Easter ConFest

Happy Easter everyone. I do hope you had a good weekend. I spent mine dancing around fires, bathing in mud and telling strangers I loved them. How about you?

Perhaps I should explain. I was attending my first ConFest, an alternative lifestyle festival near the border of Victoria and New South Wales. A friend of mine was going with three uni buddies, and in a last minute scurry of packing eskies, borrowing cars and tracking down tents that had been lent to friends two summers ago (and not aired out since… lesson learnt!) I managed to convince my boyfriend and his best mate to come along too.

I didn’t quite know what to expect. One the one hand I had my father nostalgically recounting the details of the first ever ConFest in 1976, which he attended (cue harrowing realisation that although you have always considered yourself cooler than your olds, you are in fact following in their exact footsteps and if things continue to play out this way you will soon be making bad puns at every opportunity and hoarding boxfuls of glass jars in the shed for no apparent reason*). My dad was telling me with enthusiasm all about seeing Jim Cairns speak, so I was beginning to form the impression that is was going to be more of a politically-minded hippy fest, rather than the hedonistic hippy fest I was envisaging, with psytrance freaks, trippers et al (although I have to admit this isn’t actually my scene and I was quite relieved to find it wasn’t the case).

The drive there was long. So long that by the time we emerged from our metal wombs I felt I had spent enough time with my companions that no amount of naked mud bathing could bring us any closer. We were greeted at the gate by forty something man who, although he was sans pants, was very cheerful and helpful and gave us the festival low down while we attempted to keep our eyes from drifting low down (here come the bad puns... I told you.)

We set up camp, and as the experienced ConFesters among us pulled from their bags rugs, sarongs, incense and an array of tubs containing various seeds (for eating?), I slowly come to the realisation that some of us (the ones who ad brought the new-fangled super-fancy pop-up garden gazebo) had perhaps packed to practically. Not to worry. With the combination of pretty, floaty, nice-smelly things, and shade and comfort providing apparatuses, we actually ended up with one hell of an awesome set up. And so we went off to explore.

We pretty much got lost every time we left the camp (who knew that tents all look the bloody same?) but it didn’t really matter because the festival had more than one area of activity, and there were new and exciting things to find around almost every corner. There was the Arts Village, where paint and dust and expression all collided, the doof tent, where those for whom the tranquillity got a bit too tranquil escaped, and a huge chai tent. There were fire twirling circles and drumming circles, a silent disco where dancers listened to their beats on headphones, a market space that was a vegetarian foodie’s heaven, and of course the beach (the festival is set on a bend in the Edward river) where refreshingly un-self-conscious people swam and bathed in mud… in the buff of course. My first venture down there was in my togs, and I have to tell you I have never felt so self-conscious for wearing clothes. I felt like everyone was staring at me, although in actual fact they were more likely having too much of a good time enjoying nature at it’s finest to notice. But in that sense it was kind of like one of those dreams where you suddenly realise you are naked at school or something, and you are panicking even though no one else has noticed… except in reverse.

The main focus of the Easter ConFest (there is one over New Years as well) is the workshops. Run by anyone, and attended by anyone, they range from your standard yoga, meditation, palmistry type workshops, to more bizarre topics like a workshop on decision-making, which in theory is a great idea for a festival full of people too stoned to decide whether to open the cheddar or the BBQ Shapes**, but in reality meant most people just decided not to go. I did however do a Latin dancing class run by a man in his underpants (and you got the feeling the underpants were just an afterthought too), and something called “Spontaneous Choir” which was run by Steve, your quintessential tie-dye shirt wearing, long hair sporting aging hippy. Spontaneous choir was a bit like a drama class for a group of about three hundred. The funniest part of it was an exercise where we made two lines, facing inwards, and people would walk through the two lines with their eyes closed while the people on both sides touched their shoulders and sensuously (Steve’s word, not mine) told them they loved them as they passed. It was a bizarre sensation that actually made it sound as though you were hearing the voices in your head, so as funny as it was, I was glad when the opportunity to get in touch with my inner schizophrenic was over, and we just went back to communal clapping activities and the like.

