequently replaced with a stimulating sensory experience should not, and should never have been, a criminal issue. It is a public health issue and rather than try to prevent it with illegality, which does not work in any significant way whatsoever, we must accept that is part of the human condition for a lot of people and try to manage it instead of demonising it.

We live in fucked up times and modern pressures are extreme & getting wasted might just be the only way people can cope with it. It obviously brings its own problems and is not a solution in itself but we must start treating it as the side effect of a greater issue. In the book ‘The Inner Level’ by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (their follow up to ‘The Spirit Level’) they show that drug use is much worse the more unequal the society and is a way to cope with feelings of inferiority and fierce status competition.

I have included shots of people doing selfies as the dopamine hit you get from people liking your photos on Instagram is as addictive as any recreational drug and also creates both a ‘high’ & a sense of euphoria when you receive the digital love and also the comedown when the feeling drops off. And just like balloons, the high is very fleeting and you must then chase the next fix to feel good again.

In 2015, there was a explosion (not literally) of balloons and selfies when suddenly you couldn’t turn for seeing either. I would actually say this year, from what I saw, that selfie taking is down overall (which can only be a good thing and I would love to think we had reached peak selfie) but balloons are definitely up. The shot below, which you may remember, features a ‘ballofie’ from that year (which I coined back then but weirdly has taken off) and yes, is a combo of the two activities, designed for the ultimate double hit.

I have also included it here as the shot and an accompanying story features in my, very soon, about to be released photography book: MYLDN – a streetview of London Life’ which is out next tuesday! Now, how’s that for a smooth link to a blatant plug? (and the first of many for the next few weeks as I do my best to promote the mofo, so soz ‘n’ all that..)

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#MYLDN (1326) – Carnival ’19 Pt 1: Warming Up

There is always at atmosphere of nervous excitement and anticipation as people start to arrive at Carnival. You can see the locals bracing themselves for the mass of revellers that are descending on their neighbourhood. You see groups of mates getting into the spirit, spurring each other on. You see lone wolfs eager to join the pack. You see people with their guard up, not realising they have to let it down to properly engage with the event. Carnival is like life, what you put in you get back, what you project you find, when you let yourself go, you are rewarded…

It’s good to be back…

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GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 6 (Sun 30th June)

  • If you gonna go bright on the festival outfit you gotta stay chipper
  • Jeff Goldblum fans leave 15mins into his set cos he was so friggin weird and just whitttered on about nothing rather than actually play any music.
  • The Hackney Colliery Brass band – best thing we saw all weekend. They even did a bangin version of Prodigy’s out of Space
  • Now this is doing Glasto in style. We saw Mavis perform at the Pyramid and she was superb and deserved this incredible on-site vehicle, beautifully designed by Joe Rush who also created Pangea and Glastonbury on Sea.
  • fat white family vs festival fatigue. FWF lose.
  • This is the q for the rabbit hole on sunday night. These people clearly have no idea what they are going into otherwise they would know it is def not worth the wait.
  • What used to be Arcadia, now Pangea. The MC declared to the crowd..”this is not EDM, this is D&B” Ok, cheers, thanks for clearing that up.
  • The giant spider is dead! Long live the giant umm crane!
  • Dawn at the stone circle (she’s the one on the left in the red jacket – drum roll puh-lease!)
  • A guy holding a cross, a guy dancing to no music and a guy who looks like he has his hands down some other guy’s shorts…welcome to the Stone Circle.
  • A ton fuck of people turn up for this ancient Glasto ritual which involves wathcing the sun rise whilst off your head and spending 2 hours trying to find your mates

And so we survived another Glasto. Just about. Hope you enjoyed my skew-whiff vision of Glasto (is there any other kind?) This was MYGLSTO but you can be sure that everyone out of the 200 odd thousand people on site would have had a different one. I have tried to show you a Glastonbury festival that you won’t see on TV. The one away from the main stages. And also to show you that it ain’t for everyone. Not as a warning just in the pursuit of an honest depiction.

And in all honesty I’m not even sure if it’s still for me. I have slightly lost the desire to dealing with crowds of that size and as there is more of a sheep mentality now at Glasto (see rabbit hole q for perfect example) which creates giant walking dead style herds of festival zombies lurching from main act to main act rather than venturing off the beaten track, it can become overwhelming. And having just read that they’ve had approval to increase capacity by another 20,000 that kinda puts the fear in me.

I also felt this year there was a lack of mixing between the multitude of sub-genres and musical tribes present. I liked that everyone moved between worlds but people tend to stay more in their respective camps these days. The ravers, the rock heads, the popsters, the hippies, the vaudevillians, the bucket list baby boomers, the poshos, the locals, the workers, the middle class munters..these independent worlds have always existed at Glasto but it felt like there used to be more crossover between them which for me was the best thing as you got to speak and hang out with folk from different bubbles to your own. I also judge a festival on the quality of the stop and chats and I would have to say it was definitely down on previous years. But that could have been me. I gotta feel it and I guess I wasn’t.

