By Vinnie Batten
‘The Gregorian calendar can suck my dick’
There is nothing more vibrant than the graffiti on the back of toilet doors at the Woodford Folk Festival. This pseudo-intellectual scrawl, amongst the comprehensive coverage of the rest, particularly grabbed my gaze. It raises some questions, and I demand answers.
Does this anonymous festival-goer have an issue with our current internationally accepted calendar format, or the concept of time in general? Is it an interpersonal conflict with Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in the year of 1582? Are they equally vocal about the prospect of Queensland introducing Daylight Savings Time?
Time is an interesting commodity. We spend so much of it considering the amalgamation of past & future, looking forward towards things we’ll retrospectively regret. At 23, I think a lot about turning 50 years old, when I’ll most likely be wishing I was still 23 years old, back when I was worrying about one day celebrating my 29th birthday.
Reject its relevance with all your might, but time still governs all land. And on that land, we have festivals. There’d be no point in having a festival without time. None. Unknowingly, you’d arrive three days early to then wait to listen to a band that doesn’t even have the privilege of being able to write music with time signatures or Beats Per Minute. Utterly useless.
Luckily, Woodford has time. It’s a great time. I’ve spent every single New Year’s Eve of my life at Woodford, symbolically welcoming a brand–new year into existence, yet to discover my successes and failures of the next chapter. When the sun rises over the Glasshouse Mountains at 4:58AM on the 1st January, it’s merely a countdown to next time.
My toilet door scrawling friend, consider this an open invite to elaborate on your reasoning for all patrons, come Woodford 2019. Your move. Will you allow me to critique you further? Time will tell.
