For three days, three nights, and a lifetimes worth of music, the Indian Lookout Country Club in Mariaville, NY, was filled to max capacity with roughly twenty-five thousand hungry and eager festivalers searching for at least a taste of something not found back in the real world; but that’s only the beginning.
Interestingly enough, with over one hundred performers taking to five separate stages for well over one hundred total hours of live music and DJ’s, the festival reaches far beyond the bounds of simply, ‘checking out music for a few days’.
After being present for only a short while, it becomes very clear what is actually happening. The festival itself is about understanding community and yourself within that communal structure. Think about it: you walk together, you dance together, you even sleep together. This bond of humanity that takes place is rarely found anywhere else in the world. Whether you’re walking through the main concert field, squeezing your way through the dance tents, or just sitting on the ground relaxing, a hefty majority of what you’ll find are smiling faces ready and willing to interact with you.
This instantaneous connection that happens every second here is truth, it’s real, it’s an unreserved, unfiltered encounter that can be more significant than many conversations one may have with people they’ve known for years. Stripped down to bare skin and open minds, there is nothing to fear in the festival atmosphere. There is no need to lie to someone else or build up a wall and more importantly no need to lie to yourself about who you are. Many would say this is due to drugs like acid or MDMA, but the truth is, it's not. After talking with countless people over the course of an entire weekend, the same themes continuously show themselves. 1. We’re all searching for peace within ourselves, that freedom to be who we are, as we are, beautiful in and out and 2. An understanding that we all can use help in finding this peace, so why try and fool someone who could open your world to you. In the words of a particularly vibrant and shrewd personality named Dan, that kept popping up all over the place both in person and reference with many serial festival goers, what ever your issues are that keep you locked up and blocked from being free, “That’s your trip, man”.
Fun Fact: Camp Bisco is a circus for big kids. Infused into the music are endless imaginative and creative forms of outward expression. People float around with exuberant clothing mimicking gypsies or clown like creatures - stripped socks, painted hats, jingle-jangle chimes and trinkets hanging from skirts and pants and dreads; masks and hats resembling all forms of animals and hybrid animals and animals you didn't even know existed yet – animals of the soul - are all worn with pride. It’s a vast fun house of full color spectrum, naked bodies painted into faces and designs… if you can think it, it’s here.
Inside of this house, everyone is dancing at all times. Dance has existed as a form of self-expression since we can remember. It was spawned as a way to express visually the emotions of the human psyche. Whether it be joy, anger, despair, sadness, tension, love, fear, or any of our emotions, dance is the therapy to help release this energy. It makes so much sense, too. As our hearts beat in a rhythm, as we breath in rhythm, it’s as though we were designed for dance.
But of all the acts of release, it is the ancient art form of the Hula Hoop that is most entrancing. Documented as existing as early as 500 BCE, this form of dance combines the swinging, dipping, jolting, twirling, and jumping of the common feet sweep, with a circular hoop (classically made of willow or grapevines twined with thick grasses). It is amazing the moves that these women can accomplish within the Hula dance – not to mention the cardio workout. Everywhere you walked you were bound to find a Hula-er, but amongst them all, the mighty Kristen Benson took the cake for best hooper of the weekend (had there actually been an award she would have killed the competition). "[The hoop]'s an extension of my body," Benson says when she stops between Break Science songs. “I have never felt a connection with an object or hobby, activity, [or] sport before.” Benson practices every single day and is working towards becoming a hoop aerobics instructor. Hooping isn’t what many would first think of when thinking about aerobics, but Benson was kind enough to divulge how this world was opened up to her.
“I saw a beautiful gypsy lady at Wanee Festival in 2010 and her elegance and body movements were so captivating and I had to get in that circle. I tried and within 20 minutes I had mastered my first trick; the addiction started. It’s extremely therapeutic and an artistic expression that not only releases dormant, youthful feelings but it completely switches the energy in the body.”
She kicks the hoop up with her foot flipping it over her head, slinks through the hole and spins. Then, twirling it from her waist to her legs, up to her neck, then amazingly just the shoulder, she grabs the spinning plastic and tosses it at least twenty feet into the air and catches it like it never left and continues the sensual swaying. You think baton is difficult? At least they can be stationary. Try standing still while hooping, you'll just be standing over a ring on the ground. Oh, and wait until you see her hoop when it’s on fire.
Saturday night, Bassnectar played before the final Disco Biscuits set. Played? Pardon - Destroyed. In the midst of Lorin Ashton’s face melting beats and soul-entrancing rhythm, tidal waves of glow sticks being hurled into the pitch black void above, and literally thousands and thousands of individual dancers moving as one ocean of sweat and bass stomping, a poor kid, maybe 22, collapses to the ground. What happens next is monumental. As surely as the people surrounding him are lost in their own psychedelic universe (with or without actual drugs), feeling themselves as they gyrate and bounce and trudge to the sheer epic proportion of the music, they stop.
There had to be fifteen water bottles handed over in a matter of seconds
to help hydrate the young man. It’s as if everyone felt his pain without even seeing him. No one asked for the three dollars they paid for it, they didn’t expect a pat on the back; everything else ceased to exist in their worlds and for a moment, lived solely to aid this person on the ground. He eventually got up and slowly but surly, danced on…with a little help from his friends.
The spirit of giving and receiving lies within. It’s an openness to the connectivity between you and your fellow earth beings. Instead of twenty-five thousand little bubbles bobbing around on the concert field, Camp Bisco was one giant bubble, where everyone could feed off of everyone else.
People passing J’s, handing out cigarettes, tossing beers to strangers, giving away squirts of boxed wine that’s just in the bag, sharing umbrellas, helping your neighbor put down his party tent because you know the downpour and wind that’s inevitable to fall (happens every year at Bisco) is going to tear it away… It’s everything you forgot your parents taught you about sharing and it’s done because it feels good and because we’re all in it together.
The hope is that at the end of this experience, at the end of this journey lies the very beginning to another. One where you’ll go back to your respective towns and cities and think twice before simply ignoring a smiling stranger in the street, or passing by a hand in need. Maybe tomorrow you’ll help that single mom carry her stroller up that flight of stairs instead of hurry past in a huff. No one can tell anyone how to live but change happens one person at a time. After all, life is a festival.
For musical highlights from the festival, check out Part II: The Camp Bisco Experience - The Music.
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