GLASTON-BERRY ! in memoriam, 2014

glastonbury2


It’s not a place but a state of mind

or no mind as the singer commands us
in another drawn out drawling cry
Glaston-berry ! I can’t hear you…
Glaston-berry ! I wanna see your hands…
and jump like you’ve never fuckin’ jumped before
more and more like a frontman turned
tinpot dictator, Tin Man, hey

as the ghosts of other rallies rise
uncomfortably juxtaposed, to mind
(only seemingly buried in black and white)
as he prowls the Pyramid stage
—as aptly named—
in his white DJ and black tux
effing the air in every other phrase,
when he’s not sheepishly smiling.

And has it really come to this
that a once radical green corner of Albion
an oasis of peace and intelligent love has become
merely a weekend escape from reality ?
A flag-waving feelgood bubble of gum ?
Where we’ll all do as he say
where we’re all spaced out anyway—
and where charities are hired to pick up the litter
we’re too pampered to take home ?

£300 bell tents…abandoned bags of coke,
even a prosthetic leg !

Glaston-berry ! Listen, are you raising our awareness
or just feeding your own spectre at a feast
sucking souls en masse out of the air
into your satisfied faces ? You tell me.

The commentator rhapsodizes that’s how to headline.
F— the heartline, eh. Nigel Farage any day,
or someone who actually has something to say
like Seize the Day, with your power awake
(or Midnight Oil, dancing till the dawn)
before it’s too late. It’s already too late
but that means we’re out of time
where the kingdom of wakefulness begins
and the prophets return to our land
barefoot, speaking of sacrifice
resolution, resilence, love: saint-anarchists
who will only do what they are told
by the One Above.

Let’s have the houselights ! One hundred and seventy
five thousand incarnate souls are here,
each with their own true name.

 

Jay Ramsay
3 July 2014

Pic: Claire Palmer

 


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