Festivals All Over The World

0:15Kiernan:Hi, I'm Ryan Davis. And I'm Kiernan Schmidt. And this is Out of Office, a travel podcast. This seat taken. Hey, Kiernan. Hello, Ryan. How are you? I'm good. How are you? You know, this is the rare nighttime recording. And, you know, I've got a little something to tipple over here on the side. So I'm excited to see how it goes. You mean you're drinking right now? Yeah, you know, I got a glass of wine and I made sure it's a natural wine, given that I'm talking to you. I knew I knew you'd pick up through the mic if it was something manufactured or had a chemical. I am jealous. I right after this, I'm going to go grab some some food and I will have a drink or two in your honor.

0:58Kiernan:You haven't talked much about natural wine. Are you are you has the Ozempic killed the passion? No, it's just, you know, outside of Mexico City, it's just hard to get natural wine in like Bogota or, you know, Colombia in general. It's it's not like Mexico City. So I when I was in New York, I devoured natural wine. And now, you know, I do a little more cocktails in Latin America. And so just to skip to the Judy alert, but we'll weave in the alcohol. Where are you right now? I know you're in Colombia, but I don't know where. I'm actually in Cartagena, right outside of the walled city. Just sort of, yeah, I'm here with my friend Diego, who is celebrating his 30th birthday, and he wanted to come to Cartagena.

1:47Kiernan:So here we are. So what's going to be your go to celebratory drink tonight post podcast for the birthday? Um, you know, the the thing that they really like to drink is that sort of sugar, that sugar liqueur. It's called like Agro Dente. So do you find the cocktails to be super sweet generally? They can be pretty sweet. Yeah, yeah. I'm a real sour cocktail. I'm a sour cocktail man. Lime, lime, lime. Fill it up. Yeah. Well, they do. I mean, you know, here in Cartagena, you know, there's just a lot of mojitos. So you can you can you can do you can do sort of just traditional beach drinks. Maybe I'll do that tonight.

2:26Kiernan:Have I ever told you about our house cocktail here in Boston? I think you have. We make something called the Southern Baptist. That's the name of the drink. And it's awesome ginger syrup. That's really, really spicy. Lime juice and bourbon. It is perfection. That sounds good. You have to make me one next time I'm there in Boston. And, you know, we are pre-recording a little bit here, but I got to say, Ryan, I'm feeling morose right now because one of my great heroes, Tom Lair, has died. You're familiar with his oeuvre? A little bit. Less than you, though. You really shook up about this. You know, this is how I was with Malcolm Jamal Warner.

3:11Kiernan:So anyone who doesn't know Tom Lair, Tom Lair, first of all, he's 97 and he lives right here in Cambridge. But he's world famous. He's had West End shows in London that were reviews of his songs. He rose to prominence in the 60s and he used to go on television in the U.S. in the 60s. The Harvard man. And yeah, he wrote Fight Fiercely Harvard and he wrote tens of other very, very funny songs. The one that you're going to know, Ryan, is that he wrote the element song, which is that it's that all the elements of the periodic table set to the Rogers and Hammer sign. And back when he wrote it, there was only like 26 elements.

3:51Kiernan:Yeah, I'm sure there's I'm sure there's been provisions. And he really took on the establishment. He was big during the Cold War. And he would he wrote all these great, very funny kind of Dr. Strange love sort of songs about nuclear war and bombs. He just had a hilarious, creepy kind of sense of humor. And do you you don't know this? I actually met him when I was in college. Really? Yeah, I was in college. I was writing a lot of songs and musicals. And I discovered that he lived in town and I hand wrote a letter to him. And I said, I just want to, can I take you out to brunch? And, you know, I kind of thought he would pay, but he actually took me up and let me cover his brunch.

4:33Kiernan:And we went out to brunch and had a great time. We talked all about humor and politics. And I have to I something that I distinctly remember is that he it was during the George W. Bush presidency. And he thought that was too depressing to joke about. He was like, I don't know how anybody would do political comedy today. So imagine I have to think he might have been happy to go. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. Gosh, what a life. You know, I encourage people to read his Wikipedia because this dude did everything. He was hanging out with David Frost. He wrote for the electric company. He wrote songs for Dodge automobiles.

5:08Kiernan:Well, and the other thing is he stopped performing in 1968. He was like huge for like three or four years. And he he had a life in academia. He was a lecturer at a bunch of universities. And yeah, he did. This was like not his full time gig. He just kind of like put these off on the side and became world famous for it. Quite amazing. That is very cool. Well, you know, all his songs are apparently in public domain. So I think he could play a little snippet for us right now. Do you know he mentioned that during our brunch? He said because he had no heirs, he wasn't married. He had no children. Was he?

5:49Kiernan:Yes. Yeah. No, I'm waiting for you to finish the question. I mean, was he a bachelor? I mean, he was a confirmed bachelor. whether you know what his personal preference was i don't know i i know i know that i uh we just had a perfectly genial affair but you know what you know what he seemed to like me which usually indicates that he probably was um now uh uh ryan the other thing i want to touch on is as you know i'm deep into london planning i'm i'm just i when this airs i will be in london super excited to go back to the city that i i lived in i haven't been there since pre-covid and famously you've got a story about the the churchill war rooms which i very stupidly avoided for all the times i've been there including the year i lived there because somebody once described it to me as like oh yeah they've got dummies of churchill and i was like dummies of church what is the hall of the presidents at disney world i don't want to be dummies of churchill yeah the churchill war rooms have a lot more to offer than i know this is what i've learned since and i've been yearning to go back and i've already i've booked the tickets we've got the time we're absolutely going to the the churchill war rooms and i was keeping in mind if those tickets weren't available i was going to pull what you did which that becoming a member of the imperial war museum well i think you should be one anyway you're such a big fan you guys you know me empires and war just can't get enough um you need to watch uh re-watch the darkest hour with uh with gary oldman because that's actually filmed in the churchill war you know what i think oh i did not know that that's i'm sorry that's not true they were totally recreated based on the churchill war run okay so not not as good false information no i think that's a great tip because um god the last like portrayal i saw of winston churchill was john lithgow in the queen and you know john it's like five feet above what churchill was sure he's like half the weight it just didn't work he It is a bizarre casting.

