On staying when you're ready to go
Valley fest 2022
I wrote a piece about diversity and inclusion at Valley Fest last weekend.
I decided not to publish it… but, I’m conflicted... One week later, I’m still not sure it was the right choice.
I didn’t publish because:
My teenage daughter was working there, and I didn’t want to put her at risk.
One of my friends was there, interviewing the farmer I wrote about last week.
Women I admire, work relentlessly hard to produce that festival, and as far as I could see, the only people I was really going to impact with my comments, were them.
And yet the points made in the piece are valid and true. I’m clear from my experiences working with them that the management team’s attitude towards diversity and inclusion, deserves to be called out… Especially if they’re now billing themselves as a ‘Bristol’ (rather than Somerset) festival.
Something to think about before next year maybe?
This speaking your truth business is hard. The real-life consequences are well… real.
If I wasn’t in Bristol… if I didn’t live 2 minutes away from some of the team… I would have published it.
I would have been further removed from the situation.
Less concerned with the opinions of others.
Less worried that it’s all for nothing anyway… the strategic choice of toxic patriarchy is to simply ignore and carry on. It’s business as usual. A commitment to partying hard as the world burns.
And who I am to judge? I too have chosen hedonistic release over reality, for much of my adult life. Let them dance for fucks sake. Who knows for how much longer it will even be possible?
Today, I am very ready to leave this city.
A tumble-down cottage near the sea calls to me.
Hot, city nights fill with dreams of Dartmoor. Space to breathe. A small scrap of dirt to grow vegetables and keep chickens…
On other nights, I dream of what I know is coming. I sleep fitfully and wake gasping for breath. My heart pounds, as it tries to urgently piece together ideas about how the hell we’re going to feed everybody… damned 3 am.
Still thinking I’ve gone a bit mad? I’m pretty comfortable with that at this point.
For me, the madness is carrying on as if the current economic paradigm has any hope of surviving the next twenty years.
Standing still, not moving, staying put, seeing it through… it all feels counter-intuitive to my gut instinct to cut and run.
I’m flighty by nature… Have always struggled to stay put too long.
When the girl was small, we used to imagine ourselves as the mother-daughter duo from Chocolat, wandering from place to place, distributing sustenance and sage advice.
If life was a movie, this would be the bit where I disappear off to India/Italy/Thailand to find myself, eat good food, and fall temporarily in love with some unsuitable man, before eventually realising that loving myself well is the greatest gift of all.
But alas, life is not a movie. And in reality, change and healing rarely look like the linear line of improvement our cultural narratives tell us to expect. We love an immediate transformation story. Reality is often far less romantic.
My reality is that I’m a single-income parent, with no money to move, and a kid who wants to finish primary school here. Moving him for a year, just to move him again for secondary school, would be selfish and unfair. And so, I am obliged to stay put until next summer.
A year to change a life?
A 12-month transformation game?
Attention paid to the lessons I’m being offered around relationships, mental health, financial responsibility, integrity, accountability…
12 months to heal. To make smarter choices… Sobriety, financial accountability… maybe even some celibacy…
I’m off to my friend’s cabin in the Black Mountains for a few days. Just me, the boy and the dog. Off-grid. No phone or wifi.
Having to stay in Bristol for a year has given me an idea…
