All things considered, Hurricane Charley could have dealt southwest Virginia a crueler blow than the gray, blowing mist and thick fog that shrouded the mountaintop at FloydFest yesterday. But the cold, gray cloud that descended on the Blue Ridge made the festival an unfamiliar planet for much of the day.
It would have seemed less alien, perhaps, had I not brought with me the memory of the same event two years ago: thousands frolicked and basked in 80 degree heat, juggling, throwing frisbees, lying about the grassy hilltop on blankets around the stages. Set up along the long, 80 acre corridor of the broad, open ridge, the hundred vendors of esoteric or useful crafts and creations were visible all at once on either side of the open spaces, peopled with dazzling, throbbing tie-dyed and button-down humanity.
Yesterday, every traveler walked in his own universe. Were there thousands on the hilltop, hundreds, or only the one or two we could see in the stifling fog at any instant of time? What Others there were, were vertical, walking without seeing their destination or standing in the mist as if unsure of where they were in space. Colors fade in the blue fog, and yellows and reds appeared only at the last instant when others came into and quickly out of your viewspace.
The audiosphere served to further disorient, each stage the center of a sound-territory with its loudest calls projected into the wet whiteness by the directional speakers. But the territories overlapped excessively, and it was never possible to hear or attend to just one performer at a time, save under the impressive, pick-up-truck-sized speakers at the massive and grand Main Stage. Whatever was happening there permeated all other venues, no matter what, while lesser stages held smaller realms of cacophony.
And in this odd netherworld of cold blowing fog and noise, we read, a leaf in a gale. I had wondered how we would be heard against the competing amplifiers and instruments all around us, and the answer was, barely; but I had expected this. My little reading sample was accompanied by the low-frequency tremelo of didgerdoos and manical goat calls and chantingfrom the main stage, and I think Zydego music closer by, at a decibel level far greater than what was coming out of the little mic and amp we had. By the time Nate read a little later in the day, it was misting enough that by the end of his truncated reading, his pages where hanging limp in his hands, and drops were forming on his hair.
Later in the afternoon, the fog had moved away, but only into the next valley, rising and falling to reveal and then hide the main stage that is perched just on the lip of Rocky Knob above the gorge. Far away, but still not out of the audiosphere of the competition, Dar Williams played on the small, intimate Workshop Porch. With the "cocktail party" selective hearing we all must cultivate, it was possible to hear and enjoy her simple music and complex lyrics under a brightening sky. Colors were coming back by then, and you could sense the wholeness of the event, the energy and wonderful diversity of human form and oddity.
I'm glad we went. I'm glad our Writers Circle had a presence there, getting our words in. Too bad about the fog, for those who didn't get to see the scene in full color. But today will be different. Every one of them is.
