The Counterculture is in Resurgence
And this time round, it's inclusive and diverse
I’m writing this while my boots dry out.
Just back from Into the Wild - a festival that I go to every year, with a shifting squad of family members. We use it as a low-cost and low-hassle holiday, as a space of reconnection to ourselves and to each other, and as respite from the crapola of everyday life. Come on in…
I enjoyed reading this week’s Substack festival report from Brian Klaas about Boomtown festival. I thought Klaas was a political scientist (rather than an anthropologist) but their analysis of Boomtown is great - and there’s a couple of very useful concepts in there that you could happily use in your own thought toolkit. (So long as you’re not an ethnography-appropriating, extractive, money-chaser or a wannabe social engineer for Project 25. If you’re one of those, please fuck right off this page now, please and thank you).
Do go read Klaas’ post - first, before mine, to be honest - if it’s analysis you want. It’s alright - stop right now, click the link, go have fun and learn some things about unselfing and modernity’s great crackdown on fun. I’ll still be here when you get back.
OK. That was great, wasn’t it? Did you laugh at the bit about the stuffed psychedelic llama? Wasn’t the observation about mainstream festivals absolutely bloody spot on, in all its absurdity? As Klaas notes:
“In other words, a greater share of people feel a pulsing urge to escape from modern, corporatized life, but ironically, the events on offer are often bankrolled by titans of modern, corporatized life.”
That’s exactly it, eh?
Marc Rebillet (as Klaas writes him) sounds like he could be amusing, but chugging 4 beers and losing your job because you’re late to work feels more like a tactic than a strategy. Anthropologists have debated since the start of the discipline whether temporary uproar can ever translate into meaningful systemic critique or produce lasting shifts in public consciousness. We’re still arguing about it.
As an anthro, I’d want to chuck into Klaas’ rich analytic mix something about Bakhtin (carnival and the European traditions of letting-off-steam-and-going-bonkers); something about Gluckman and rituals of rebellion (world-turned-upside-down as a necessary if occasional part of life in a hierarchical society; a nod to Victor Turner’s enormously influential work on liminal spaces / moments; something about Hakim Bey’s TAZ (temporary autonomous zones); and a bit about Foucault’s heterotopias, cos utopia is literally going nowhere, babes.
But you know what? I’m doing less ‘analysis’ here and more ‘processing my own post-festival shit’ right in front of you all. I’m also not here to write a bloody undergrad lecture (hooray!) and you’re well able to look up any of these ideas that you want to follow. Just go carefully with Gluckman - nice concept guy (rebellion!) and an outspoken critic of empire, but still generally assessed as one of those classic colonial anthros, imbricated in the whole system. Yes! Sometimes people can be very smart and loving, and also products of their times, what can I say? It’s a hazard that comes with whiteness and God knows I’ll be working to recognise and undo the rubbish in my own head and embodied actions until I dissolve back into proper Oneness and become compost.
As we’ve had compost and shit already, let’s dive in.
Into the Wild has only compost toilets - making humanure. No stinky and toxic chemicals. No splashy mess. No vomit-like portaloo stench. I first met these kinds of toilets in 1980s village India, where ash from the cooking fire was used to cover the crap. Marvellous - and we need more.
Compost is something my grandparents and parents - keen postwar gardeners - taught me to love; and ITW had plenty for compost fans. I went to a talk about how to build and nurture soil, and ate some gorgeous meals from composters and allotment-holders.
I ate a lot of good food - not a rubbish meal all weekend. An especial favourite was Kumar’s idli. We got five. That’s 5! (A south indian idli set is usually 3 or 4). This was great food and a lovely story, too.
Something I notice, year on year, is how ITW is growing in diversity. The festival has always tried to work with indigenous knowlege and global musicians (see the programme here). Many of the year-on-year faces and workshop-givers are invited in from beyond the local, mainly white, Sussex community.
This year, our little fam was very happy to find so many queer and Global Majority people among the attendees. It makes a difference, when you can see yourself reflected and feel - this space is for me, I belong here.