Packing up on the last afternoon, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave. Sure, I was beginning to get a little freaked out by “mud tribe”, an activity where mud covered folks break off into tribes and communicate with nothing but primal grunts all afternoon, but beyond the oddities, I had discovered a really peaceful, cooperative atmosphere at the festival that I hadn’t experienced anywhere else. Everyone was friendly and smiling, but it was more than just that. It was this sense of community that had sprung up in the middle of nowhere between a bunch of strangers, a sense that hadn’t been imposed on us by organisers determined to run a festival with a “great vibe”, but had rather just developed organically. In fact, I got the feeling the festival barely even needed organisers, festival-goers just seemed to look after themselves and others so well anyway – not leaving a scrap of rubbish anywhere even though there were no bins and you had to take it all home with you, returning the ceramic mugs and plates to the food stalls who gave them out rather than disposables, even the fire safety system was based on the principle that if you heard a whistle, you were to go to in the direction of the sound to help put the fire out yourself. Oh and how could I forget the dedicated individual who went around to each and every tent on Easter Sunday eve to plant chocolate eggs?

But it was time to go. I had responsibilities back home to attend to - uni assignments pilling up, tax returns needing to be done. So with my newfound faith in humanity, I breathed it all in one more time, and reluctantly hopped in the car to go. Besides, I thought, I probably need to go and get started on my glass jar collection.

* I suspect it might have something to do with a desire to make marmalade that has never been realised

**Both, in the end

A Polarising Issue

Recently, a friend and I have started doing pole-dancing classes. A trend that has attracted more than its fair share of public attention in the last few years, pole dancing classes have become about as original a blogging subject as a pair of fluffy slippers has a gift for Nan.

But hear me out! As someone who holds a firm opinion on everything from which way to the toilet paper should hang (underneath), to whether people who drive four wheel drives in the city should be rounded up and shot (yes, mercilessly), it has pained me for some time that I haven’t procured an opinion on the whole pole dancing - degrading or empowering? debate.

Considering I have, for the last few weeks now, been putting on a pair of hot pants and hooker heels every Monday evening, and trotting off to gyrate on a pole and pout at myself in a mirror for an hour (and, I’ll be honest, having the time of my life while doing it!) you would be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that I have moseyed on over to the empowering corner of the ring.

But there’s just something about dolled up, scantily clad women spruiking feminist ideas that has always seemed a little misguided to me (as I’m sure it has to many). I’m not sure when exactly the burning of bras made way for the seductively stripping off of bras, or when a woman without a man became less like a fish without a bicycle and more like a girl with no reason not to get shitfaced and pash eight men whose names she can’t remember, but the idea of feminism seems to have taken a few odd turns since my generation came of age.

On the other hand, it has struck me as prudish and judgemental when a few friends have given me that look of disgust, laced with a hint of pity (the kind of look you would give to someone who has food on their face but doesn’t realise it), when I have told them why I’m busy on Monday evening.

So I’ve felt a bit torn. I desperately want to defend my newfound hobby, but don’t feel particularly comfortable pretending to be some kind of Gen X Germain Greer while I strut around with my tiny shorts riding up my bum. Sorry, that’s just not right.

But this morning while I was doing the dishes – this activity isn’t related by the way, I’m not delving into gender roles here, it’s just that the kitchen sink is where I do lots of thinking and often have my epiphanies – I had, well… an epiphany.

I suddenly realised why it is that I can’t stand either corner of my proverbial degrading vs. empowering boxing ring. Both sides seem to be basing their arguments on the same, shocking misconception – that there is something wrong with harmless and private expressions of sexuality.

While this is an obvious trait of the anti-pole dancers, I have realised that some of those who endorse pole dancing are guilty of the exact same thing - by trying to convince everyone that pole dancing is not necessarily sexual. Pole dancing for fitness! Pole dancing for fun! Pole dancing isn’t about sex; it’s about toning your arms! No, smelly gyms and dumbbells are about toning your arms, you are gyrating on a pole, I am gyrating on a pole, it’s totally sexual… and that’s okay. In fact, pretending what we are doing isn’t sexual is what is potentially morally dangerous in my opinion, because then we are just a bunch of women having a work out on a normal weekday evening… while wearing push up bras and six-inch heels. If you ask me, it gets weirder and sleazier when you pretend there is nothing sexual about it.

