As I started out in planning this thesis project, I was excited to dig in to the subject of what a music festival fundamentally 'is', given the high intent required of people to travel long distances in pursuit of an intangible, music-centric experience - and of course, the massive investment of money, time, and social and mental energy they often require.
I began by asking questions like this:
"Isn't it odd that we have to build these artificial spaces like music festivals (or events like Burning Man), displace ourselves from our daily environments, and insert ourselves somewhere completely foreign surrounded by art and music to finally feel like we get to 'be ourselves'?"
Then I realized that maybe this analysis was...backwards.
Maybe the current state of our daily lives, at least in Western, industrialized societies, with their tendency toward incredible and often unfulfilling repetition (whether in school, work, job hunting, cleaning, rising to and completing mundane daily responsibilities), and the general trend toward social isolation and fragmented, superficial communications through social media, is actually more of an artificial construct than the closely knit, self-reliant community that we can experience at a music festival, a community that works, cooperates, experiences and celebrates closely and together.
Maybe the music festival experience is more true to human nature than the modern lives we feel driven to flee, just to feel more alive.
Seen in this way, the kinds of novelty-seeking people chase at a music festival could be about more than just having fun, but also about the self-education our current cultural infrastructures fail to provide. We learn quickly when we have to adapt to new situations, and as Maslow suggested, healthier, fully actualized individuals deal with the unexpected and even crises in life, with more creativity, spontaneity and equanimity. Maybe it's just as important for culture that we have opportunities to pull ourselves out of our daily structures and environments and throw ourselves headfirst in to completely different, spontaneous, even chaotic situations - simply to learn how to deal with them.
Maybe the more we experiment and the farther away from the norm we can get ourselves, the better we can deal with those moments when our daily experience of 'normal' goes completely off-script.
We must manufacture places to chase serendipity.
Perhaps these escapist tendencies and celebrations actually serve us better than our daily routines.
Who knows, but it's fascinating to ponder.