7:51Kiernan:Yeah, I like Gary Oldman's show. I think it's pretty good. Yeah, I think that's going to be a plane watch for me. I'm saying it right here. Fantastic. Well, you're going to have a really good time. I'm jealous. You're going to go to London. You're going with your mom. You seen any theater? We are. We're seeing two shows. We have two shows booked. I may be going to fit in a third if I can find the time. We're going to see a revival of Oliver, which will actually be my second time seeing Oliver on the West End. Last time, Mr. Bean was playing fagin amazing you know the west end always gets good oliver productions i grew up on that album with jonathan price yeah yeah it's gonna it'll be great obviously it's wonderful to see oliver's a perfect musical to see in london and then we're gonna see operation mincemeat which is actually also on broadway and it's about a world war two we're gonna have a very world war ii trip well that's when in london it's about the last thing that happened there it's about i've actually katherine and i did the audiobook of operation mincemeat when we were on a national parks road trip.

8:49Kiernan:And it's this hilarious story of British intelligence officers kind of bumbling their way into this plot to throw the Nazis off about where they were going to attack. And it worked and all these things go wrong. It's very, very funny. So looking forward to that. And then the one that I'm thinking would be fun is I think it would be fun to take mom to the Tower of London, maybe go to Henry VIII's castle that you can visit and then try to go see Six, which is the kind of Hamilton-y sort of musical about the six wives. Yes, yes. It's like a pop rock show. Yeah, it's very funny. But I hear it's funnier for people who were listening to pop music in the 90s and 2000s because it kind of plays on all that.

9:36Kiernan:So I don't know that it would ring her bell enough. Yeah, no, it's perfect for me. It's perfect for me. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see if we have time. But really, I'm having just such a great time putting together the schedule and Churchill War Rooms. I've been thinking about you. I am so jealous. You're going to have a great time. Get those tickets in advance. Well, and I'll say hot tip. The theater tickets in London are about half the price of what they are in New York. I don't know. Something during COVID switched where all the tickets to Broadway are like three hundred dollars now. you can still get great tickets for like$120 in London.

10:11Kiernan:That's crazy, right? I mean, it has to do a lot with the real estate and things like that. But yeah, that must be. I mean, it's crazy. But that's why I'm so hungry to keep buying up tickets. I'm like, let me get my fill of theater. Yeah, well, that'll be fun. I have not been to London for a minute. So you'll be over there. And then I'm over in Dublin in September. So we'll have some episodes. passing by. Maybe we could do a follow-up to getting Broadway tickets. We could do West End tickets. Another famous flop of an episode. Yeah. I mean, I think it's not as hard there because it's just cheaper.

10:46Kiernan:So now, Ryan, I'm very excited about today's guest. So it's been a little it's been a little bit since we've had an author. We'd be we're pretty picky with what travel authors become a lot to travel books come out. Lots of emails from founders of travel companies who Yeah, we get a lot of PR. And this one, I actually reached out to him, which is always a good sign. So his name is Daniel Stables. And Daniel Stables wrote a book called Fiesta. And the whole premise is that he traveled all around the world. And he gives kind of the cultural context and the history, kind of anthropology around different sorts of celebrations and parties that happen around the world.

11:24Kiernan:And he talks about all the traditions. It's such a cool idea. And that's what that that is really a way to hook me on your travel book, an idea I haven't heard about yet. Yeah, no, I think this is a really fun idea. You know, I was brainstorming like what what fiestas, what festivals have I have I been to and, you know, traveling. And it's not something that I've sought out all that often. But, you know, I really, you know, I'm going to listen to this interview because I'd like to I'd like to hit up a few. And I mean, I've never been to Mardi Gras. I've never been to Carnival. Wow. But you have done Day of the Dead, which is a major one.

11:58Kiernan:That's very much on my list. Yeah, I've done Day of the Dead post-James Bond, so post the reboot. And then I've done, you know, obviously gay prides in New York and Mexico City and D.C. And those are, you know, definitely qualify, I think. And then, you know, Berlin does that huge like Christmas festival where you drink like the gloop bin, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I've done that. So that's that's been fun. Yeah, you've touched some of I will say he goes super. I mean, all corners of the earth. So it's going to it's going to blow your mind. It's going to add a bunch of stuff to your list.

12:33Kiernan:So I think it's time that we take off to talk to Daniel Stables about his awesome book, Fiesta. Let's talk to Daniel. Cabin crew. Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff, please. Our guest today is Daniel Stables, who traveled the world attending and analyzing festivals and ceremonies of all kinds. It's religious, cultural, ancient, modern, modern, pretending to be ancient. The book is called Fiesta, and I'm a big, big fan of it. Daniel, welcome to Out of Office. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on. So let's start right at the beginning. When did you come up with this idea of a book that's festival themed?

