From pink balaclavas to talking sticks, Nick Richardson uncovers the strange world of the New Age festival |
| Spiritual Humour |
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| Keep Taking The Tablets! |
| It was a sight to behold - the lady dancing, on her own, in the middle of the crowded hotel ballroom. She was wearing a pink, chainmail, knitted balaclava and waving a child's plastic lightsabre. It was a strange dance routine. A sort of Morris dance meets Star Wars with choreography taken from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Not what you'd expect to find at a mind, body and spirit festival, but this was Cornwall - land of the free spirit. The way she was moving suggested the spirits might not have been free, but certainly very cheap... The crowd gazed at the lady with a mixture of looks, some looked amused, most looked baffled, but a few seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it. I must admit my first thought was: 'What a looney! That's not normal.' My second thought was: 'So what? Who am I to say what's normal? Who suddenly made me so important?' Her message, if there was one, was totally lost on me. But did there need to be a message? Perhaps she just got pleasure from doing it and there was no higher reason than that. She certainly appeared to be enjoying herself. Can you imagine how dull and boring life would be if we were all the same? Think of life without diversity, without difference, without anything to challenge our conceptions of what's normal. You would never need to travel abroad or experience different cultures. What a grey world that would be. Heaven forbid, we'd all look like politicians. |
| It's amazing how aggressive some people become when you tell them, for example, that you believe in life-after-death or reincarnation. Why are some people so hostile to other people's beliefs? I've been laughed at many times by people when I tell them I believe that I'm intrinsically a soul inhabiting a body. The usual comment is 'Keep taking the tablets.' The most vehement, are normally those who have never even thought about the subject of spirituality, the sheep who stay safely amongst the flock. Their philosophy is if you don't understand someone, hate them for it. I recently attended a Native American healing circle, where around forty of us sat in a group and passed around a talking stick. The idea was that you are only allowed to talk when the stick is in your possession and it is forbidden to interrupt anybody who holds it. |
| Crippled Ostrich |
| I started to admire the lady. It takes a lot of guts (or in my case, a lot of beer) to get up in front of people and dance alone. If I ever head for the dance floor at a wedding, my sons look on in horror. "Oh no," they panic, "dad's going to dance." They quickly walk away muttering words like "embarrassing," and "crippled ostrich," and "what did mum ever see in him?" On a slightly more serious note, how often have you been ridiclued for saying what you believe in? |
| The stick passed to a young woman whose words have stayed with me, "This is the first time," she began, "that I have sat in a room full of people and not been intimidated. I've always felt the need to explain and defend my beliefs. People have always made fun of the way I look and the clothes I wear. I haven't felt that here today. Nobody had judged me or made assumptions based on how I look. For the first time I can actually be me, the real me." |
| So I've decided this year to follow her example. I shall take my inspiration from a mixture of cultures. I shall dance around in a leopard skin loincloth with badger sporran, and spray the crowd with rice pudding. I will let you all decide on your own hidden meaning in that. To sum up, one of my favourite quotes comes from the American author and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Be silly, be honest, be kind." Which is, in my opinion, a much better saying than, 'buy one, get one free.' Meanwhile keep taking the tablets and vive la difference (as they say in Poland). |
| Rice Pudding |
| That's why it's important to have people like the lady in the pink balaclava. Who perhaps reasons, 'I don't care what you think of me, I'm having a lovely time, and doing nobody any harm.' |