Wow...where to begin?
Gratitude. Thank you, everyone, for helping us get this festival off the ground again. Your endless enthusiasm and energy are what makes throwing one of these so much damn fun. Special thanks to my (occasionally coerced into it) instructors: </a></b></a>
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rassayana , </a></b></a>
yojimbob (even if rain/scheduling didn't permit Qi Gong to gong, I appreciate the work you put into the class), </a></b></a>
webspinner1 , </a></b></a>
ckackley , </a></b></a>
droops and </a></b></a>
odilla . Additional thanks to my wonderful ritual assistants, </a></b></a>
emcic , </a></b></a>
fala_redwing,
berkanna ,
scorpionrose ,
katie_r_doherty . And thank you, of course, to the amazing Cassandra Syndrome crew:
legolish ,
scorpionrose ,
ckackley ,
katie_r_doherty ,
whiteknucklejoe and my beloved
revelrain .
Thank you to the entertainment--to Imakhu, The Dreamscapes Project and The Mathers Creek Band.
And, most especially, a huge thank-you to Tom Vandeberg (otherwise known as Rev. Midnight). It takes a special kind of person to trust a crazy musician enough to put a whole festival into her hands. Thank you for letting me do this. I'm already formulating plans for next year ;)
The festival began Friday. Crew and I arrived on site around 10 am. We spent the majority of the day putting things up--directional signs, pavillions, tents, sound system...you name it. It was awesome to see everyone roll in all bright-eyed and excited about the festival. The first workshop was on bellydancing, led by Imakhu. I was involved with dinner prep/additional camp setup, so I didn't get to attend that one :*( Looked like a ton of fun, though, and I heard great things about it.
The meadmaking workshop was next, led by </a></b></a>
rassayana . She and I both brought bottles for the open tasting and were generously gifted with three more by other meadmakers at the festival. It was great--meant our newbies got to try a nice variety of meads. Hopefully we've infected a few more people with the meadmaking bug :D The workshop was followed by a mead competition. </a></b></a>
fala_redwing developed some really wonderful judging sheets for the competition. Point values for certain things, followed by an area for feedback. I actually only looked at mine this morning. One hilarious thing I noted was the change in the quality of handwriting from the first category I was entered in to the next. Looks like our judges were having a fine old time of it ;)
A performance by Imakhu (and her AMAZING didgeridoo player) rounded out the evening. The generator gave us some trouble, but it finally decided to behave itself by about midway through her act. Excellent stuff--fantastic drumming, dancing, storytelling and singing. It was a great lead-in to that evening's drum circle.
I was so bushed by the end of Imakhu's set that I actually ended up calling it a night then. Heard Friday's drum circle was awesome, though.
Saturday dawned rainy, unfortunately :( The biggest downside to that was losing our Qi Gong workshop. Even if scheduling had worked as planned, the workshop would most likely have not gone forward. That's one of the many things I've been writing down to begin planning for next year--a specific, covered location where EVERY workshop is taught. Having them all over the event site was too confusing.
The good news was that the rain cleared around 11 or so. Although we had a very muddy event field, at least it was glorious and sunny. I finally had a chance to see the main ritual I've spent so much time prepping go through. For those of you who weren't there and are still reading (my Gods, you are dedicated--I'd have given up on me by now), the ritual was all music. Literally no spoken words--I designed a 25 minute long track that used chants for each section of the ritual. The visual aspect of the ritual was perhaps the most unusual part. Each Element was represented by two people wearing masks in the appropriate color. The Deities were actually puppets. Giant puppets--the kind one wears with a harness. So our Sun God and Moon Goddess were about 10 feet tall with articulated arms and flowing gowns. The 'work' of the ritual was a blessing of each participant by the Elements and the Deities. Ritual attendees passed around the circle and were gifted with a lei in the appropriate color by each Element, then passed through the God and Goddess in the center. It was fun to see everyone still wearing their lei's later in the night. Yes, there will be pictures, btw :)
I was pretty wiped after that, so I ended up crashing, which meant I missed a bunch of the other workshops. That's the downside of running myself ragged organizing, I guess--I miss a lot of the fun stuff :(
Which brings us to the evening concert, the next part of the festival I was conscious for ;)
We ended up reordering the sets at the last minute--TDP was running late, so we went on first. Fun set--it was wonderful to have a big stage to play on! I ran all over the place. And I got to debut my fantastic new loincloth that the brilliant </a></b></a>
scorpionrose created for me ;) TDP was next. I love that band. So, so very much. Which means, of course, that we did something horrible to them. You see, after they covered one of our songs at Brigid's Faire, we decided that they won the prank war. Thing is, they seemed so terribly crushed when I admitted defeat. So we decided to start up the war again.
We all watched the start of the set, then walked off the field during their second song. TDP has a huge white band van that they use to transport their instruments. To our intense delight, they parked the car behind a shed, rendering it invisible from the stage. Earlier in the week, a member of our gang who shall remain nameless (to protect the guilty) purchased a large stash of window chalk, ribbon and bows. We spent about half an hour decorating the van. Oh, it was beautiful. Completely covered. Pictures will come soon, I promise.
Then we went back to watch the rest of the set.
After they closed the set, we ran back to the van to await reaction. Much hilarity ensued ;)
The only damper after that was...well...the damp. The Mathers Creek Band, a fantastic 8-piece country-rock outfit from Florida, was scheduled to go on stage after TDP. Unfortunately, the heavens chose the changeover between sets to open on us. There was a massive chaos of hauling gear out of the weather and loading it into protective vehicles once the rain thinned.
Fortunately the storm passed quickly enough. The problem was that the actual surface of the stage and most of our cables were wet. Electrocution is an ugly beast, and one no one wished to tangle with so far away from a hospital ;) So, we decided to try a different tack. Everyone was beginning to relocate to the fire circle, so MCB did an acoustic set at the fire. I think, in retrospect, it may have actually been a better show that way. The whole festival was there, and the firelight and and energy down there was just wonderful. Everyone's a little bit country somewhere and there's nothing quite like a campfire and mead to make that wee bit of country come out and sing along ;) MCB's campfire set was a fantastic lead-in to the drum circle that evening.
And it was a ~lovely~ drum circle. I have memories of dancing, of drumming, of chanting, of talking to wonderful people. All the bits and pieces that really make festivals worthwhile for me. Gods, it was fun.
Which brought us to Sunday. Tear-down. Always sad. I hate to watch our little village get all packed away. The one bright spot was a fantastic closing ritual led by </a></b></a>
odilla .
The only downsides were the weather and the campground itself. The campground...oh, the campground. Where to begin? No water or electrical hookups out in our region. The bathhouse was not a walkable distance. And the trash...my gods. Every single firepit was a disaster of cans, broken glass and other detritus courtesy of drunk idiots. Also, there was an off-road vehicle convention going on in one of the other loops of the campground, so we were subjected to constant noise of trucks on the trails nearby, not to mention some of the idiots trying to cut through our camp on their way to other trails. Definitely made us cranky, preciousssss.
That said, all the work, all the energy, all the joy everyone brought to Midsummer really made that fade into the background. What's staying with me now are my ideas for next year, my memories of drums in the night, of laughter and chatter, of ritual and song.
I can't wait til next summer....
cheerful
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cassyndrome , CS did an interview with Sonic Cathedral--they're a webzine that specializes in female-fronted metal. I think it came out really well. As 
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