So the next time anyone tries to tell me how great it is that we are “getting fit” while we slither up and down our poles, or the next time any of my friends look at me like I have food on my face, I will say no; no you are both wrong. On Monday evenings, I feel sexy, and until I develop hooker heel induced back pain and chronic wedgie syndrome, there’s nothing wrong with that.

What's on the box?

Over the last month or so I have had the feeling that I am someone seriously in need of a heart re-stringing and a course in Compassion 1.01. Every time I turn on the television and hear tales of woe from Victoria’s bushfires, I find myself callously moaning a low “whooo caaares”, much to the shock and disgust of my couch companion.

As a normally empathetic person who cares for all forms of life (I have been known, in my younger years, to have pulled the wings off the odd fly with tweezers, but I can assure you I am now completely reformed), I myself have been shocked by these thoughts. Hundreds of people have died, I tell myself, the number of houses, of homes lost, is in it’s thousands. How can I be so cold?

Then, while watching the news on a commercial station of questionable quality (a description so easily applicable to all three, I know, but I just like to keep you guessing), something became apparent to me.

The urgency and solemnity with which commercial news and current affairs readers report on such fickle issues as diet fads, dodgy tenants and the footy, makes a mockery of actual newsworthy items like the Victorian bushfires when they are ungracefully lumped in the same half hour.

One could hope that when these real issues emerge so unexpectedly from the sea of faux news items that they would seem especially significant and poignant by comparison, as in deed they should, but I fear this is not the case. Instead these meaningful and important issues seem to have a chameleon effect, blending in with the other items that viewers sensible enough to judge a dodgy tenant story’s* importance (or lack thereof) will promptly shrug off.

See it’s not that I am particularly insensitive (although a couple of wingless flies may beg to differ), it’s just that I have grown so accustomed to throwing the nearest un-secured object at the television screen in frustration every time a commercial news report comes on, that it has become an automatic reflex of sorts.

And this screen battering Terrets doesn’t stop at news and current affairs. Oh no. The array of spectacularly bad reality television shows on offer at the moment is hardly an original complaint, but I doubt anyone has broken as many coffee cups as I have in anger over the notion that obese people exercising is entertainment.

And I know that many hold the view that television programming has been on the slippery slope to shitsville for ages now, but is it just me, or has someone poured some extra grease on the slide in the last few months? Perhaps it as something to do with my being out of the country for most of summer - my perception I mean, not the actual programming, as I am in no way suggesting that the fate of Australian television rests on my presence within national borders, although isn’t that an interesting thought? No what I mean is, after being away from it for a while you come back to discover things you are glad you had forgotten. Like television programmers penchant for immediately thrusting a contract in the face of anyone who proclaims that “I tell it like it is. If I don’t like you, I’ll tell you. Uh ha!” Plus, you know, when I was away in Europe, once it hit midnight every channel just started showing soft-core porn, and that’s pretty hard to compete with really.

So for the sake of preservation of my coffee cups I think I’ll just stick to ABC and SBS for now. The fantastically smug “News from home, if you live in the world” slogan that SBS has taken on of late gives me the feeling that events like the bushfires will be put into context along side similarly significant events (and even, gasp, those that might have more significance).

I also ruled out the possibility of any kind of a social life on Wednesday nights again this year once I saw ABC’s line up. Another season of The Gruen Transfer will afford me many an opportunity to appreciate Wil Anderson’s particular elongated elf kind of attractiveness (oh yeah and the show’s pretty good too), and nothing beats the comforting, sitting down and chatting with your wise but hip parents feeling I get from watching Margaret and David’s adorable bickering on At The Movies (am I the only one who assumed for ages that they were married but just didn’t share a surname?) And if these shows go off the air, at least there’s the knowledge that I could revert to picking up the tweezers and taking my anger out on some flies. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

*Alright so I am mainly talking abut current affairs here. Perhaps I’m being a bit hard on the old newsreaders. Natarsha Belling, for instance, is a lass of considerable intelligence whom I particularly admire, if only she didn’t insist on spelling her name like such a wanker.