We’ve been seeking that festival feeling for millennia

Why else do we endure discomfort, queues, and sleep deprivation?

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

A singer on a stage holds out his arms to conduct the crowd.

Chris Martin enchanting Glastonbury.

Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why do we go to festivals? It was something I contemplated at 4am while trying to stop a marquee from setting sail into the air during a quintessentially English late July storm. Thankfully we pinned it down, but sometimes it seems we can't get a handle on something until it's been taken away from us. Lockdown allowed us to indulge in some soul-searching about our appetite for summer festivals. A Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee survey of 36,000 people showed that what people most missed about festivals during the pandemic was 'the atmosphere'. The atmosphere, much like that airborne marquee, is something difficult to put your finger on, but whatever it is, you do want to soak it up.

So, what contributes to that ‘atmosphere’? Harry van Vliet from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences compared over 20 studies into motivations for festival-going. He distilled them into: escape, family togetherness, socialisation, and novelty. Other researchers, such as Rippen and Bos, cite realising significance, giving meaning and giving shape, and deploying, developing and maintaining competencies. As abstract and ethereal as our motivations are, at festivals we want to ram the tent peg into the ground, staking the opportunity to escape or to imagine the future. Why else would you endure discomfort, questionable cuisine and sanitation, queues and sleep deprivation? We endure little inconveniences because we have bigger thirsts.

Then there's the gap between what people hope to get out of a festival and what the organisers are aiming for. Spare a thought for those who booked onto the FYRE Festival, which promised ‘a new type of music festival that would ignite the energy and power of its guests’. Instead, they ignited fury, lawsuits, and six years in prison for the founder. The driver here was greed. If festivals are an immersive experience, what the festivalgoers unsuspectingly immersed themselves in was the sad fruit of that particular rotten orchard. Instead of the gourmet meals and luxury villas, the staff ate sandwiches in styrofoam boxes and guests who’d spent up to $100,000 to attend fought over a limited number of mattresses and tents. One legal document from a guest claimed guests were lured into ‘a complete disaster, mass chaos and post-apocalyptic nightmare’.

The performer, therefore, is like a prophet or a priest. We get to enter little portals to the divine.

We know if we’ve immersed ourselves in something more hopeful. I’ve spoken to several people who’ve been to Taylor Swift gigs, all still ‘buzzing’. Cities and countries keep reporting the bounce, the economic uplift they’ve all experienced from a Swift visitation. Deep down, at concerts and festivals alike we all probably know that we’re not there to ignite the energy and power of us as the guests, but to spectate the energy of the maestro at work. They are the ones who plumb the depths of creative introspection for us. They are the ones who concoct, via musical alchemy and a large support team, something reaching transcendence. If we can immerse ourselves in that, then, however fleetingly, all the inconvenience will have been worth it.

Festivals, therefore, are a pick-n-mix of artistry that we can come up close to. And therefore, the thought goes, their creative genius. Which is almost as elusive as the atmosphere of an immersive festival itself. Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, says it was a mistake when we placed the human at the centre of the universe, and the pressure that comes from having to be a creative genius. In her 2009 TED Talk she spoke about Socrates believing he had a daemon that spoke to him, and the Romans believed that they had a ‘sort of disembodied creative spirit’ called a genius. The performer, therefore, is like a prophet or a priest. We get to enter little portals to the divine.

Maybe Coldplay can be right, when on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury they sang to tens of thousands, ‘you’ve got a higher power.’

But what if the founder of the FYRE Festival was actually right? What if the guests themselves at festivals have energy and power, and not just Chris Martin? Millenia ago, this idea was once also floated at the festival of tabernacles, or Sukkot, where the Israelites made a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem and would camp in tents for seven days.

The gospel writer John says that Jesus spoke to whatever it was people had pitched up tents by the temple for:

‘On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’

John goes on to explain that ‘By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.’

Where the Holy Spirit had previously been given to specific people, for specific times and purposes, including creativity, here the Holy Spirit was promised to anyone who would believe in him. And as well as their own fulfilment, the divine creative energy would flow through them to others.

More than a mere atmosphere or nebulous spirit, Jesus claims to be one with the creative energy who hovered over the waters at the start of the Bible, the dwelling place at the end of the Bible where God will be with his people, and drove a stake, or a cross, into the ground to enable this to happen.

Maybe Coldplay can be right, when on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury they sang to tens of thousands, ‘you’ve got a higher power.’

