The other day I came about a Midwestern festival. Typical brick roads and some go karts slipping between stands in a sprawling grid of orderly love – and as you catch the hotdog sign with its muted tart color composition so you’d probably wonder if the participants are as cheery within as without.
So much so that my eyes glazed and I looked beyond, maybe fast forward illusionary time – looking toward the sunset giving it all an amber hue. Creaky doors to close. Plopping on egregiously oversized recliners for the evening news. A mother hiding her tears thinking about yesteryears, when the festival used to mean something to her.
What did the festival mean back in the day? She couldn’t tell you why, but this is where I can supplement some words as the Midwestern outsider.
Festivals, window sill pies – these only live in subservience to something higher. The tragedy of the modern festival is that it somehow became the apex. People live for festivals, rather than seek relief in them or enjoy the break in them.
When one begins to live for lukewarm funnel cake, one won’t live much longer. Though a heart’ll still beat and powdered sweet nestles shirts of crease, it’ll all render as a body amongst the other bodies. Bodies placed around our festival venue with an uncomfortable certainty. Uncomfortably so, as there’s nothing to abandon it for.
Well, you may wonder, what would you abandon the lukewarm festival for? And though I won’t know it, you’ll know it to be true: it’s your dreams, whatever your dreams will be, however corny.
Dreams! Dreams.
If all we can hope for is some festivals and a slow death with disconnected families, villages – the weeping mother now lost – then let’s maybe serve our dreams again.