Lightning in a bottled puddle.
The whole idea of putting lightning in a bottle seemed silly except in that far-off twinkle of a metaphor flitting through the moss laden branches of my mind’s quagmires. It intrigued my sense of magic and wonderment; an eco-friendly fringe music festival in the middle of an oak prairie which featured musicians such as Bassnectar, The Glitch Mob, and Yard Dogs Roadshow.

Each stage was a feat in temporary construction. They had to go up in a really short amount of time, be able to survive the elements as well as the participants’ various states of inebriation, and still be pleasing to the eye. Each stage had its own style of decor. The Bamboo stage (or main stage) was a wondrous structure built of split timber bamboo bent to create a Hollywood tribal feel created by the bamboo artisan Gerard Minakawa and his crew. The Orchid lounge was a quiet, non-amplified stage meant for relaxing. There were couches, beds and swinging chairs to recline and enjoy the diverse subculture of Lightning in a Bottle.

The Woogi stage felt like it was birthed of the earth: two huge cloth domes stood as sentries to the dance area. The last stage was the Tree house. This was a post-industrialist robot’s control panel, the work of master creator Shrine of Lucent Dossier. The stage was an amalgamation of fabric walled “stagelits” held together by a mechanical themed proscenium.

They tried so hard to achieve a green festival; they had set up a vast array of solar panels to store energy for the four stages. All in all there were many things that needed improving but it was a great step in the eco-direction. They had no trash cans (to encourage people to pack it out), only a few recycling cans and a very centrally located composting bin. The main problem was that there were so many people, and once it was dark out the only real light was in the stage areas, so trash and bottles would quickly fill the available receptacle and with no alternative place to put it, it went on the ground.

Every morning at 8:00 am the green team would set out on the daunting task of picking up all the rubbish that was left the night before. It took till about 10:30 am for the stages to start to pass as clean. The bags were loaded into a truck or a golf cart and hauled back to the large trash dumpsters. The next task was to get the recycling into its dumpster. The large garbage cans were too heavy to lift over the top even with two people, and the front doors were closed because it was already almost full. They had to re-sort the large cans into smaller cans to be lifted over into the bin.

By noon the place looked clean. All the MOOP (Matter out of Place) was tucked away in its proper location. The port-a-pots were pumped out, clean and restocked. Even the people had had time to shower, eat, and greet the sun. Each new day would bring out new costumes…

There was an area dedicated to workshops on sustainability as well as a few impromptu workshops scattered through the campground. But as night fell the whole atmosphere changed to a loud cacophony of competing beats and rhythms cascading through the oak canopy. The light of LED’s swept across the gloom, giving landmarks for the bottleites to help them find their camp.

All manner of creatures came out at night. A psychotic screaming kamikaze sumo wrestler on a miniature motorcycle illuminated by a white unholy light narrowly missed hitting my group as we left our camp. I saw a few giraffes, their large heads sticking up over the crowd annoying those behind them. Though the strangest critter at the whole festival would have had to be the little old man in all white, with a spotless top hat and tux, who got down and funky with some mechanical grooves with his wife in an outfit straight out of Little House on the Prairie. These two were two if not three times the age of most of the participants.