I was hit by a double blow midweek, as the images of artists recording their sets for last night’s crowdless, glitch-affected Glastonbury live stream coincided with the cryptocurrency crash. I’d bought some #BTC and #ETH for my godchildren, on the grounds that if it went well they’d have enough dough to roll around in Bolivia for a few months when they turned 18, and if not they’d have a good story about their bankrupt godfather. I was gloomy remembering that for another year festivals will remain unattended, then doubly gloomy watching my holy crypto dwindle to a puddle. Is this really what Jesus wants for these blameless youths?
I suspected I was in a minority in having a foot in both camps. The kinds of people who love Glastonbury, and festivals more generally, are not the sort to set much store by the blockchain, except when it helps them to buy drugs off the internet. The more I think about it, though, it seems to me that Glastonbury and bitcoin have more in common than their supporters would like to admit. One is a brilliant idea that has grown completely out of hand, bears little relation to its early incarnation and is increasingly beset by environmental anxieties. The other is a cryptocurrency.
More importantly, both are binary identity signifiers, in that you’re either a festival person or not, just as you’re a crypto person or not. Once you’ve eaten the pill, metaphorically (crypto) or literally (festivals), you never shut up about it. They inspire evangelism. In the case of crypto, it’s because the value of your holding increasing depends on other people being prepared to pay more for the things after you. Some have observed this mechanism is not totally dissimilar to a classic “pyramid” or Ponzi scheme. The bitcoin buyer, unable to stop saying the word “fiat”, knows he is cannily placed on the arc of history, and that the sun is setting on government-controlled money.
There’s a comparable dynamic at work with Glastonbury. It’s an emotional pyramid-stage scheme where the reward is as much to do with the idea of the festival as its muddy, exhausting, reality. The Glastonbury of the mind is an illusory vision of the nation where people briefly stop arguing about private school and fishing quotas to wiggle around to Beyoncé and have their chakras read. A nirvana where you can sing “ooh Jeremy Corbyn” without being obliged to vote for him. Like crypto, Glastonbury sucks up more energy and column inches than it ought to because there’s a hope that if everyone can just keep believing, perhaps it will come true.
For those who attend Glasto in person, securing a place is proof not only that you want to go, but that you are able to obtain a ticket, either by being online at the lucky moment, being one of the 4,057 staff the BBC sends every year, or by having enough cash and contacts to circumvent the system. A weekend that invariably ends up costing £500, even if you’re not “glamping”, is elite by definition. Although the proceeds were for charity, the festival was being true to its modern identity when it charged £20 for this year’s livestream. For geriatric millennials and early-stage boomers, it’s also proof that you can physically still endure the weekend. All those hours of peloton and yoga are worth it. It’s a way to show off, a kind of temporary country club for people who think they are better than golf.
The millions of people who watch Glastonbury on the BBC every year experience something similar. If they’re festival lovers, they are nostalgic for the person they were. As they see Neil Diamond croon to a few thousand baffled teenagers who got lost on the way to Stormzy, the armchair ravers are temporarily transported to a more hopeful time in their life, when an all-nighter meant more than lying in bed cross about the ending of Line of Duty. “Ah, Glastonbury,” they think. “I’m a Glastonbury person, too. What a good kind of person to be.” The crowd, the collective energy, is a vital part of the experience, which is why last night’s live stream missed the point. It’s not about the music. A nation in need of healing is not the same as a nation in need of Fix You.
There’s a warning across the Atlantic in the form of Burning Man, the festival in the Nevada desert which began as a genuinely radical week of self-expression, gift exchange and has been steadily co-opted by libertarian capitalism to the point where, as best I can tell, you’re not admitted unless you hold at least a million dollars in cryptocurrency. Glastonbury might be a circus of self-delusion, but at least there’s a pretence at collectivism. For now, festival lovers can cling to the hope that has always been a solace to dreamers, investors, gamblers and bankrupts: maybe next year.