This year was in some ways one of the easiest (no rain, no mud, tent with shade, wangled an on-site vehicle pass) but also one of the toughest. Having been to a few smaller festivals of late which are all the fun, none of the aggro, it felt like a slog. We were slightly battered on arrival (after an unintentional run of nights in the lead up to the festival – textbook error) which meant we were maybe a bit jaded and too weary to deal with such a humungous event.

And without wishing to end on a downer (but I feel it would be disingenuous to not mention) I am also finding it very difficult these days to party with carefree abandon with the looming climate apocalypse lurking over us. Its a proper buzzkill and finding it harder and harder to shut it out and keep pretending all is well when it clearly isn’t. I just feel we need to put everything on hiatus until we sort out this shit show. Glasto should be a celebration of life but I just don’t feel like there is much worth celebrating right now. We need to take action not fuck around with frivolities. At least till this mother of all messes is dealt with. And yes, it was great they banned plastic bottles this year but that is a drop in the ocean (pun obvs intended) to what needs to be done.

And I think deep down it is having an effect on everyone but its the ‘elephant in the field’ no-one is really willing to discuss. And no amount of intoxicating substances can wash away the feeling that we are ignoring impending doom. If it is an emergency, which has been proven unequivocally, why aren’t we still not acting like its one? Why are we still doing all this shit? I love dancing in fields to great music whilst hugging strangers as much as the next festival go’er but maybe this isn’t the time? Just sayin…

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    GLASTONBURY 2019 – Day 4 (Fri 28th June)

    • Trump with breasts swinging a plastic chicken is maybe not the best thing to see when you’re wasted..instant trauma and this was in the healing fields…
    • The slogans have spoken
    • Some people went to extreme lengths to not get split up in the crowds
    • I cannot tell you how many times I saw these scenarios around site at Glastochella
    • I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was actually at a Rosalia gig
    • The Brass Funkies at Funkingham Palace – they were superb and 1 of 3 brass bands we saw which were the highlight of our Glasto
    • The man with the bunny ears applauds the people who were dumb enough to queue up for 1hr + to get into the rabbit hole
    • Meanwhile The Bimble Inn gets rollin…
    • Superb brass band No. 2: Das Brass

    We marched all over site on Friday and even though it had seemed packed uptil that point the crowds seemed to have doubled since the day before. Dealing with the mob in downtown Glasto (around the main stages) is pretty full on and not for the feint hearted. It’s a slog and you see lots of people who seem completely overwhelmed by the scale of it all and the amount of folk they have to fend through to get to their chosen destination. This is the bit they do not see on the TV.

    Every time I mentioned that I was going to Glasto or that have just been to Glasto, the response is always the same…”Oh, I’ ve always wanted to go there. I would like to see it, just once”. It has become one of those bucket list things like the northern lights or Machu Picchu. IT is now something everyone wants to experience but it is definitely not for everyone. Not at all. It is an extreme event, an endurance test and ideally you need to be pretty wasted pretty much all of the time to deal with it.

    Glasto used to be full of mostly munters and musos, party people who are willing to do what is necessary. These days you tend to get a lot more tourists who are there to see the spectacle rather than necessarily participate in it in this way. This has changed the feel of the festival considerably and it now feels different to how it did. Not that anyone doesn’t deserve to be there or can’t do it how they want to do it. Glasto should be anything but exclusive, everyone is welcome but it has altered the vibe.

    it used to be mainly heavy duty hedonists that was attracted to Glasto which created a certain atmosphere. In the current era, pretty much everyone and their grandma now want to go to Glasto. So as a result, it sells out in half an hour so it basically boils down to who has the fastest broadband is who gets to go.

    Its not about it getting more commercial because it had to move with the times and think that Emily Eavis has done a magnificent job of transforming it and making it relevant to a new generation by diversifying the acts which has successfully diversified the crowd. It needed to evolve to survive but it has also diluted the Glastonbury spirit, in my opinion and in my experience there. And I will come back to this concept of personal perspective and projection in my final Glasto post on Sat…(bonus blog day so I could cram it all in, aren’t you lucky?)

    After our massive trek across site we came back to the Bimble Inn and had the best time out of anywhere we had been so decided we were going to park up in the Park (park pun intended) and have our fun without the aggro of having to get to it in the first place. This is often my policy in my home town and Glasto is actually a lot like London. Its massive and not just one place, its lots and lots of places sandwiched together and sometimes the best thing you can do is stay local and enjoy what is on offer on your doorstep…