Blazing Horse; Celebrating Collective Exchange
So, The Blazing Horse festival, weekend, event, get together, is over. What was it like? Fantastic, stupendous, wonderful, out of time, a crack in space in which much collective spirit and community effort was spilled into, filled, brimmed over, drank. For those members of our mutantspace skills exchange who performed over the 2 days I salute you. You gave it your heart and soul and everyone loved you for it. So before I go on I have to thank Pearse McGloughlin and his Nocturnes (Enda and Sean), Carl Plover, Bill Coleman and Marc O’Reilly. You all rocked.
By the time I arrived on Friday evening the place was transformed. It was no longer the farm I stood in around July time. Over the weeks previous a committed group of friends had set up wigwams for kids workshops, an acoustic stage, main stage, burger van, coffee stall, a shed cum night club, decorations, lights, installations, fires, straw bale seats, tables and a caravan where everyone brought their food for the communal table, drank tea, coffee, ate, talked, sang, smoked, laughed and chilled out all day and night long.
There was a family camping area, with adults taking it in turns to keep watch, a field for everyone else to set up camp in and most importantly plenty of portaloos around the site area.
Blazing Horse is not about being a passive spectator, a consumer, it is about getting involved, helping out, being there and I think I did my bit, well I hope I did. I had a got a few acts for the weekend, I helped facilitate a small kids parade and did a little burger frying late on Saturday night. Not that it was work. Not that I was told too, forced too, put in a position too. No. It was because I felt compelled through a collective need, desire, to share, give of my limited skills, talent, time to an event that was borne out of that very same spirit. You can’t have your cake and eat it. For real change to happen we all have to take responsibility to change what we can. Then, together, we can overturn anything in our way.
I’m not sure what else to say about the weekend. Words and pithy descriptions only take away from the spirit it engendered in me. It’s timeless quality, sense of community, fellowship, collective responsibility and wonderment are all feelings that will ripple forth and grower larger, wider, vaguer yes, vaguer as time moves on but this I know for sure;
My past at Burning Horse has already informed my future.
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