Sometimes all you experience of something is a story, but that’s enough to light you up. That was me just seeing the signs for the project Carpe Exitus at Confest; a rolling workshop of fishing for, preparing, and eating the feral carp, then making a soft leather with the skin. I heard the story around the fire at the Evolve village, where my friend Yonke had gotten involved in all the steps, and was still in process, massaging the beautiful yellow-silver scale-patterned fish skin, hours of continuous kneading needed to make it supple. I’d watched the carp from the riverbank, as they flicked their fins at the surface. They are the fish that make the water opaque, churning it as they chew up the silty river bottom, inhibiting other fish and water plants. Hence Carpe Exitus’ motto, ‘eat the problem.’
Yet the river Kolety (pronounced Kol-etch in Wemba Wemba), is still beautiful, and almost always Confest rings with the call of sacred kingfisher. They were not so audible to me this year, but I had the luck of my closest sighting ever of an azure, diving into the mudded water. Obviously the churned river is still adequate habitat. And the rains had come, the native grass was intermixed with masses of delicate sky-blue wahlenbergia (native bluebell) and fragrant river mint, and the ancient redgums were as venerable as ever. And the revegetation is thriving. It’s not all invasive prickles!
Although it was the 50 year anniversary of Confest this year, I didn’t manage to get along to any storytelling or view any documentation of this inspiring legacy. Confest can be like that – there’s simply too much going on! But maybe others did, and if so, I’d love to share in your experience.
But I can share this – how I am both inspired and deeply saddened by what I know of Confest’s history. Inspired, because of its enormous positive impact on so many of us, and saddened, because of how close it seemed in the seventies that culture could have gathered momentum in this direction rather than being hijacked by the forces of capital. To think that it was our deputy prime minister, Jim Cairns, who came up with the idea for Confest! What if Whitlam hadn’t been dismissed, and that community and ecological vision instead became deeply embedded throughout Australian culture?
Eat the problem.
There’s something in this phrase for me. Dive into the churned-up mud. Digest what is. Allow ourselves to be nourished by what we encounter. Keep at the work, keep kneading, and keep needing each other. Because what we have, the utter magic of that Easter weekend with not a phone in sight, the love and dedication hundreds of volunteers pour into Confest every year, is incredible and very precious. I’m feeling so much gratitude for people’s dedication to the vision, despite, and because of, this crazy world.
Finally, something I fished up for you from the very bed, the inspiration that began it all; Jim Cairns’ speech at the opening of the very first Confest.
The purpose of the festival is to show the urgent need to shape alternatives now. Ways must be found because of the violent, acquisitive, alienated, industrial society which now poses a threat to survival. People have for centuries searched for equality and the right to and ability to determine their own development.
Individuals must accept responsibility for themselves. Personal happiness and equality, as much as a good society depend on self-realisation.
The most vital factor is the sense of true identity. This is lost because our identities are created by others – not by ourselves. The all-powerful externally created hegemony in this assumed-to-be free society, and its eternalised personal alienation, must be understood if self-realisation is to be achieved.
The starting point must be ‘will to be that self which one truly is’.
There must be equality and effective individual participation in government and in every other group activity if self-realisation is to be achieved.
ConFest will be concerned with the search for the true nature of man and woman.
For many centuries, belief that man is inherently bad has exercised tremendous influence. Because of this belief, individual needs are suppressed and the result is that personal helplessness, lack of independence, and the desire to be led are created.
From infancy on, people are re-trained to be self-denying, falsely modest, self-effacing, and mechanically obedient. They are taught to suppress or hide their natural feelings or energy.
Social ideology is governed by contradictory altruism, by guilt, and the inability to experience work and action as a pleasure. This results in tendencies towards violence. But is not the basic natural needs of people that have a destructive and hedonistic outcome – it is the result of the repression of basic natural need that is violent and destructive.
The internal social crisis of today that result from these contradictions means that we must shape the alternatives now. There is not just one alternative. The new society will be made up of the choices of multitudes of people – individuals and groups – who are determined to find a way out. No one can be excluded.
Sincerely Jim Cairns