13:09Kiernan:Honestly, it's such a good hook for a book. I was kind of shocked that nobody had done that yet. Yeah, me too, to be honest. I think I always like, so I've been working as a travel writer for the last sort of decade, really. And initially I used to write guidebooks. And every time I would travel either for work or just for fun, you know, I always loved being in somewhere when a festival was going on. Just because, you know, there's times in the calendar where everything's just so much more vivid, vibrant, not just obviously literally. we talk about costumes and the smells of festival food and the sounds of music and stuff like that but also just everything's turned up to 11 people's personalities and inhibitions stripped away um altered states of consciousness often engendered by various different things and um so they're just fun really and so I always kind of what thought oh one day I'd like to do a um a book like a sort travelogue type book about festivals and then I think it was sort of 2019 kind of time I started thinking right I really need to do this now and then 2020 obviously everything just went out the window with Covid and festivals were pretty much the last thing for good reason to come back so it's been germinating for a long long time but there's bits in the book which go back to experiences that I was having when I was traveling sort of yeah like 10 years ago and they go right up to yeah to a year about a year ago from now um so it's quite a broad spread it's been a long time a long time coming well and you go you travel all over the world i mean you're from indonesia to burning man in the u.s you you stay you're you're from england you go to you speak to a couple of uh united kingdom festivals and i'm curious obviously you had tens of thousands of festivals around the world that you could have attended.

15:10Kiernan:So how did you do the research to narrow it down to this list? And did you kind of unearth the themes that guide you through these different festivals afterward? Or were you casting based on what you wanted to write in the book? Yeah, I think to answer your last question first, I think the themes kind of emerged as I went through. You know, when I started off, I was thinking, well, I started off by making a massive list of festivals. that was like the first thing uh-huh and uh spreadsheet or word doc uh i wish i could say spreadsheet i'm not that proficient with excel so yeah most authors it wouldn't be a spreadsheet exactly yeah yeah um so i was thinking well should i could do it month by month obviously festivals tend to be a seasonal thing um i could do it month by month or i could do it um i don't know continent by continent kind of like or but um i realized kind of doing it divided by time is not necessarily that smart because then i mean if there happened to be two festivals at the same time of year that i wanted to include then i didn't want to be held back from doing that so um the themes kind of began to emerge um organically as i went to more and more of them and i realized actually there's lots of similarities between these things even in really really different cultures which are quite kind of interesting um so yeah so for example i mean there's a chapter about food festivals there's a chapter about um uh festivals that uh strike towards these these altered states of consciousness like i mentioned before um whether that's through drugs or alcohol or um the the example i actually used in that one deliberately was one that was nothing to do with drugs or alcohol which is a a sufi islamic festival in turkey um where they and this is this is for for folks who have seen the imagery of whirling dervishes this is the the center of that ceremony that's right yeah so uh so that's kind of an example of like i think travel travel writing is about discovery right in in various forms so you don't want to i always try and resist doing stuff that seems too obvious so I didn't want to so whenever I tell people I'm writing a book about festivals here in the UK they would always say do you mean like music festivals right that's what most people think of and then they would say is Glastonbury in it Glastonbury Festival which is our biggest most famous festival um music festival and the answer is I mean Glastonbury Festival is in it because Glastonbury is actually a really interesting example of a festival which kind of takes a lot of these elements from traditional festivals in a kind of conscious way and repackages them and this is like the ultimate bohemian kind of gathering and it's a great it's an amazing experience and it's a really uh cool place but i didn't want to just do a festival about glass a chapter about glass and re festival because it's like it's too familiar you know right right um and so but by the same token i didn't just go what's the furthest away most exotic sounding thing i can find and just just focus on that because like you said i deliberately did a couple of things in the uk as well and obviously it's convenient for me to do that but it's also i think it's really really important with travel writing when you're writing about culture and different cultures across the world it's really important to also turn that same gaze on yourself and your own culture because otherwise you know you fall into this kind of slightly colonial kind of traditional like travel writing was in the 19th and 20th century to be honest you have a lot of fun poking fun at missionaries recounting yeah which i really like ryan and i my co-host and i we we both grew up painfully catholic and so right um a lot of your you know you do some great quotes and then kind of poke fun at you can always look at missionary accounts of what native celebrations were like um and i think you do a great job of avoiding that you know you you you immerse yourself in the history and culture of where these ceremonies are coming from and you know you have a little bit of fun like winking humor at it but you're never laughing at the people and why this is important to them well yeah i think that's it it's like the last thing you should be doing with travel writing is going like oh look how weird these people are because they do things differently to us but by the same token i think sometimes people tread on eggshells too much and go we shouldn't even point out cultural difference and variety and actually you should and we should celebrate it but the point is you have to come at it from a point of not aren't these people weird because they're different from me it's more the point of god aren't we all as humans fascinating and bizarre and strange and messy and interesting and profound and beautiful and all those things regardless of what culture you're talking about because the thing is these things are universal and festivals are universal that you know pretty much everybody uh has taken part in one or in many uh we can all recognize them in our own culture um and everyone knows what it's like to uh to take part in one so i think when you have that comparative thing looking at different ones across the world in different societies you you realize the similarities between us by by celebrating those differences because as i say these these universal themes come up time and time again.

20:47Kiernan:Yeah, there's two there's two instances in the book that that reminds me of and that I felt connected to. One was when you were speaking to a gentleman in the Shetlands. Now, I think that's is it pronounced up Hallie? Ah, Pellier. That's right. And you were talking about the construction of these things that are all going to be burned in the end. And one of the guys just says, you know, there's very little to do here in the winter. Yeah. And I put in a slightly more polite way. Yeah, that's true. It's a little less profane. But yeah, you know, I think that that's that is a real driving force between these sort of tentpole events that different cultures put all across the world, which is, you know, a lot of times you're just looking for diversions during a dark time of year or during something to break up the monotony of work and, you know, just like survival.

