![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cheekbones3Well, taking the eight weeks of preparation, bonding and silliness as a given, here's a more detailed sysnopsis of my Beltane. However, this may take a while to put into words as I'm watching the World Snooker final and playing in the later stages of a big poker tourney as we speak.
It started at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning after a final group night of putting together costumes, sewing things up and generally making sure we'd done all that we could.
I spent an hour dashing around, making sure my willowbranch tree-effigy was still holding together while sorting out drinks for the evening, food for the afternoon and generally trying to make sure I had everything that I needed (house keys, tickets for hill and club, trousers and tree). Forced the tree out of my flat, taking ornaments and furniture and lamp shades with it, and made my way up the road, to general ridicule and amusement. Imagine a cylindrical wooden clothes horse draped in brown cloth and painted brown and green with a person inside clattering it on every bus shelter...at least I had another Earth Point person walking with me, so it wasn't that bad, and I like the attention anyway!
We finally made it up to the hill rather sweatily sometime after ten, and it turned out to be a lovely day for the final walkthrough. Nice and sunny, we had a relaxed run through of our pieces along with a lot of lazing in the sun and generally ran about and enjoyed the calm before the storm. Off at this stage, mid-afternoon, down to someone's flat for some grub and to get kitted out, before we went to get painted up.
We move to four and a half hours later, and we walk through town, down Leith Street and to Royal Terrace to get up to the hill in character with tourists snapping photos of us all the way. The dusk is approaching as we get up towards Earth Point's space, and we take a slow tour of the hill to get a feel for things, and to allow a couple of toilet trips.
We then picked up our trees, and made our way to our space, which has been ritually prepared for us, and we enter in a lovely manner, receiving wine, food and a gift from Earth Guard, which was lovely. We then just took up positions around the perimeter of the circle and gently warmed up in silence, this drawing quite a crowd, as it looked like we might actually do something. Unfortunately for them we didn't, and as darkness drew in, we all gathered together, the crowd cleared off to where other exciting things sounded like they were happening, and we had a few words together linked together in our circle. I can't remember what exactly was said, but it was lovely to be altogether like that, keeping warm under a poetic waxing crescent moon. For a few minutes, we sang a lilting acapella and enjoyed our togetherness for the last time (for I doubt all of us will come together in such a manner again, although I hope that enduring friendships have been borne by the group), and those moments before we started are probably my most abiding memories of the evening.
It then came for the events to begin, and we watched from behind as the processional drummers kicked in that wonderfully familiar beat and the fire sculptures lit the night. As things progressed out of our sight, we moved around, preparing in our own ways for what was to come, and the people started to gather round us.
Eventually, after this long-drawn out period of pregnant waiting, the fires of the procession came into view, and we got into our positions. Everything seemed to go pretty smoothly in our performance, and while the May Queen was present, I spotted no major hitches. Once the procession moved through our space however, it became much more difficult to hold our space from the people who saw it not so much as a sacred area for respect, but an easy way to get to the next event area, so my torchbearer persona reappeared for a wee while at this point! Eventually we moved onto the second phase of our performance, the childish games (we ended up with this idea after our thoughts on having a "fiery labyrinth of doom" were (surprisingly?!) knocked back by the production crew). Cue lots of silly running around, basic acro and me getting my false tooth loosened yet again by a misjudged arm movement. I'm getting sick of seeing the dentist! No problem though, and we completed the five-minute game frippery with a swift ring-o-roses and then peace as we all fell down.
Our youthful personae thrown off as we rekindled ourselves, we circled out of our space to move to phase III, our performance on the monument, a new addition for the elemental points this year. I enjoyed this part immensely, as it gave us a chance to have fun in front of a surprisingly large crowd of people who hadn't bothered to follow round the procession, and we acted out our story of people (ferret folk, don't ask!) chopping down the forests and reaching the point of disaster, before one of them realised what was going on, and offered herself as a sacrifice to regenerate the forests. Myself and Tom at this point then suspended the sacrifice (Brenda) upside-down, a la The Hanged Man from the Tarot, and she then (after being righted), brought the trees back to life, and also redeemed the ferret people, and we had a happy, singing-tree Disney-type finish, before was cleared off for Water Point to wash on. After a group salute on the monument again, we, along with Water and Air moved to the stage for phase IV.
Simply, this part was about us holding the space around the stage while keeping the crowd vaguely interested with relevant interactions between the elements (Fire joined us at this point too). The crowd really was encroaching badly, so we resorted to physically linking hands and pushing backwards, which did the job pretty well actually, and then we got our few moments of further stardom by forming the walls of a volcano and trying to encase Fire, and also by barring against Water until they wore us down and we got washed off stage again.