And while the festival is all about that deeply problematic concept - Nature - there’s a more subtle approach going on here than we sometimes find in some of those scenes, where people can too-easily get caught up in land-soil-people, resources, ancestors, nature spirits and - oops, before you know it, have gone full-blown ecofascist.
We went to a Celtic shamanic ritual, led by Sussex Woodland Bard School. First off, the ritual facilitator was queer as they come. This, for me, connects me into my experience of rural Indian village shamans and sannyasis in Kerala, who were - as renouncers from the mundane world of heterosexual marriage and family - often queer-coded. (Yes! just like Catholic priests! and loads of other spiritual and ritual specialists around the world since, like, forever). Queers have always, globally, been prominent in spiritual and shamanic spaces. (Another undergrad lecture swerved here, but you can look at this if you want to go and think about that a bit).
Jonathon Huet, on his feet, spoke to us, as we lay on our backs in the yurt, looking up through the roof hole.
He explained that we all have both horizontal and vertical relationships with the land and all the creatures and spirits who live on it. Anybody who is currently living on this land, he asserted, is in relationship with the land and its spirits; this is the horizontal relation. Any land that you have ancestral connections to is your vertical connection. This pleased our group. The Black British folks, living here but with ancestors from far away, belong, according to Jonathon, just as much as anyone who can claim to be 10 generations deep on this land. Those of us who are displaced from ancestral belonging do, in the spirit world, still belong. For Jonathon, both our roots and our routes make us and connect us to the land.
In this space named as Celtic shamanic, then, Global Majority people were named and included; that was beautiful and it made a difference. No blood and soil bollox here! No Viking blood nonsense or ‘7th son of 7th son’ type claims to belonging. We all belong. Because we’re here. Bloody right.
We heard two or three times about this right to belong and about the naturalness of inclusion from the facilitators (look, I’m an anthropologist - it’s really hard for me to name them as shamans, and I’m working that through with lots of thinking). As they pointed out, the world is one, ultimately humans are one, the environment (or, if you will, Nature) is one. (I’m deftly avoiding an over-explication here of why calling it Nature is also another modernist rationalist bollox). We can all learn to listen to the land.
In the way of this synchronicity-saturated world, the first Substack post on my catch-up feed when I got back was from Peter Reason’s newsletter, where Etain Addey reflects on over 50 years of living and learning the land in Umbria. You can draw a breath, take a moment, and read here. If you’re curious about more land-rooted stories, Susie Mawhinney writes delicate noticings and strong stories from the French hill that shelters her family.
There were a few less-lovely moments at ITW, that were recognisable to me as a bit too familiar from these kinds of scenes. You know, that stuff that sometimes gets shorthanded as mean green: those kinds of hyper-ego behaviours that result in people coming along to a yoga or meditation session and claiming their space aggressively and in very ungraceful ways. It’s all about them! Their spiritual development demands it! They need and deserve this experience! Much more than you!
A young Black man spoke to me about a nasty incident of this. He’d turned up for a group gong bath five mins before the start time (8am! Heroic -I was still under the duvet in the van, drinking tea in bed and listening to rain).
He’d arrived early, but found that the space was already full of yoga-mat-spreading white people who absolutely did not shift or make space for him. Minutes later, a white woman also turned up, right before the scheduled start time, and simply pushed her way in, striding into the room; people began to move over and make room. This emboldened him to do the same, but, he reported, people were visibly aggrieved. He had to do a gong bath with somebody’s feet pushing hard against his leg and his own body contorted to allow the spreader next to him their full desired luxurious amount of space. And the facilitator witnessed it all, but didn’t do anything about any of this.
I’m fortunate that I can pay for a single gong bath; but if you’re young, Black and broke, and your only opportunity is a group session at a festival - shouldn’t we be supporting that, white people? Shouldn’t we be giving up a bit of our space, for fuck’s sake?
There were more good bits than sour moments, though. I’m not going to checklist, but here’s a couple of treasured musical pieces.
In our fam, we love to dance.
