I didn't take my camera to my first Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. I knew instinctively that this was an experience I wanted to live. I didn't want to sit on the sidelines and watch, as our modern culture encourages. I didn't want to observe, report, capture, as though Festival were something I could put in a box and take out later, as if Fest were something I could own. Fest, I thought, isn't a butterfly to be pinned behind glass.
I still feel that way (and it's my feeling only, just for me, and just for now). But ironically and contrarily, I also regret the lack of photos.
The Festival's intention regarding photos is this:
"The Festival is full of beautiful images, and womyn often want to record their experiences here on film and tape. If you receive permission beforehand from womyn you do not know, you are welcome to take photos for personal use Please respect others' rights not to be photographed, and do not take random photos or video of the Festival environment, other campers or performers. In the age of YouTube, what plays here stays here.
"Performers specifically ask that you do not tape or videorecord their performances.
"No photo or video can be published or used for any commercial purpose or for public distribution without specific written permission of each person in the photo or video and the permission of the Festival itself. All Festival images are protected property of the Festival."
Even in my few years of Festival attendance, I've been surprised at the number of womyn taking pictures of crowds and parades, despite the clear intention regarding getting permission from all photographic subjects. It's actually made me unlikely to take my shirt off or march in the Butch Strut. I don't want pictures of my free self showing up on YouTube. That inhibition saddens me, in a place that otherwise breathes empowerment.
Yet before I attended, I scoured the internet looking for pictures. I stared at them, I wondered how the Land smelled, how those tents moved in the wind, how that mud and paint felt as it dried on skin under the hot sun. I tried to put myself into those photos.
It's a fine line. Other womyn may arrive at different conclusions. For me, part of the magic of Fest is that it's Avalon. It's Brigadoon. It doesn't exist except when it does.
I wish there were no cameras at all, and that when we sisters are missing Home, we recapture it by calling one another on the phone, or meeting for coffee or a walk in the woods, or getting together for a campfire and music and chatter.
Now that would be magic.
