Could there be an epic countdown to a legendary party at Shangri-La HQ – where every year, the doors to eternal pleasure will be opened to those wearing the chosen key.

For this year’s 100^th anniversary –something very special is planned…. their death / ever lasting happiness.

Does the singular godlike figure behind Shangri-La, the multibillion dollar corporation, decide for us that this is his final act of benevolence? From Dubain shopping complexes, utopian theme parks and super sex toys for disabled people, he is the Adrian Veidt/the Wizard of Oz/Obama of our time? Pleasure is for everyone, and everyone’s right. We never see him – but he is part of every aspect of our Glasto experience, on everything you consume.

There are hourly countdowns for people to prove their worth to him.– who will be able to find the girl with tiger eyes? Who will convince the pleasure drons what love is? People scramble through hoops in return for a key to the golden gates.

(nice to see a black market of key look-alikes)

Meanwhile its discovered that actually the end is nigh, that the doors to Shangri-La REALLY will open…An underground movement begins – those reluctantly finding themselves saving a numbed population that doesn’t even want to saved.

We witness moments of revelation dotted through the day. People in raptures of pleasure and possession writing on anything/anyone they see ‘The doors will open’ but people realize they’re not talking the same doors…

Are there other groups that deliberately want to stop the masses frm entering the gates? Who will be our Charles Manson? And if he and the Family’s were out to create their version of the Beatle’s White albumn to induce world chaos, who would be our god band? neil young? the ting tings?

Are there different forms of pleasure? Does the officially condoned pleasure start becoming increasingly militant as the weekend passes?  Does it lead to this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfkxpEqzBY&feature=related

Do the envelopes strung on their necks give them their final instructions? Is this the final dance to death?

Can we tie more of the Glasto mythology, line up, and back-story into our corporation?

FYI – this is a real Texan philanthropist that recreated Shangri La
http://www.starkfoundation.org/About-The-Foundation/Founders/Henry-Jacob-Lutcher-Stark.aspx

There’s a rumour going round that this is the last Glastonbury.
There won’t be any Glastonbury next year.
There are people wearing sandwich boards with ‘The End is Nigh’ written on them
Placards just saying ‘It’s over’ Graffiti appearing on toilet cubicles, notes pinned on tents or handed to you in a crowd of people.
Huge flaming lettering on a hillside spelling out ‘That’s all folks’
But if you ask further you find out its all a bit more serious than that
Glastonbury won’t be here next year because nothing will be here next year.
It’s the rapture
The end of days
The apocalypse.
But potentially there’s a way to stop it.

I like the idea of some kind of religion founded on hedonism.
A world where the meek are not blessed.
Where it is your duty to have as good a time as you possibly can.
To live to excess.
Where everything that we consider a sinful, guilty pleasure is a necessary part of worship. What would that actually be like?
If taking ALL the drugs and dancing like an enormous twat for as long as you could stand up was what good, conformist folk did? Was conservative. Square.
Because it’s Shangri-La so there is no work.
Surely then manufacturing yourself meaningless work is a kind of rebellion.
Digging meaningless holes.
Filing and refiling. Moving things from a filing cabinet on one side of a field to the other.
It’s a kind of release.
A statement.
Evangelical’s pursuing you across the world trying to compel you to have a bit of a dance.

OR

What about a cult founded entirely on something really trivial that happens at a festival.
Like an entire army of people who’ve devoted their lives to trying to find your debit card.
Armies of people digging up holes in the ground.
Search parties on golf buggies and BMX bikes.
People wearing sandwich boards or holding placards.
Wanted posters everywhere.
Seances. Memorials.
24 hour rolling news.
Or it could be a set of keys.
And everyone wears round their neck a white key on a piece of string as a reminder of their everlasting search.
This shows that you are part of the hunt and so you get let into the secret bowels of places.
It ‘unlocks’ certain experiences, opens hidden doors.
Perhaps each time you do something or go somewhere you get another white key to hang around your neck. By the end of the weekend some people have this epic looking collection of keys.
Then they could sacrifice one of their hoard to bring somebody else into it.
They could be trying to bring more and more people into the search.
Perhaps there are different levels of event. Places that you can only get into if you have 1 or 2 or 10 keys.
Encouraging them to go into different places where the key might have been lost.
There are key ceremonies – sombre/carnival-like re-enactments of the moment they were lost.

It soon becomes apparently that Shangri-La will just cease to be unless the keys are found.
Or perhaps Shangri-La only exists because the keys are lost (for it hath been said that Dave can’t start the VW without them)
And so there are others out there trying to stop them from finding the keys.
Or perhaps there is a secret underground rumour (from some Gonzo-like journalist) that there never were any keys to begin with.
And the celebration when the keys are found is enormous.
It’s the party to end all parties.

