Between Sets

I arrived expecting to remember the bands.

In some ways, of course, I did. The line-up was the reason for going. The music was the reason for packing, travelling, arriving and finding a place to sleep under canvas.

But once I was there, the festival became something wider than the timetable.

It was the campsite slowly waking up. The walk between stages. The conversations around tents. The dust, the heat, the beer, the waiting, the decision of whether to stay where you were or move towards the next sound.

It was the feeling of living outside for a few days, with music always somewhere in the distance.

I was not there working. I was not there as an accredited photographer. I was not trying to turn every moment into content.

For once, I was simply there.

Sometimes the music is not only on the stage. Sometimes it is in the way a place begins to feel like its own temporary world.

That surprised me.

I expected to come home thinking mostly about performances. Instead, I kept thinking about everything that happened between the sets.

The space before the lights went down.

The walk back afterwards.

The way a festival can make strangers feel briefly connected, not because they know each other, but because they are all moving through the same weekend together.

That is something Indigo keeps coming back to.

Not only the artist. Not only the stage. Not only the song.

The whole room.

Or in this case, the whole field.

See you in the Listening Room.