The procession appeared to be taking its time (probably struggling to fight through the (by now starting to get damp) masses of people, so we repeated this three times until eventually the horn was blown to signal the arrival of the May Queen, as well as her consort the Green Man and hordes of Red Men. The usual schmozzle ensues, with the Green Man foolishly touching the Queen and getting killed by her handmaidens. She's nice though and takes pity, his revival causing a lively (and vaguely lethal-looking in the rain)dance about the stage. They are then officially saluted as a couple and go off to light then bonfire, while we all cleared off to the Bower (site of the thrones), got sat down and could actually relax and crack open the booze. A pair of couples got handfasted, the giftbearers represented their gifts, and the red men came along for the dénouement, the temptation of those paragons of purity, the White Women. All night they resist, and even with the Blue Men trying to hold them back, the sheer persistence of the Reds eventually gets them through and the Whites succumb to the charms.
The dance begins! All chaos breaks loose, booze everywhere, tongues appearing in unexpected places, and at last, release! Slight downside in that the torchbearers and stewards seemed to break the line pretty quickly, allowing the public to come in and make a performers' party into a bit of an over-aggressive mess, but this is only a minor quibble. Mostly the Spectators are really nice and appreciate what they see, but by this time, a high percentage of the crowd remaining appear to be of the drunken pervert variety, trying to get their hands on the exposed breasts of the obviously-really-gagging-to-snog-some-desperate-stalkerish-type-bloke-they've-never-met performers, so it would be nice if we got more time together as performers alone. Oh well! Soon enough, it hit one o'clock, and we had to move off the hill to the club. This we managed surprisingly coherently as a group, and the music in the club was excellent as ever, as first the processionals, then the beasties did an excellent amount of drumming, and they were followed by the Green man Bluegrass Band, or whatever they're called.
Casualties started appearing by this time is intoxicants took their toll and stresses of the previous few weeks were released, but we soldiered on with lots of dancing (and on the part of the other earthies, snogging) until sometime after four, where we decided to go collect our booze for the after-after-party, and to make wondrous cheese and lettuce sarnies. I was really flagging by this point, and the rain was coming down pretty heavily, so I really could have done with going to bed, but forced myself onwards. A few of us set off up to the party (we lost a couple more to sleep at this point (well, they went to bed at least)), and we slogged our way to a wee valley at the back of Arthur's Seat, where quite a lot of people were still going strong in the light of the new day. Only an hour here before circumstances forced time to be called personally, and we slowly trudged off to bed.
All-in-all, a fantastic night with brilliant people with whom I hope to spend many days and nights in the future. I've only seen a few photos, so hopefully some more will become available as and when people get time to empty their cameras.
In the time I've been writing this, the end of the Snooker occurred (Well done Graeme Dott), and I came fourth in that poker tournament winning over $200. I'm so not happy though, as the position I was in, I had a hell of a chance to win at least $500, if not the first prize of $900 or so. Ah well, maybe next time! Later to bed than I anticipated, and possibly a more factual post than I'd hoped, but I can assure you that some of the moments of last night will stay with me as long as any others.
Nighty night, kiddoes x
It started at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning after a final group night of putting together costumes, sewing things up and generally making sure we'd done all that we could.
I spent an hour dashing around, making sure my willowbranch tree-effigy was still holding together while sorting out drinks for the evening, food for the afternoon and generally trying to make sure I had everything that I needed (house keys, tickets for hill and club, trousers and tree). Forced the tree out of my flat, taking ornaments and furniture and lamp shades with it, and made my way up the road, to general ridicule and amusement. Imagine a cylindrical wooden clothes horse draped in brown cloth and painted brown and green with a person inside clattering it on every bus shelter...at least I had another Earth Point person walking with me, so it wasn't that bad, and I like the attention anyway!
We finally made it up to the hill rather sweatily sometime after ten, and it turned out to be a lovely day for the final walkthrough. Nice and sunny, we had a relaxed run through of our pieces along with a lot of lazing in the sun and generally ran about and enjoyed the calm before the storm. Off at this stage, mid-afternoon, down to someone's flat for some grub and to get kitted out, before we went to get painted up.
We move to four and a half hours later, and we walk through town, down Leith Street and to Royal Terrace to get up to the hill in character with tourists snapping photos of us all the way. The dusk is approaching as we get up towards Earth Point's space, and we take a slow tour of the hill to get a feel for things, and to allow a couple of toilet trips.
We then picked up our trees, and made our way to our space, which has been ritually prepared for us, and we enter in a lovely manner, receiving wine, food and a gift from Earth Guard, which was lovely. We then just took up positions around the perimeter of the circle and gently warmed up in silence, this drawing quite a crowd, as it looked like we might actually do something. Unfortunately for them we didn't, and as darkness drew in, we all gathered together, the crowd cleared off to where other exciting things sounded like they were happening, and we had a few words together linked together in our circle. I can't remember what exactly was said, but it was lovely to be altogether like that, keeping warm under a poetic waxing crescent moon. For a few minutes, we sang a lilting acapella and enjoyed our togetherness for the last time (for I doubt all of us will come together in such a manner again, although I hope that enduring friendships have been borne by the group), and those moments before we started are probably my most abiding memories of the evening.
It then came for the events to begin, and we watched from behind as the processional drummers kicked in that wonderfully familiar beat and the fire sculptures lit the night. As things progressed out of our sight, we moved around, preparing in our own ways for what was to come, and the people started to gather round us.