Or we could have a whole lost civilisation in search of their tent.
Nomads cast adrift, left roaming eternally in search of the tent.
Many have forgotten what it looked like in the first place, others hold a scrap of fabric that allegedly belonged to the tent.

–

Some other ideas:

What about if the symbol was a tiny envelope hung on a piece of string round your neck.
If you can resist opening the envelope all weekend and bring it back on Sunday night there is some kind of reward.
Maybe the envelope contains a card that if you open it takes you on some alternative route.

Some kind of brief initiation ceremony.
Performers all carrying a hipflask of something suspicious looking.

I like the idea of a search party.

Stickers that can be put on EVERYTHING.
You can give out whole pages of them.
They turn up everywhere.

Something that you have to try and take a photo of
A man in a red bowler hat, or something.
Some enigmatic white rabbit that everyone is chasing round the whole of the festival site.

Some way in which people can engage through taking photos.
How many photos get taken at Glasto?

A celebration of people in the background of other people’s photos.
How many photos can you get into the background of?

As promised here are some of Tax Deductible’s brainstormings, ideas, and things that made us go ‘ooh’ when we read the brief. This has brought out our inner geek. Sorry. Hope we haven’t missed the mark completely, let us know.

Characters and scenes

• As glastonbury gets muddier and muddier, the mayor’s lackey is constantly placing board after board in front of his feet so he remains pristine white and clean despite the decay, after the uprising of the outsiders he is the filthiest.

• Prosthetic cyborgian outcasts – out of date robots from AI, wires fried, CPUs addled. (We have a wicked prosthetics lady who makes all our creepy stuff for shows.)

• Mad gonzo journalist – a la Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan – interviewing the ‘city’ and documenting the downfall. Increasingly aware of the corruptness of the mayor, becomes some sort of hunted renegade for spreading the TRUTH.

• Freegans eating everything. EVERYTHING.

• Blade Runner style shanty china town market selling noodles and whores

• Pleasure droids with oyster card style touch in pads.

• Leisure Officers – enforced leisure time – maybe something simple and aesthetically odd, like everyone HAS to play with a large red ball. Leisure sirens! FUN FUN FUN! Lectures on the philosophy of fun. Pleasure junkies – people who have had far too much fun.. abandoned outside the main area, moaning for red balls. Pleasure Moderators.

• Love the workers digging the hole. Would be brilliant if they kept changing their mind. Holes EVERYWHERE. With signposts and directions to some sort of spiritual underground ‘metro’.

• BMX couriers sound so brilliant – love the idea of taking the typical cycling courier look of today and making it even more silly and sci-fi and scuzz punky.

• Do Androids dream of electric sheep? ELECTRIC SHEEP. Mood organs! Vendors selling moods in microchip form.

• Religions from the future – cult of the oyster card – touch in touch out touch in touch out. The idea you raised about rituals – touch in pads everywhere to do everything. Devices that track everyone’s movements via the cards creating giant screens of data, graphs, maps, tangles of information – everything digitalised and recorded. Religious preachers, cultists working the outsiders up into a religious fervour, howling prophets fighting for attention – speaker’s corner but even more insane.

Some inspirational things:

The sci-fi and futurist art of Syd Mead(concept artist for Blade Runner)

Transmetropolitan (dystopian comic about gonzo journalist from the future!)

Vivienne Westwood’s litter tribe

Harajuku street kids

Postcyberpunk

Blade Runner

Sin City – tribe of whores

AI’s Rouge City – home of the pleasure droids

American ‘White City’ of the early 20^th century – forced, idealised utopias

British Pleasure Gardens late 18^th century – Vauxhall Pleasure Garden – utopian mish mash of cultures and entertainments with little coherence!

Ray Gun Aesthetic

Metropolis

Spray-on tattoos

Yesterday evening Laura, Lyn and Andy came over and we talked some words.  Things worth thinking about from that little chat include:

The Cult.  And languages of groups:  Clockwork Orange, pig Latin, the coded language used by sailors, what was that called?  Pilari or something.  Look at behaviours of cults, the rituals.  What is ritualistic in our lives that we no longer recognise as ritual?

Escape.  Or something.  A shared action/desire for the denizens.  They want to get out of Shangri-La (a bit like Logan’s Run) or they want to take it over, or they all want to die together.  A simple thing for performers to play.

Visual identity:  Some kind of tatooing (real or otherwise) or an item of clothing, big armband, shaved head, bleeding eye, bone through the nose.  So as to be recognised as a person that has gone through some kind of Initiation Rite. Something that can be thrown up on walls and doors, a kind of viral.  a logo.  a log.  A spider, or an ant.

Unity of purpose with the rest of the field.  Need to understand what else is going on and make sure that everything ties in together.

There was more but I have to dash out now.  Please add your thoughts, ideas, links, images, recipes and love poems.

kiss kiss.

here is a constant source of inspiration