21:37Kiernan:And I think you spotlight a lot of the fun times that that has. The other is you come back a few times in the book to this idea of festivals as like a liminal space. So it's taking you out of your ordinary life. It's reversing roles, you know, the hierarchy in your society, or it's basically just giving you a pause. You said the status quo turned upside down was one of your examples in these sort of role reversals. Um, but I thought you really grounded it. You said the hazy dateless week between Christmas and New Year. And for, you know, a Western American who grew up Christian, that really rang to I was like, yeah, that week does that's like the one week of the year where people seem to pause where you actually spend time with your family, you do all these things that you don't do all the other 51 weeks of the year.

22:34Kiernan:And that, you know, when you take it to these less familiar cultures, it just it immediately connected that even in this, you know, super tech heavy, especially like work driven American world, there is still that time that one week a year. Yeah. And everyone's like, is it is it Monday today? Like, no, nobody knows. The only other time when you visit the world that it feels like that you forget what day of the week it is. yeah totally I mean one of the great things um about festivals generally I think is they make you know they make us forget ourselves in the best way and that's kind of the point of them you know as you said like even in modern western society where we're so obsessed with productivity work work work all the time um we still allow ourselves these times like that week between Christmas and New Year um and I think it's partly you know we need it our brains need it we need to kind of reboot um but uh i think sometimes they're geared towards that i mean i'll go back to again this thing of altered states of consciousness but it's because i almost i feel like that maybe more than anything else that's what festivals are geared towards which is kind of forgetting yourself you know like forgetting the ego yeah going transcending um day-to-day worries and stuff like that in kind of in pursuit of connection with something bigger than ourselves whether that's family you know wider society our community our culture whatever we mean by that um our friends are you know the music that you're listening to at this festival god possibly if that's what uh you know you're into um so yeah i think that that's definitely one of the pretty much completely universal things about festival and that's what differentiates festival from the wider sense of ritual because you know rituals lots of these things i describe in the book are rituals but they're communal rituals and i think festivals are always geared towards that communality and connection with you met you mentioned the liminal stuff i won't go sort of too heavy into the like anthropological stuff but it's touching it a bit in the book i was an anthropology uh grad at university i picked up on that that's a big passion yeah um so uh there's liminality this idea of kind of when these threshold states um between uh i mean like for example the week between christmas and new year but also in between rites of passage like when like when you're graduating university or high school or whatever um you're when you're in between these phases of your life you're kind of you're in a liminal phase and there's this idea that these kind of liminal states which festivals create as well because day-to-day life is kind of suspended and then suddenly everyone's on this level playing field and the idea is that ultimately it brings people when when we leave that state and we return to everyday life it brings people are kind of held together more strongly as a result of it somehow wow and i think definitely those feelings of like communal strength definitely a kind of the point of festivals really yeah so let's let's dive into a couple of the individual festivals that are representative and why well as i say it ranges from sort of the funny to the serious so let's start funny um the cooper's hill cheese rolling in gloucestershire uh describe what that is and how it fits into that framework okay so uh cooper's hill so this is a um traditional english festival happens very close to where i grew up which in the southwest of england so it's a county of gloucestershire and it's um basically uh a race down a steep hill cooper's hill in pursuit of a huge wheel of cheese i think it's a nine pound wheel of cheese double gloucester cheese and um it's actually kind of it represents the like the beautiful sort of folly and uh bizarreness of festivals because it's actually physically impossible in terms of you know the the speed and and terminal velocity and stuff like that sure for a human to ever catch the cheese so the way it actually works if they they release the cheese they roll the cheese down the hill and the people have to they roll after it as quickly as possible and they try and catch the cheese but it's impossible nobody can ever catch the cheese but the person who finishes who crosses the finish line first gets to keep the cheese and they're like bouncing down i mean this year's uh event was not too long ago i think it was in june uh or may and there's some of the footage on social media of like people a guy just in the course of bouncing did a whole i think it was either a double backflip or something and you can see like because they they go so fast and they bounce off the ground so hard yeah and the amount of broken bones and stuff is crazy they have a there's kind of metal fences at the bottom and just a lineup of ambulances because they're just a constant stream of people getting taken to hospital um amazingly no one's died actually yet doing it's pretty incredible the cheese gods must be kind of looking out for for them i've got to say i mean that's one of those things and there are quite a few british festivals english festivals where it is quite difficult to discern what the point of it is that's one of them it's a crazy thing to witness but it's uh it's great fun well and i think it is a recurring theme through lots of these is this sort of you get beyond pain because you're in such a mind state of ecstasy you know you relate it to the berserkers of the Nordic tradition who get into their like war like mentality and can't feel pain.

