At the Wickerman

I had fun at the Wickerman festival on Saturday.  Not being seventeen anymore, and having turned into a bit of a wuss, my partner and I opted to go for a day and a night only.  We were in the area anyway so it wasn’t too far to go for only a wee while.

Oddly enough my favourite thing turned out to be one of the dance tents.  The flickering colourful lights, cheesy computer graphic projections and repetitive rave-style beats all suddenly made sense.   I found I was an expert at that kind of ned-rave-style dancing.  It was also a bit like visiting a living museum, as my partner, who’s a few years my senior, confirmed that yes, this was what real raves in the 90’s were a bit like.

Earlier, we had passed some of the afternoon in the pleasantly monikered Acoustic Village.  It was much more civilised than the rest of the fest, with a Burns Marathon and real ale.  I enjoyed this much more than the ubiquitous pear cider which was sloshing about the rest of the festival.  Not that pear cider doesn’t have it’s place, but I think it’s at teenage birthday parties alongside Malibu.

At the Acoustic Tent I enjoyed Billy Bates and Sambe Sene & Diwan and had a little bop to Fairport Convention over the PA system  between acts.  I found myself doing that strange grooveless bouncing dance at which I have previously found myself smirking when observed in others.  There were definately one or two people smirking at me as I tripped jollily up and down in the sunshine to the merry strains of “Come All Ye”.

It was later in the rave tent that I realised there is most definately a PhD to be pursued in investigating the links between folk-rock and 2 Unlimited, as my stacatto rave dancing boasted uncanny similarities to my folksy bobbings.  Slightly more pointing obscurely into the air with the rave music, mind you.

Why ‘Maps’?

My folk-singing name is Maps, but when I’m engaged in other activities, like staring out of the window, editing silly films about giant chickens (see Burnout Films) or eating apple pies, I’m known as Marie.

So why the changeover?  Several reasons.  The first is entirely pragmatic  - Marie?  Mairi? Mhairi?  Maire?   There’s an ambiguity over the spoken pronunciation of these words that provides a regular lifelong supply of minor irritance for folk with any of the foregoing forenames.  Best avoided I think.  It’s hard to mispronounce “Maps” right?

The second reason is that I’m greatly interested in maps themselves.  This will require a little background explanation, so please do bear with me.

Like all forms of matter, human beings exist in space and in time.  We are limited and consequently defined by space and time in an absolutely fundamental way.  We can’t disobey the laws of physics, by levitating at will for example, or by deciding to alter our mass  so that we are 100 feet or an inch tall.  Each thousandth of a second that passes is gone.  It might only be a moment ago, but we can no more re-visit, re-live or reverse that thousandth of a second than we can go dinosaur-spotting.  So we are subject to the same essential conditions of being as say, a big lump of granite or a greenfly.  However, unlike granite or greenflies, human beings have, for reasons unknown (big fat evolved brains? immortal souls?) the capacity to be fascinated, aware of and often annoyed by the immutable yet opaque realities of time and space.

We are small, discreet entities moving around in a vast and incomprehensible mesh of time and space.  We build an enormous underground machine the size of a city in the hope of uncovering a key, a particle that will cause great shadows to lift and reveal a gleaming, beautifully ordered…something.  We can see patterns and hope they point to an underlying system. We long for meaning and fear that there is only chaos.

We try to find ways to understand ourselves in relation to space, to time and to the other creatures with whom we’re travelling, or jamming, or sharing a bathroom.  And what results from these searchings, longings, musings, calculations and individual cries into the great collective unknown?  Maps, diagrams, schematics.  Drawings, stories and songs.

Phew.  That took longer to espouse than I expected, so I’m afraid you’ll have to guess the other reasons if you wish.  I have an urgent longing for a cup of tea and I must go search for one in the mysterious realms of my kitchen.