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Now that the featival is finally over, I finally have a second to process everything that’s happened in the past three days.
So much information, so few words.
If there is a way to describe the experience in short, I’d say it was three days of me smacking myself back into the moment.
“It’s hot. Are you going to let that stop you from having a good time?”
No.
“Your legs feel like sticks, doesn’t it suck?”
Not enough to have a bad time.
“Artists you respect are here, don’t you worry about what they think?”
Yes and no. I would love to connect with a bunch of them, but there is no need go impress them. The desire to impress them is just too much ego.
Most of the 3 days was just enjoying music and studying the performances and the event itself, to see what I could learn,
A fair bit of it was battling with self consciousness though.
What would you do if your favorite artist or the person you respect the most in your field of work was standing right in front of you and another two or three people you respect were standing within 2 meters of you in a crowd?
Now imagine it was Japan where people don’t talk to strangers and it’s considered pushy to start a conversation with a stranger in most cases.
Now imagine this is all an independent DIY scene where celebrity isn’t supposed to be the most important thing, and to overemphasize it shows a kind of tone deafness and misunderstanding towards the entire scene.
I’d much rather they know me through naturally stumbling upon my work and through the mutual friends we have than as a babbling fan who is trying to suck up to them.
Even the guitarist who I have talked to twice before. I caught him trying to avoid my gaze twice as he was walking around the festival.
I don’t think he meant to ignore me specifically. As someone who gets a lot of attention, he needs to manage where he puts his energy and he has a lot of close friends and other social responsibilities there. I amxsure he does that with most if not all of his fans. He might be tired or too drunk (lol he definitely was too drunk).
It’s also a cultural thing. Japanese people hate awkwardness so much that in order to avoid being the one who isn’t noticed by the other person, they pretend not to notice you in the first place. This is ridiculously common and drives me crazy 😝 it doesn’t apply if you are an ultra close friend, or to extremey extroverted people but most people here are not that.
Could you enjoy the music if semi-famous people you respect and who you’d love to sit down and talk to are literaly all around you and you had no comfortable way to approach them?
Well that’s what my week was about, trying to keep a cool head and just enjoy the music despite all the distractions around me.
One of my favorite singer/songwriter’s stood next to me during a performance for literally the third time since I started listening to his music. He looked like he didn’t want to talk to anyone but because I’ve run into him so many times I thought we should at least interact, so I gave him a head nod. He gave me one back. Mission accomplished. Not awkward. Not nothing.
The same thing happened with an artist who I’ve been listening to for 20 years who was my first dive into experimental and psychedelic music. I wanted to pet a dog who everyone was petting and noticed her waiting to pet the dog too so I told her to go first so the dogs didn’t freak out over my food.
I hate being this star struck but its to be expected I guess and I shouldn’t be embarrssed by it.
I’ve told this story before the first two times I ran into artist mentioned above. Rather than obsess over them or just accept that I missed my chance to connect, I will use this as fuel to focus on my work and level up.
We run in the same circles and one or two of them even follow me on social media so it’s not as if we will never have a chance to connect again.
In the end I want to connect with everyone as equals, as regular human beings, not with some complicated power dynamic where one person is way more interested in the other. The only way for me to get there is to create work that I love almost as much as I love their work and to find others who like it at least half as much as I do.
My message to rhe festival organizers:
“See you in 2026, I will grow a lot this year so I can share my magic with everyone too”
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https://youtu.be/fxzjCc1bQz0?si=4z7Y4_iAo1pcZdvZ
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