I was uncomfortable at Woodford to hear the Tibetan monks who had been hired to chant the festival’s “Dawn Ceremony”, alongside the thrilling singing of Tenzin Choegyal, being largely ignored or at best treated as background muzak while many people chatted and caught up, hugged loudly and with much syrupy performance, anointed one another with detergent bubbles and photographed one another. As the sun slowly rose and Tibrogargan was revealed giving the eternal thumb to the sky I wondered whether any other performers of the 2000 who comprised this six-day event would have been treated so rudely. Drunken revellers walked and stood in front of seated and even meditating patrons just in time to catch the peak moment – the sun’s disk coming up over the horizon – and with no sense of quietude or of having intruded on a gathering that had formed hours earlier. The main aim seemed to be to get a good seat. I kept thinking, people have no sense of the sacred. Then after a while I began to marvel that even the most oblivious people, even people who will ensconce themselves right next door to non-smokers and then light up, even those who call across a quiet crowd to their friends and then unfold crackling groundsheets right in the “front row”, really do have some sense of the sacred, however deteriorated – otherwise why would they be there? why not stay on at the Pineapple and dance some more? why not go home to their tent and fill the campground with dubstep? We were all drawn to that hillside to see in the year. We were all there to observe something – but I had a feeling that something was more observant than us.
