Ahhhhh, 2012.  A very special year.  I've begun to crawl in to this experience, this place that always calls me deeper.  Next year will be different, that has been promised.  That is the future; I can still taste 2012 on my lips.

I arrived with intentions.  "This year I will learn more about how this organization runs, is led, and what a feminist, intentional community looks like from the inside."  Since I discovered just before fest that I wouldn't be at any of the "community" meetings held for crew, I chose patience as the value I would work on this year.  I am not a patient person.  I jump up and down when waiting for Red to get off an airplane.  I call people ten times and hang up before their voicemail picks up when I am trying to reach them.  I buy books rather than wait for the library.

Being on the land before most people arrived was very good.  I loved being a festie and the sweet anticipation of the gates opening.  Helping to build the festival is amazing.  I liked everyone on my crew.  Nancy I called "Coach", BB was my mentor.  Maya and I got to know one another and I can feel a friendship developing.  I followed Rosie around like a puppy.  Her wife Rhonda made sure to remind me several times that Rosie and I are purely platonic.  I am a flirt, but a harmless flirt and Rhonda turned out to be quite the flirt herself.  Rosie seemed to make certain I had a great fest.  I had a wonderful schedule and I hope my crewmates were as happy with the schedule as I was.  We did pass it around and choose shifts. Maya wound up with five nights working so I traded her Sunday night for Sunday day and she seemed good with that.

My very good friends were there as campers and my girlfriend was working her first year on Shuttle.  I do wish I'd had more time to hang out with my friends.  I felt as though I had enough time with Red because she worked split shifts and we could sleep in together on my mornings off and could spend time together later in the day.  I missed seeing my friends as much as I am used to hanging out.  Some of that was early risers/late risers and mostly it was me working 8 hours a day and also helping Red get through a very tough fest.

Oh, that picture reminds me of how very many things I got to do this fest, things I've always wanted!  I got a haircut on the land for the first time.  I brought my clippers and V gave me a nice trim, giving me a most excellent mohawk.  This look was "in" this year, with quite a few butches sporting the shaggy hawk.  I also got to visit Hell's Kitchen and spend some time there getting to know some of the womyn.  It was very nice, and I will be back.  My friends there were very loving and supportive and I see now a small slice of what BDSM has to offer.  It was fabulous.  I also learned how to eat fire.  It is something a friend learned as a Lesbian Avenger, and she taught us.  "The fire will not consume us; we take it and make it our own."  They were doing it at the Triangle firepit and I chanced upon them.  Amazing.

Monday night after the gates opened Kirsten, Lisa and I wandered downtown, watching the night stage techs work on lights and fog machines, we sat out in the field and counted shooting stars.  We laughed until we cried about goofy stuff and we felt such love.  I went to parties, flirted nonstop, and opened my heart.  I missed my kids and learned lessons again, reconnected.

Since I've come home I have had a few conversations with great friends about how happy I look at fest,  how different I look.  I glow, I shine, I am home.  Of course I want that all the time.  Every year I try and bring a little more of that home with me and keep up the friendships and the love that deepens over time.  I guess that is patience.


                                                                           

Why I am wearing red this year

It is not because I hate trans people. It isn’t because I don’t know any trans people, or don’t know that they come to fest anyway. It isn’t because I am not kind, sweet, loving, big-hearted, or that I don’t believe in “transgender” as a legitimate identity and way of being in the world. 

I do know our biology informs our lives, beginning before we are even born. I know patriarchy is real and has a huge impact on males and females alike, and I believe that female only space is a way to start healing some of the damage done to females in patriarchy. I think it is the responsibility of oppressed people to work on their healing in ways that are meaningful and effective, and Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival is that healing space for thousands of females. It also isn’t that I don’t think trans people want or deserve healing, maybe even the kind of healing I find at fest. I absolutely support trans people in their journey and their healing process, just as I would hope for (but don’t really expect, at this point) support in mine. 

Over the years, I have thought about the issue of trans women and trans men at fest. I began without a firm opinion. I visited Camp Trans, read handouts, talked to trans folks in the line, and did readings at home as well as talked to festies and trans people I know. I listened, and I formed my opinion. I do believe that changing the intention to include anyone who identifies as a woman diminishes the positive healing space we have. The past two festivals have cemented my opinion and created in me a need to use my voice. I’m not always articulate when I feel strong emotions, and festival always brings on strong emotions in me. At first, this made me afraid but I am working to embrace these strong feelings in my life and allow myself to sit with those feelings while I work on articulating them.