28:28Kiernan:The one that's probably the most extreme in the book is the Fuck It Vegetarian Festival or Nine Emperor's God's Festival in Thailand. And, you know, describe what you see there, because it's it's probably the furthest one could go as far as body mutilation in the course of a festival yeah it's very very certainly the most extreme thing that i witnessed in the course of this book researching the book so yeah so uh the island of phuket in thailand and um it's called as you said most commonly known as the phuket vegetarian festival which seems sounds very wholesome but um it's actually kind of the least wholesome thing you can imagine because these uh so the story goes is around 200 years ago um there was an opera troupe from southern china and they were touring in sort of the south china sea and they toured in um in south across southeast asia and they went to phuket and they got stuck there when there was an epidemic and they decided that the way that they would protect themselves from the epidemic would be to resume or to to take up their taoist religious practices from back home in southern china so these included abstaining from meat hence the vegetarian and uh also uh engaging in ritual self-mutilation so to begin with they would just kind of put skewers like pierce their cheeks with skewers and things um which they still do but over the decades and over the centuries it's become much more elaborate and extreme to the point i mean there's some there's people there telling you who tell you now like oh it's just ridiculous now it's not like how it used to be because you see the stuff you see is just i mean i saw people with uh swords like two swords diagonal cross at a diagonal through their mouth one through each cheek a guy with a lamp through his face uh a guy with a bmx spike frame through his face um and it's bizarre obviously to see people in that state but it's even more bizarre to see them having these piercings done so they go to the temple in the morning uh or to the shrine rather and they're they're what's called massong which is like spirit mediums effectively so they would tell you that they get possessed by their deity and then and what you see them getting into this trance so they they like start retching and then they start to shake and their eyes are glazed over and they're like that for the whole day just shaking shaking like they just put down like a pneumatic drill sort of thing um and then they sit down and they have these things then i saw the guy with the swords have the swords put through his cheeks yeah and this is just so so folks understand audio this is taking two swords on different sides of your head and inserting it through the cheeks through your mouth between your teeth and out the other cheek that's right yeah uh and and these are four size swords also four size swords yeah there's a picture of it on my instagram if you that is so inclined so so stay away from that I saw him what's your handle in case anyone's interested as at Dan Stabs so D-A-N-S-T-A-B-S is appropriate fitting yeah Dan Stabs yeah uh so yeah I saw him have this procedure done and he did not flinch he didn't move a muscle when he was and you know there's no anesthetic involved there is the power of the mind you know the power of being in a trance or I guess they would say the the power of their their chosen deity or whatever but um and then so they have these things done and they file out of the shrine and then they go on a procession through the town through puka old town and i was sort of i had a guide but i was like walking in the procession with them and they're in a trance wobbling around with various sharp objects sticking out of their faces not having a clue where they're going basically and they're kind of getting guided along by attendants and so i'm just constantly like walking along watching my back just trying to make sure i don't get stabbed by a rogue sword or skewer or whatever um so yeah i mean it's a very effective cure for jet lag i can tell you that much but um it's yeah an amazing experience and just again you sort of say i mean why do we go to the people yeah um but for but but for them it's it's a religion right I mean, it's a major religious and spiritual, though it sounds like from some of the locals, there's a feeling that is it moving to extreme sports and just stunt, which takes away that religious aspect of it for some.

33:22Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting one because they, I mean, yes, it's a religious thing. It's all centered around the shrines, the Chinese shrines in Phuket. um and the the idea the kind of spiritual idea behind it is that these people suffer suffer excuse me on behalf of the wider community so it's like they by doing these extreme practices which they deem to accumulate really good karma really good huge amounts of religious merit yeah they would say that that kind of absolves the bad karma of the wider community which kind of sounds kind of familiar right to someone from a christian background um and uh but then like i said yeah some people were saying well it's just ridiculous now like how are they why they do what it's got too extreme it's all about the people taking photos someone said to me i met a guy an anthropologist out there uh we were sort of comparing notes on the the what we'd seen that day how extreme it was and i said um i mean do you think it's as authentic as it used to be and he said well you know on the one hand you can't really fake sticking a sword through your face you know you don't there's there's being like tourism savvy yeah and then there's that it's quite an extreme thing to do but then he said but then and we were like comparing photos that we'd taken of like these these guys and ladies with these various baroque things just sticking through their faces and they were like posing for the pictures and this guy said to me how do the gods know to pose

34:59Kiernan:for a photograph right even while possessed they know how to get on instagram possessed and i thought that's a good point yeah yeah so i mean you know there are lots of festivals across the world it's very easy to point the finger and say well you're just doing that for um the instagram likes or you're doing it for tourists to attract tourists, you know, for money. But when you're saying to someone, you're just sticking a sword through your face for money for, you know, for, for those reasons, it's kind of like becomes a bit, because they don't make the individuals don't make sure they don't get paid for it.

35:29Kiernan:Yeah. So well, you touch on that too. In the, the, the, the Catholic ceremonists, Romeria del Rocco in Spain, where Rocchio, is that how do you pronounce it? Rocio. Rocio. Rocio. Okay, let me say, yeah, you touch on this too, in the Catholic festival, I wasn't familiar with it. And it had a level of violence that you don't typically associate with kind of Catholic ceremonies. It's in Spain and Andalusia called Romero de El Rocio. And why don't you describe that, you know, it has aspects that will sound familiar to Catholics with statues of saints and things but then there's this this kind of frenzy and violence involved yeah so um yeah it's a yearly pilgrimage um it's kind of the biggest fiesta in spain i would say it's not the biggest not the most famous pilgrimage that'd be the camino de santiago but it's the probably the biggest party i mean they say as many as a million people descend on this little town of al rossio i personally think that's a bit of an overstatement there's certainly hundreds of thousands of people And they walk from their various churches across Spain, and they arrive at this town called El Rocio, where there's a famous statue of the Virgin Mary.

36:55Which, as you say, so far sounds pretty kind of standard for a Catholic pilgrimage. Yeah, standard Catholic stuff. Yeah. The thing that first got me interested in it was, you often see it described as the drunken pilgrimage. and I immediately and you know drawn to that kind of uh juxtaposition of of spirituality and kind of depravity and and debauchery um and so I sort of looked into it and then I was trying to find I don't speak Spanish so I was trying to for a long time I was trying to find um a guide and a translator who would go with me and everybody I emailed all the all the tour companies I emailed I'd get a kind of concerned response saying like, Oh, you, you absolutely sure you want to do this?

