Festival

I made a joke to a friend about this festival being my Groovin’ the Moo, but there really were a lot of similarities between this festival and the musical festivals I’ve been too. The crowds! Holy hell, so the one criticism of the festival that I have is that it doesn’t really allow much wiggle room between sessions for people with weekend passes. Maybe a lunch break in the middle of each day? But damn, the crowds in between sessions, particularly at the Capital, were insane. No sticking to one side of the staircase, people stopping in the middle of walkways to look at their phones or programs, getting to the bottom of the staircase and then just standing there. Just a general lack of spatial awareness, really. This isn’t exclusive to this festival, of course, but I really did assume that the crowds at a literary festival would be more patient and more organised. But crowds are crowds. There was definitely a rushed feel to the weekend. Maybe I’m just being a grump, though. At musical festivals I love this kind of atmosphere, and looking back on it I probably could have loosened up and embraced the flood of people who were there because they share the passions that I do. 

It certainly created a festival atmosphere without forcing it, though. The guests seemed to enjoy themselves, the crowd was reactive in the best ways (laughing at jokes, staying quiet while the writers spoke). Overall everybody was respectful to one another (except for the incidents I talk about in another post, but those were exceptions). The audience was responsive to the guests; it was mostly the case that the time ran out before all the questions could be answered than the alternative. Even if a lot of the questions did drag on a bit, it was nice that people were getting the chance to ask questions to those they were interested in. I didn’t attend the book signings because I wasn’t really interested in any of the writers individually (plus, my timetable didn’t allow for it anyway), but giving patrons the opportunity to meet the writers, and also giving writers the opportunity to meet the people who have been following them for years, is a really special thing, and I’m sure would have been the highlights for people who took up that opportunity.