Explainer

Creed

Psychology

Trauma

7 July 2023

4 min read

Thoughts and prayers: why such words can really count

Cop-out phrase or the key to articulating something more powerful, Henna Cundill dissects the neurological power of a platitude.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A Coast Guard officer gives a press conference while looking grim-faced. Others look on.

A Coast Guard office gives the news of the loss of the Titan submersible crew.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected...”

We hear that repeated often enough, don’t we? Some public figure is quoted as saying this phrase in the body text (usually about paragraph five) beneath nearly every gut-wrenching news headline. “Thoughts and prayers” are the panacea, the platitude, the words to say when there is nothing that can be said.

It's easy to deride and dismiss these words, and many do. There is an understandable frustration when public figures serve suffering people with vapidity instead of vim. But perhaps I can make a case for “thoughts and prayers” being more than just a political cop-out? To be sure, these words are not everything, but they are something.

I love words, that’s why I try to write for living. (Try to, anyway.) I love languages too; I’m one of those annoying people who finds learning new languages pretty easy. Lots of people think they are rubbish at this, but they have missed the secret weapon: repetition. If you’ve the willingness to dig in and repeat vocab lists and word tables over and over again, and then over and over again, and then all over again. And then again. And then again, again… then learning a new language is easy. Repetition is the key, because repetition forges and reinforces new neural pathways in the brain.

You see, that’s the exciting thing about learning a new language: you can actually feel the incredible plasticity of the human brain in action. It doesn’t have to be a new language, you can mess with the language you already know – I promise that if you look at a car and say the word “bicycle” to yourself 100 times, the next time you see a car, you will likely have to consciously will yourself not to call it a “bicycle”. Go ahead, try it. (Car) bicycle, (car) bicycle, (car) bicycle … and repeat.

The human brain is constantly linking words and phrases to objects, emotions and perceptions, grouping things together by association. One study showed that participants were quicker to verbalise the word “priest” in response to a photo of a man in a dog collar when they had been shown a picture of the Pope immediately before. This is because the brain stores words in categories of related things, and this language storage system then has the power to shape what we perceive. Due to the association with the Pope, the participants perceived a “priest” and not a “vicar” or a “minister” or even just a “man.”

Think again about the word ‘bicycle’ – in your mind’s eye do you now also see a car? See, I’ve played a trick on you! If you saw the car, then I’ve gifted you a new (and, sorry, totally useless) neural connection between the word bicycle and the object car. You’ll probably unlearn this one pretty quickly – neural pathways can fade as well as develop. But philosophers have long pondered this strange power of language to create our sense of reality – we develop our perception of what exists based on what we can communicate. Put more simply: people generally pay attention to the objects and perceptions that they have words for, and often ignore the things for which they have no words at all.

Having something to say about suffering that gives us the ability to pay attention to it, to perceive and acknowledge it.

Of course, there are no words at all for that feeling one gets when reading about a school shooting, or a natural disaster, a mass murder or an accident. Horror is a screaming silence. “Our thoughts and prayers…” are typically the words to say that we have no words, that we are powerless to articulate what’s going on inside when we look upon the dust and ashes. But, if we take the philosophers seriously, and if we acknowledge the plasticity of the human brain, then putting these words around an event creates certain neural links and associations. It is having something to say about suffering that gives us the ability to pay attention to it, to perceive and acknowledge it, even when we would rather ignore and turn away.

And if you or I actually do think, and if you or I actually do pray for all those affected – especially if we are willing to do so again and again, and then all over again, well then, we have not only created a neural pathway, but we have also reinforced it. We have gifted those suffering people a little place in our minds – perhaps even a permanent corner of existence. They are perceived, seen, and if you have ever been in a place of suffering, you’ll know how much it matters that someone, anyone, pays attention.

Far from helping us to avoid reality, having something to say gives us the means to engage.

Perhaps this is why the Bible repeatedly emphasises the importance of praying for one another, and for the world, and even for one’s enemies? It’s not only that prayer works on God, but that prayer works on us – developing our plastic brains and increasing our capacity to pay attention, to perceive the suffering of others and to allow horror to birth compassion. Far from helping us to avoid reality, having something to say gives us the means to engage.

I am by no means arguing for platitudes instead of political power. Words are no substitute for tighter gun-control, better public safety, standards in public office and/or an open-hearted, open-walleted, boots-on-the-ground humanitarian response. Words are not a panacea, but neither are they powerless. Philosophers and prophets alike have long pondered the mystery that thoughts and prayers create realities – advances in neuroscience have only served to confirm the wisdom that was already in the room. To think and to pray is to create, to speak words that will bring life and breath out of dust and ashes.