37:38You know, they, they, they get really drunk and they take loads of drugs and they, they get really violent inside the church. It's very dangerous. You don't really want to be doing this, which obviously just had the effect of making me convinced. That's a chapter writing itself right there.

37:54Kiernan:Exactly. Yeah. What, what kind of, um, what kind of pilgrimage, you know, can you describe in those terms so yeah eventually i did find someone who's sort of uh loose enough morals to send me a guide and a translator and uh they so effectively i joined the um sort of branch of the pilgrimage that goes from seville from a church in seville um and i walked with the pilgrims for two days um down to to el rocio and it's amazing physical setting it goes through this uh national park called the doniana which is sort of wetland sand dunes grassland sort of area and you're not normally allowed to walk in it at all normally you can go on a jeep tour but that's it so that again really adds to this that liminal thing again this feeling of being partly because you're in a wetland and it's like half land half sea but also you're somewhere that you're not normally allowed to be also if i recall correctly it gets wetter because it basically becomes an open latrine for thousands of people walking through that's true yeah yeah um and it gets very very crazy and very sort of loose and i mean the drunken pilgrimage is a very good um descriptor they kind of i mean there's this thing in spanish religious popular religiosity especially where they kind of have you know there's no conflict whatsoever between having a party and having and having a very religious event you know they don't see those things as mutually exclusive at all and in fact that's kind of why i chose fiesta is the name of the book because fiesta has this you know it's a religious occasion it's a feast it's a saint's day it's a party in spanish it has all these meanings um and it kind of has a wider meaning than just the word festival so that's why i chose it for the express encompass the different meanings of the festival thing that cover in the book but that thing of spanish popular religiosity is never more pronounced than uh the romaria because they get extremely drunk uh all the way through they camp along the way stay in campsites and they're sort of playing flamenco songs and um uh they yeah so you see some crazy things like these people like some guy i saw like wrestling a wild boar people just like standing around and laughing at it like and people behave badly you know then i'm not condoning this yeah yeah yeah um but then the way it culminates is they finally arrive at the church in el rocio el rocio incidentally is amazing as well it's often described as the strangest town in spain there's no cars um and it's just dust and it's like a wild west sort of film set um is what it looks like because it's just these dusty roads low slung houses with horse posts lined up outside them and then during the romeria just thousands and thousands of people coming and going all the time so the whole place is shrouded in this like orange dust um and everyone dresses up in their traditional andalusian clothing so it really does look like it's an amazing spectacle but they finally get to the town and then on the last night the whole thing that it all culminates in is one of the brotherhoods as they're called of the churches from a town called al monte which is not far away from el rocio they're the ones who originated this pilgrimage and they they do a thing called el salto which means the jump where they go into the church and they form a kind of human like ladder basically like a scrum and then a human ladder and they very violently they're fighting each other to to get to the top of this ladder throwing punches at each other just tearing each other off throwing them onto the floor of the church it's always like young men as you can sort of imagine and then they get to the top of the ladder and they jump over the altar and they see they seize the statue of uh the virgin take it out over it's out of its kind of enclosure yeah take out of the church and parade it around town for i mean like eight hours nine hours and they're in a again like a trance yeah this happens so the the jump happens at three in the morning, four in the morning.

42:09And so everyone's drunk, a lot of them on various other things, and they've been drinking all day, and then they do this for eight or nine hours. The violence just never leaves the statue. So it's this scrum of people all from the Brotherhood clinging onto the statue, recessing it around the town. And if anybody who's an outsider gets close, they're just getting punched kicked bitten you know like yeah they're not allowed and again this is a thing which comes up in other festivals as well this thing of um it's all about it they set it up as it's them against the world but the idea ultimately is that it's about strengthening their own kind of identity i think yeah um but again it's a very

43:00Kiernan:extreme way of doing it but this is what festivals and is is there any sense there um that while they reject outsiders there's a little bit of an attention you know that getting that attention is also part of the violence one million percent i mean they they will always i'm trying to remember the word in spanish but they basically they describe anyone who isn't from al monte their small town that they describe as a foreigner effectively uh even though like 99 of people right out the pilgrimage are foreigners even if they're spanish foreigners to them um but they they do this thing so they have this very aggressive attitude towards outsiders getting close but also even when you're around town if you take pictures i had my camera and i was taking pictures of these people dressed in their traditional sort of dress on horseback a lot of them and so i'd lift my camera to take a picture and they would shout at me and say no you know go away sort of thing in slightly less polite terms than that but so then i would lower my camera and then they would sort of becker me back and go no it's okay you can take a picture so it's like it's performative you know they want and i think the that that ultimate act of kind of ritual violence in the church is also performative but it's real you know because you see them smacking each other in the face and um so it's it's a really interesting kind of it's like a theater play but it's but it's real as well and it really represents that um i was saying about that spanish popular religiosity where the religion of the people as they see it has nothing to do with the church and the authorities in fact they actually see the church as kind of getting in the way so they have this you know their fixation is on the virgin mary effectively so much more than on jesus or god even um so they uh i mean you see it in the church in al monte it's almost you've got like priests and curates like scattering as they try as the when they decide to jump over the altar well i like the idea that after this eight 12 hours of debauchery somebody has to quietly bring the icon back and put it back onto the altar till next year.

45:21Kiernan:That's a very good point. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. I'm very curious about whose job that is to keep track of the darn thing. Yeah. It's probably some poor, yeah, junior member of the clergy, I imagine. Yeah. I mean, it's very, it's very interesting. Like, I think it also relates to, you know, you see in a lot of Central and South American cultures where, you know, the ancient pagan religions were kind of brought into the Catholic traditions. And when you visit those places, I mean, I've seen it in Guatemala, my co-host is often in Mexico and in the Day of the Dead celebrations. You see a lot of that iconography, you know, the Catholic Church recognized you got to bring that in or you got to create times of year where that can be part of the ceremony.