Eventually, after this long-drawn out period of pregnant waiting, the fires of the procession came into view, and we got into our positions. Everything seemed to go pretty smoothly in our performance, and while the May Queen was present, I spotted no major hitches. Once the procession moved through our space however, it became much more difficult to hold our space from the people who saw it not so much as a sacred area for respect, but an easy way to get to the next event area, so my torchbearer persona reappeared for a wee while at this point! Eventually we moved onto the second phase of our performance, the childish games (we ended up with this idea after our thoughts on having a "fiery labyrinth of doom" were (surprisingly?!) knocked back by the production crew). Cue lots of silly running around, basic acro and me getting my false tooth loosened yet again by a misjudged arm movement. I'm getting sick of seeing the dentist! No problem though, and we completed the five-minute game frippery with a swift ring-o-roses and then peace as we all fell down.
Our youthful personae thrown off as we rekindled ourselves, we circled out of our space to move to phase III, our performance on the monument, a new addition for the elemental points this year. I enjoyed this part immensely, as it gave us a chance to have fun in front of a surprisingly large crowd of people who hadn't bothered to follow round the procession, and we acted out our story of people (ferret folk, don't ask!) chopping down the forests and reaching the point of disaster, before one of them realised what was going on, and offered herself as a sacrifice to regenerate the forests. Myself and Tom at this point then suspended the sacrifice (Brenda) upside-down, a la The Hanged Man from the Tarot, and she then (after being righted), brought the trees back to life, and also redeemed the ferret people, and we had a happy, singing-tree Disney-type finish, before was cleared off for Water Point to wash on. After a group salute on the monument again, we, along with Water and Air moved to the stage for phase IV.
Simply, this part was about us holding the space around the stage while keeping the crowd vaguely interested with relevant interactions between the elements (Fire joined us at this point too). The crowd really was encroaching badly, so we resorted to physically linking hands and pushing backwards, which did the job pretty well actually, and then we got our few moments of further stardom by forming the walls of a volcano and trying to encase Fire, and also by barring against Water until they wore us down and we got washed off stage again.
The procession appeared to be taking its time (probably struggling to fight through the (by now starting to get damp) masses of people, so we repeated this three times until eventually the horn was blown to signal the arrival of the May Queen, as well as her consort the Green Man and hordes of Red Men. The usual schmozzle ensues, with the Green Man foolishly touching the Queen and getting killed by her handmaidens. She's nice though and takes pity, his revival causing a lively (and vaguely lethal-looking in the rain)dance about the stage. They are then officially saluted as a couple and go off to light then bonfire, while we all cleared off to the Bower (site of the thrones), got sat down and could actually relax and crack open the booze. A pair of couples got handfasted, the giftbearers represented their gifts, and the red men came along for the dénouement, the temptation of those paragons of purity, the White Women. All night they resist, and even with the Blue Men trying to hold them back, the sheer persistence of the Reds eventually gets them through and the Whites succumb to the charms.
The dance begins! All chaos breaks loose, booze everywhere, tongues appearing in unexpected places, and at last, release! Slight downside in that the torchbearers and stewards seemed to break the line pretty quickly, allowing the public to come in and make a performers' party into a bit of an over-aggressive mess, but this is only a minor quibble. Mostly the Spectators are really nice and appreciate what they see, but by this time, a high percentage of the crowd remaining appear to be of the drunken pervert variety, trying to get their hands on the exposed breasts of the obviously-really-gagging-to-snog-some-desperate-stalkerish-type-bloke-they've-never-met performers, so it would be nice if we got more time together as performers alone. Oh well! Soon enough, it hit one o'clock, and we had to move off the hill to the club. This we managed surprisingly coherently as a group, and the music in the club was excellent as ever, as first the processionals, then the beasties did an excellent amount of drumming, and they were followed by the Green man Bluegrass Band, or whatever they're called.
Casualties started appearing by this time is intoxicants took their toll and stresses of the previous few weeks were released, but we soldiered on with lots of dancing (and on the part of the other earthies, snogging) until sometime after four, where we decided to go collect our booze for the after-after-party, and to make wondrous cheese and lettuce sarnies. I was really flagging by this point, and the rain was coming down pretty heavily, so I really could have done with going to bed, but forced myself onwards. A few of us set off up to the party (we lost a couple more to sleep at this point (well, they went to bed at least)), and we slogged our way to a wee valley at the back of Arthur's Seat, where quite a lot of people were still going strong in the light of the new day. Only an hour here before circumstances forced time to be called personally, and we slowly trudged off to bed.
All-in-all, a fantastic night with brilliant people with whom I hope to spend many days and nights in the future. I've only seen a few photos, so hopefully some more will become available as and when people get time to empty their cameras.
In the time I've been writing this, the end of the Snooker occurred (Well done Graeme Dott), and I came fourth in that poker tournament winning over $200. I'm so not happy though, as the position I was in, I had a hell of a chance to win at least $500, if not the first prize of $900 or so. Ah well, maybe next time! Later to bed than I anticipated, and possibly a more factual post than I'd hoped, but I can assure you that some of the moments of last night will stay with me as long as any others.
Nighty night, kiddoes x