So I am wearing red because I support the intention of fest as wbw space. I don’t think it needs to be redefined to “modern” definitions of “woman” because I think everyone knows what is meant but our language and words are being used against us. Continuously redefining “woman”, “lesbian” and “dyke” is only going to hurt females. Over the years I saw Yellow Armbands and TWBH buttons and tshirts, I saw TWBH supporters jump on stage. And last year for the first time, womyn who need and support healing space for females finally had a way to show it. The color red was chosen because it is recognizable and it is symbolic of female blood, shed through violence and through our biology. And the accusations began, that “wbw are being aggressive, are making it feel like gang colors, are making (TWBH supporters) feel bad” by simply wearing the color red. I have had enough of being the good girl and not speaking out when I disagree because I didn’t want to make waves. Womyn who support the intention have been afraid to speak up, afraid to disagree because of the reactions from people who would change the intention of festival as female only space. We are not the aggressors. We are only using our voices, as best as we can, even though we may be afraid.

Fest Culture

How does one describe the culture of a community?  The "rules" both written and unwritten, the policies and procedures so to say, the roles and responsibilities.  What else is there?  It seems like more than this.  I think fest is the first community I have joined with a conscious understanding that I am entering a culture different from mine and it has taken me years to grasp how different.  This is of course due to my white, hetero, middle class privilege.  I have certainly visited other cultures but not with the sense that I am actually joining.  Fest is anything but mainstream.  The way is operates has been described to me and operating under feminist principles, and I've only just started to scratch the surface at understanding what that means.  I have trouble imagining non-hierarchy, living with intention rather than rules, outside of the fest community.  Asking rather than enforcing.  It isn't easy.

I am posting a photo from my very first fest.  The womon is naked, and I asked if I could take the photo.  She gave me permission, and I feel comfortable using it here because she isn't identifiable.  So much of fest culture is changing with technology.  I'm not sure it will continue to hold the same value for me it has in the past.  Photos and video are posted on the internet without regard for the request that privacy be respected.  Last year a professional photographer used a photo of womyn at fest in a show, including topless womyn and not getting permission from them.  I am hoping to learn more about this intentional community by joining the workers on crew.  I feel I have much to learn.  I am a very flawed person, trying to get better and learn how to be a good friend, a good member of my chosen community.

Going to michfest has been a form of radical self care.  It is radical for several reasons.  First, shedding my heteronormative, capitalistic, consumerist self.  That is radical, to peel away the patriarchy which seems to cling like sunburned skin, itching to be scratched, feeling the pleasure of peeling it away and wincing when it pulls too hard, places we are more attached.  We are attached to our oppression in ways we don't understand, can't see until we are separated from it.  

A fest friend is debating whether to come to fest again this year without her partner or buy a boat, which she and her partner can share and enjoy together.  No contest for me:  fest.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of grooming happens on the land while we are away.  I know no one lives there, no one does any "caretaking" of the trees and fields out of season.  But what does it take to get the land ready for all of us to come and camp?  It seems so perfect for our use, how can that just happen?  In any event, the choice to purchase that exact property was well made and it suits us ideally.  The water is delicious, the trees are gorgeous, the camping under the trees is comfortable and easy, and there is enough open space to enjoy everything.


Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Michfest, MWMF

Every stage performance as well as the Sunday day stage has comedians.  Sometimes they are MCs for the show and sometimes they have their own slots.  I have only made it to the Sunday show one time due to work shifts or leaving fest on Sunday.  This past year I was able to see Suzanne Westenhoefer, she was very good.  Karen Williams has grown on me.  I didn't care much for her comedy at first, but over time I have come to appreciate her more.  No one makes me laugh like Elvira.  She seriously hurts me with humor, my whole body aches from the laughing.  She makes fun of us festies in a way that is so sharp, yet it only makes sense because I get the sense that she is truly one of us.  I wonder if all her audiences feel that way?  If so, she is a fucking genius.  By the way, I chose this picture of her from the internet because she looks really hot in that shirt.  And I know she would like that.

Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Michfest, MWMF

Sappho fragments

Come to me now, then, free me
From aching care, and win me
All my heart longs to win. You,
Be my friend.

Stand up and look at me, face to face
My friend,
Unloose the beauty of your eyes.....

The Moon is down,
The Pleiades. Midnight,
The hours flow on,
I lie, alone.

These are three separate fragments from Sappho.

michigan womyn's music festival, michfest, mwmf