We did a good bit of skanking with the reggae DJ set. When this tune came on, a mixed and joyful dancefloor sang along to the chorus; people made eye contact, smiled in joy, pointed to the skies and sang along. Barefoot or booted on the muddy grass, we enjoyed a bit of that old communitas. It was what you (I) wish church could be: simple, united, joyful, peaceful, connected.
Late Saturday night, I was in the van bed, listening to the live music drifting up from the woodland stage (listening to slightly distant music when you’ve gone to bed is such a festival thing, isn’t it?) ITW regulars Mobius Loop were playing, giving out free and excellent advice, including, “She Deserves an Orgasm” (she soooooo does! So do you!!) and “We’re all gonna die, so dance while you can!”
Brighton based Pollito Boogaloo used their Afro-Cuban music to remind us about the injustice of borders and passports.
So yeah, we danced in the morning and we danced in the afternoon and yes, I even danced at night. We did a bit of singing, too.
Sohpia Efthimiou’s scratch choir workshops from Singing Ourselves Home is always on our don’t-miss at ITW.
What? Oh yeah, no cocaine, MDMA or ket - nothing like Klaas’ Boomtown at all. This is a festival that advertises itself as a space for getting - Into it, not out of it. There’s always a 12-step tent; staying conscious and aware is encouraged for everyone.
What? Yes, there was a bar. Just one. This was it.
Old Tree Brewery from Brighton/ Lewes (Sussex) were selling their AF and very low ABV kombuchas, coridials and elixirs - and we drank shitloads of them. Tried them all. Once again, I marvel at how good a decent kombucha can be - and lament the utter horribleness of my own attempts.
This brings me, inevitably, back to the toilets. (It’s a festival! We’re all about when and where to shit and what it’s like! Kombucha keeps your gut regulated and moving!)
No alcohol means: nobody throwing up; nobody splashing piss all over the seat, missing the spot (I’m looking hard at you, STP people!); no post-beer messy shits splattering around. AF partying also means: no tearful or angry scenes that are out of control, and no people bumping into you in the dance space. And a lot more, but I’ll shut up now. Just imagine it, if you will. Bloody beautiful. We need a lot more sober festivals and gigs.
Festivals such as Boomtown are, yes, corporate, undemocratic, and - as Klaas records - hell for anybody in recovery or who’s just trying to stay away from the behaviours that Class As and alcohol bring on, in themselves or others.
The dog who lives with us just came to nudge me. No hyper-editing or over-thinking on this one, then. After 4 days of separation, it’s time for a walk and a puppy pile.
Dance while you can!
I hope you don’t need me to tell you that, of course, I paid for the whole lot and took no freebies. Nobody (including me) even knew I was planning to write. I’m not a sodding Instagrimmer.
If you’d like to reimburse me a kombucha, that’d be fab. If you’d like to reward the fam for letting me off all domestics while I got this written up fast, I promise to treat them. If you’d like to bung into the kitty for next year’s tix, that would be super-good.
Here’s the tip links, if you can and if you feel moved to:
This was such a fantastic read, Caro—felt like I was right there with you, soaking in the rain, music, and deep-rooted joy of a festival that actually tries to practice what it preaches. Love seeing the recognition of compost toilets as a superior alternative (why are chemical toilets still a thing?), and the emphasis on belonging beyond bloodlines really resonated. That’s the kind of framing we need more of—one that dismantles exclusion rather than reinforcing it.
Also, that anecdote about the gong bath? Goodness. It’s wild how often spaces that market themselves as "enlightened" still replicate the same old power dynamics. A reminder that decolonizing wellness spaces is an ongoing project.
Overall, it sounds like a nourishing experience. Thanks for sharing this—definitely adding ITW to my mental list of festivals worth checking out.
I love this so much! Gives me more to contemplate as I'm fleshing out my upcoming two-part piece about attending the week-long anti-lithium mining encampment in a remote mountainous region of Northern Portugal, which combined activism, educational workshops, and authentic, collaborative, self-organized, and noncommercialized celebratory entertainment. I have things to say about being part of the queering faction in what has previously been a more cishetero dominated space!