46:04Kiernan:It's amazing. Hundreds of years on that persists. I mean, I, I, I think it's quite beautiful that that persists because it just resists this kind of whitewashing of the world where we're all getting so close and so connected that like, it can become very generic. But I think for those who experience it, I mean, the violence and stuff, it's very, it's very foreign to me. And, you know, that sort of frenzy state is not something I've experienced, but you having seen it firsthand, And it seems like you, you know, you did experience moments where you do see that sort of ecstasy in the actual like religious side of it.

46:42Kiernan:I feel like so one of the stories that I found most moving was these the whirling dervishes and the training that goes in and the ecstasy that they feel. So give it give a sense of that Sufi tradition in Turkey and the training that goes into to trying to experience that ecstasy in a much more controlled way. sure yeah so yeah like i said that the um account of the whirling dervish festival it's got a festival called chevy a roost and it's held each december uh in the city of konya in turkey which is one of the kind of most one of the holiest cities in the country and the reason it's such a holy city is because it was the home of um rumi who you know lots of american um listeners will be familiar with rumi's one of the best-selling poets in the united states right in translation kind kind of yeah yeah so um lots of funny enough when i was at university i had uh my dissertation supervisor i studied islamic poetry um and one of my my teacher who then was my dissertation supervisor was very kind of at his wits end about um these kind of dubious translations of or interpretations as they are because um of rumi they're often done by people actually don't speak Persian which is the language it was written in and they're kind of become very like Instagramified and um Hollywoodified which is when I was in Konya actually I there was I was reading the English language newspaper and there was um a big double page spread about Hollywood's love for Rumi and all these celebrities who have tattoos of Rumi quotes and actually they're not really Rumi quotes at all yeah they're like brainy quotes.com literally that yeah exactly but um yeah so rumi you know before he was a um hollywood's favorite poet was um a islamic mystic in the medieval era and he founded the order of the whirling dervishes who are so named because they spin around and they do this dance where they they spin around in in yeah in kind of religious ecstasy it's kind of that's the the ultimate is this thing of trance state again um the reason i chose and so each december chevy arouse is there kind of the whirling dervishes kind of festival basically and um the reason i chose it's again it's that thing of not wanting to be too obvious you know what the chapter is about altered states of consciousness and and their relationship festivals and so you know i could very easily have gone to the jungle in costa rica or something and um just gone to a like a psychedelic entheogenic drugs festival and probably had a brilliant time yeah but um well you go you do go to burning man to be fair well yeah i actually didn't go to burning man i talk about burning man but then i decided to well i did try and get a ticket for burning man but i couldn't um it was sold out and then i also realized i was going to be spending that chapter uh sort of criticizing them for being hypocrites about their eco credentials right right right i I can't really fly to Nevada to do that and then fly home again.

49:45That would seem a bit hypocritical. But yeah, so I decided to go to this, go to Shebhi Arous instead, because they very much are about altered states, peak experiences, heightened, heightened states of consciousness. But they're, you know, they're devout Muslims, so there's no drugs involved, there's no alcohol involved. It's just through this kind of dancing. So again, I wanted to kind of present a slightly less obvious way of way of making the point but it's really striking when you talk to them and and you talk to what to them about what they experience and then you compare that to the sort of writings of uh people like terence mckenna you know these kind of like psychedelic gurus timothy leary whatever it's really really similar they're kind of that's really striking the same sort of outcomes um can

