I was hit by a double blow midweek, as the images of artists recording their sets for last night’s crowdless, glitch-affected Glastonbury live stream coincided with the cryptocurrency crash. I’d bought some #BTC and #ETH for my godchildren, on the grounds that if it went well they’d have enough dough to roll around in Bolivia for a few months when they turned 18, and if not they’d have a good story about their bankrupt godfather. I was gloomy remembering that for another year festivals will remain unattended, then doubly gloomy watching my holy crypto dwindle to a puddle. Is this really what Jesus wants for these blameless youths?
I suspected I was in a minority in having a foot in both camps. The kinds of people who love Glastonbury, and festivals more generally, are not the sort to set much store by the blockchain, except when it helps them to buy drugs off the internet. The more I think about it, though, it seems to me that Glastonbury and bitcoin have more in common than their supporters would like to admit. One is a brilliant idea that has grown completely out of hand, bears little relation to its early incarnation and is increasingly beset by environmental anxieties. The other is a cryptocurrency.
More importantly, both are binary identity signifiers, in that you’re either a festival person or not, just as you’re a crypto person or not. Once you’ve eaten the pill, metaphorically (crypto) or literally (festivals), you never shut up about it. They inspire evangelism. In the case of crypto, it’s because the value of your holding increasing depends on other people being prepared to pay more for the things after you. Some have observed this mechanism is not totally dissimilar to a classic “pyramid” or Ponzi scheme. The bitcoin buyer, unable to stop saying the word “fiat”, knows he is cannily placed on the arc of history, and that the sun is setting on government-controlled money.
There’s a comparable dynamic at work with Glastonbury. It’s an emotional pyramid-stage scheme where the reward is as much to do with the idea of the festival as its muddy, exhausting, reality. The Glastonbury of the mind is an illusory vision of the nation where people briefly stop arguing about private school and fishing quotas to wiggle around to Beyoncé and have their chakras read. A nirvana where you can sing “ooh Jeremy Corbyn” without being obliged to vote for him. Like crypto, Glastonbury sucks up more energy and column inches than it ought to because there’s a hope that if everyone can just keep believing, perhaps it will come true.
For those who attend Glasto in person, securing a place is proof not only that you want to go, but that you are able to obtain a ticket, either by being online at the lucky moment, being one of the 4,057 staff the BBC sends every year, or by having enough…
