Secret Garden Party 2015 Preview: The Secret Garden Party of Earthly Delights

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The stage at Secret Garden Party 2014

The stage at Secret Garden Party 2014

So The Secret Garden Party. This is one place that comes with a bit of a reputation. I don’t drink, don’t smoke, and have been known not to smile for hours on end as I sit bemoaning my younger days when I was a non-stop social animal. These days however I am after a more exclusive, less apparent click that delivers the evasive high of human contact without boundaries. Hopefully whilst eschewing the fear that some London street oik is going to threaten you with a stream of speech woefully devoid of consonants that ends up at the point of a knife.

Yeah, I’m looking for that hippy-dippy freedom that prances around in the sun and acts like everyone is another incarnation of Jesus, if our Messianic lord was into VW camper vans and craft beers from North Kent. It’s not that I want some kind of idealistic message with my party either – in fact I’d rather the political and passion fucking shoved a cork in it for the entire weekend, just so I could actually enjoy life. Now it may be some kind of incorrect projection, but you know what? I think the Secret Garden Party might actually deliver on this promise, like the fool ready to jump off the hill and a whole lot of wilt to do.

SGP fancy dress

Dancing to a Different Beat

Ultimately I can pretend that I am interested in the music, but as long as there’s a four-four beat and a decent enough top line that’s free from wobble and wub I’ll be content with the sound. This does mean that I need something far more esoteric to satisfy my mote. I’m obviously talking atmosphere. This has to be that right blend of permissive, expressive energy that’s been ripped up by its own bootstraps and blasted through the roof of the social strait-jacket that we lovingly call normalcy.

All too often we can be forced into a voyeuristic relationship with the festival around us. Countless threads on lesser festival sites bemoan the criticism of criticism in a never ending meta-loop. Souls cry out for some expansive and open-minded individual to jump into the middle of the dancefloor and commit the social suicide of acting like a lunatic to pave a glowing pathway for the binning of our own boundaries. Memories wander and I wonder if I could don that mask again and experience the outrageous energy and symbiosis of being the lightning rod that sparks and ignites the vibe. A release on the dam of pent up energy from too many nights locked up in yourself from worry of what the in crowd might think.

SGP Friday

Pushing the Boundaries

And that’s why I’ve decided to go to the Secret Garden Party. People have told me this is one place where those who cock a snook at the wild and deliciously free folk are out of step with the rhythm of the occasion, and if you don’t dress up like a clown in drag, free from hip and ironic themes, then you’ll be the one left out. It’s the want of that cultured climate that has me hanging on like an addict of a yet unsynthesised drug, pranging like a bitch for that elusive high where you feel like you’ve found yourself, making the rest of your working life into the thing that seems illusory and transient.

So like a clucking zombie of artistic aspiration that needs to be player on a stage where everyone is cast in the lead role and yet is also a member of the audience all wrapped up at once in a crazy moment of self-realisation, I hanker for the right here, right now. I’m going to dress in women’s clothes, talk to strangers in fields about subjects I know nothing about, take the piss out of myself as I prepare to do anything to grab those vital seconds of fun, dance like MC Hammer’s granddad and not care for one iota of time that my cultural references are out of date. It’s going to be a fine old time.

The Secret Garden Party takes places at Abbots Ripton, Cambridgeshire from Thursday 23rd to Sunday 26th July 2015. For tickets and more information, see our Secret Garden Party guide.