Besides being ‘too busy’, there’s also the basic problem of ‘being interested’. Early last year, in my first year Law tutorial, our tutor decided to force an introductory game. One at a time, we unenthusiastically stated our name and “what we were most looking forward to at the fringe or festival this year.” Except, well, nobody was planning on going to anything.
So the concentrated festival season comes with two problems: it’s too busy, and some people are too overwhelmed by the choice to pick out the things that interest them. But March also sees Adelaide plagued by a mysterious, ghoulish social force: The Clash. Not the 80’s English punk rock band, but the supposed Clipsal/ Festival/Fringe conflict.
Clutching at straws, the tutor asked if any of us were ‘at least’ going to the Garden of Unearthly Delights. In a room of twenty-six, only two of us nodded; the rest shook their heads. After a moment’s silence, someone explained that “nothing looks interesting, and all the shows are the same” – to which almost the entire room chorused agreement. They thought that nothing appealed to their tastes. The festival season wasn’t something they involved themselves with. Rather, the Fringe, the Festival, the Clipsal, and Womad all happened nearby. Adelaide was swollen with creative spirit but, for them, it mostly just meant that the traffic would be terrible. One show-avoiding friend later provided the excuse: “It’s not that nothing’s interesting. But there’s so much going on. It’s just that I can’t decide what is [interesting].”
Scheduling the petrol-head and paint-head communities to gather simultaneously is, so the argument goes, an atrocious idea. As a book-reading, environment-loving liberal arts major, I naturally fall into the artsy latter category. I was born and raised to comprehend Romanticism, not the romantic aspects of metal boxes driving repeatedly in a circle and propelled, rather terrifyingly, by way of controlled explosions. From an early age, a line was drawn in my mind between Them (the ‘revheads’), and Us. Judging by conversations, we urbanite Adelaideans share this view almost universally. At least, all the latte-sipping youths from hippy-parentage do ... I’ve staunchly avoided conversations with The Others. We latte-sippers always imagine our thin, beret-wearing companions being set upon by terrifying hordes of muscle-bound, mullet-haired car enthusiasts. In my mind’s
Volume 79, Issue 2
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