50:34Kiernan:you describe the dance the costume the symbolism in the ceremony sure yeah so they basically their outfit is a metaphor for um the death of the ego so again this is going to the psychedelic drug connection it's all about ego death you know so they're the point of their their whirling as they see it is it dissolves their ego and by dissolving the ego you get closer to the divine and closer to god basically so they wear these big tall comical hats which represent a tombstone for the ego and they wear these these huge cloaks and they sort of start the dance by shuffling along very like um slowly and rhythmically and then they throw off their cloaks and they're wearing these white um sort of robes and skirts underneath which and these represent their grave clothes and then they start spinning around and the skirts kind of i don't know how to describe it they like as they spin around you know the skirts kind of they resent they almost look like spinning tops you know it's very mesmerizing yeah um and they're spinning on one foot is that right they're spinning on one foot yeah and the way they train for that is kind of uh i mean they i think it's not quite as um brutal as it used to be the training is the understanding i get they used i spoke to a guy who said that they used to have to like kneel on a sheepskin rug for like three days without moving so far but they still do a thing now where they they will to train they'll have an upright nail underneath their heel so they'll be up on their toes on that foot and obviously if they if they lose their footing and they slip then their punishment is their heel goes down on an upright nail and um they still do that because the way that they whirl is they do it on one toe effectively and they spin around in the same direction every time so the strength and the poise you know you need in one leg to do that is crazy um but again again yeah they're in they're in this trance and you can kind of see them and when you're sitting on the i was sitting quite close to this side of the arena and they're kind of like making they're doing this very very elaborate or it's simple but it's very impressive kind of consistent dance but then you look at their faces and they're all kind of like eyes rolling back in their heads like sweating and making it like barks almost like making weird noises it's a really kind of interesting thing to to witness but it is kind of it really starts to make you feel a bit like you're in a trance yourself when you watch it yeah it's it sounds otherworldly you said yeah you know even though their eyes are closed they maintain the right distance from each other and they're supposed to be basically saying Allah Allah Allah with each spin um and the idea is that you know they're kind of separating and and uh and connecting with god as they spin further and further and how long is that in in total that performance it's a good question i think it's maybe i don't know 45 minutes maybe an hour i mean that's that's a really long time that's that it's a great physical feat it is and they do it you know all the time right right they they kind of that's an interesting one i mean talking about the question of authenticity of festivals and and these religious traditions you know traditionally shevi or it's called the sema this this whirling practice s-e-m-a and um traditionally it was a private practice like they would do it um among themselves you know it wasn't to an audience and they uh when modern turkey was founded by ataturk he passed all these laws which were all about secularizing getting rid of the religious orders because he saw them as a threat effectively and so sufism became illegal um and technically speaking the sufi orders still are illegal in turkey but they kind of realized that um there was some value whether that's monetary value or or cultural value in preserving this as kind of a cultural heritage type thing so it's allowed now but it's kind of a cultural heritage performance and so some people would tell you oh well it's you know that means it's not authentic then but then when i speak to the people who are performing the people involved with it you know there's no question for them it's a very very you know it's not just a thing they do right they go to work and doing it it's a very profound spiritual experience for them and it's one that they wouldn't get to do otherwise so it's kind of it's a double-edged sword really and they're they're not just performers from your description yeah no so um uh final final few questions the the first is uh i i assume that there were some festivals that you just couldn't work out for logistics reasons or because you couldn't find a guide so what what's one or two examples that were on that list that for some reason you couldn't get to that you'd still hope to attend well i would have loved to have gone to um the kumela in india this year so it happens every 12 years so it's kind of a long i mean they're very sub strata of it there are smaller ones that happen every four years every eight years the main one happens every 12 years it moves around different locations in india it's the biggest gathering of people on earth um millions of people uh and this one just gone was the which was this year was the biggest one ever um and it was i think it was some something to do with some particular celestial astronomical alignment meant that it was an extra special one um and i just and i love indian culture indian religion it's a hindu festival um and you have it's famous for the sadhus you know the hindu ascetics who uh would be there smeared in ash uh often completely naked like dreadlocked hair doing very extreme kind of religious practices and people kind of go to see them and pay respects to them um and there's all sorts of you know amazing music and food and cool experiences and it kind of moves around a bit like a kind of amorphous thing um i just couldn't go this year it was just had too much other stuff to do so that was a shame but one day i'd like to go to that um you mentioned the day of the dead in mexico i would love to go to that that was another one that's when people when i told them i was writing about cultural festivals that's one of the ones they always say is that is day of the dead um and i've been i love mexico and i spent a couple of months in mexico a few years back but it just wasn't at that time of year um and ever since i've wanted to go back at that time of year um so yeah i want i'd love to go there's a place called patscuaro in mexico where it's on a lake it's by a lake and on the day of the dead on the night of the day of the dead they get in these little rowing boats and they row out to the island which is like a cemetery island and it's all candle lit and they sort of pay respects and have a bit of a party there i'd love to do that uh rio carnival is another one as well it's kind of an obvious answer yeah i was just i just went to brazil for the first time um a month or two ago and everybody says everyone said to me you've got to come back during car that's one of the things that festivals are really um again you asked right at the beginning why did i want to write a book about festivals i think everyone can relate to having traveled somewhere and then some a local will say to them oh you've got to come back at xyz time of year to come to this festival because um yeah there are certain times where it just seems to be like you know proper bucket list sort of stuff and i think rio carnival is definitely yeah well i think there's enough for a sequel here it sounds like based on the Indian Festival.

58:24Kiernan:It'll be 2037. We can look for Fiesta Dose. Okay. All right. Something to work towards. And as far as the publication, your book Fiesta comes out this month in Europe. And I believe it'll be later this year, maybe January when it comes out in the US. So we'll be sure to bring it back onto the podcast. We'll probably replay this interview to launch when it comes out. But I'll say for our American listeners, you can buy it through Amazon in the UK. or in other European countries and have it shipped here. But I'll leave it to them to figure out the logistics of that. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for the book.

59:02Kiernan:Thank you for the education on so many festivals around the world. And you've certainly extended my bucket list. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. And now it's time for the last stop. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last stop on this train. Everyone, please leave the train. All right, Ryan. Ryan, well, we're here in the last stop. This is the last segment of the show, the final segment of the show. That's why we call it the last stop. It's your favorite segment. It's my favorite segment. It's popularly known as the people's segment. And that's because it's a moment for us to come together, much like all the people come together during fiestas.

59:41Kiernan:That's right, like Daniel Stables introduced us to. So it's a moment for us to come together as a community, Ryan, to share. We can bring anything. It can be a memory. It could be a dream. It could be an anecdote, It's something you're planning, an article, a tip, anything, as long as it inspires the spirit of wanderlust within us, even during the work day week. So, Ryan, I'm going to ask you, as I ask you every episode, do you have a last stop this week? I do, Kiernan. You know, I've gotten really into Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the last couple of years as I've been, you know, spending a lot of time in Colombia.

1:00:15Kiernan:I read 100 Days of Solitude. I read I just finished his book News on a Kidnapping about the Escobar kidnappings in the in the 80s. And, you know, he is Colombia's greatest novelist. He's, you know, largely credited with sort of inventing this, the South American magical realism, you know, type of literature that's become so important here and around the world. And I just found out that he is buried in Cartagena. So this week, yeah, this week, I'm going to go check out his grave, which is at the university here in a little area called the Cloister of Mercy. Cloister of Mercy. Yeah. So I'm excited to see it.