What does one expect at Fool’s Soup? I got one perspective from the nice lady who helped me paint my cowboy boots. “They don’t like to be called ‘hippies’,” she told me, “I think they like ‘freaks’ better.”
Another point of view was from a stalwart of the burning community.
“It’s pretty psychedelic. I normally don’t sleep for four days, and then catch a nap just before I have to pack up and drive home.”
Someone advised me that I should wear nothing but a bollo, cowboy hat and boots and a super-hero cape.
I went to a thrift store and bought a mish-mash of costume pieces, and headed off on Friday evening to experience Soup in the humid Texan evening. My Saab was bulging at the seams with supplies for the weekend camping, a pleasant change to having to carry all of your gear on your back. Last time I did that, I had to cast aside booze as being too heavy. This time, I had more cider, wines and tequila than is good for a person. Apparently, Austin is responsible for necking one per cent of the tequila bought in the US – about five times the average. I had my litre and a half to throw into the weekend statistics.
My Saab became a little sick and decided to overheat repeatedly en route. After many hours, and many stops, I arrived upon the unlabelled backroads that led to the venue. By this time it was dark and raining, and the mud tracks became an opportunity to fling dirt around. I had the heating on full to cool the engine, the windows open, and insulated from the road by power steering and automatic transmission, I ploughed on. The cows in the surrounding fields were treated to my victorious theme music amd a variety of expletives as I finally and miraculously arrived at the event gate.
“No firearms, fireworks or explosives?” asked BJ at the gate. BJ was countryfolk. Long hair, baseball cap and a heart of gold in addition to a charming name. I told her that I was mostly harmless. She told me not to bother erecting my tent until the next thunderstorm had passed. I asked her where to park. She asked me who I knew. I told her that I knew !Bob and Bean. She told me where they were camping. I set off in my Saab.
My eyes were filled with wonder as I approached the tents and cars strewn about amongst the trees. It was very much the fairy grotto to someone with my poor night vision. Strings of winking fairy lights adorned the trees. As I cruised past, I saw people dressed in silk dressing gowns and cowboy hats milling about in the rain. The assault on my senses continued as !Bob appeared and thrust a large bottle of wine into my non-steering hand. I drove behind his beckoning figure and before I knew what it meant and where I was, I had reversed into the Kingdom of Slack.
Things didn’t really stop from the moment that I left the car. !Bob tried to give me a tour of the place, but we would get distracted by people and events. It wasn’t until the following day that I found the swimming pool, showers, stage and the like. I met some thoroughly charming people, and completely forgot about thunderstorms and tent-erecting.
Friday evening didn’t really progress – the night didn’t unfold. Friday rather dodged and weaved, ducked and dove. My Friday was characterised byBrownian Motion – I was a molecule pottering about meeting other molecules and being distracted by shiny things and the like. I recall being very friendly with some of the dogs from the Kingdom of Slack, partly because I generally had some food in my hands. I recall one of the Slackers complaining that they had run out of Margarita mix, and then I pulled a bottle from the bowels of my Saab to the appreciation of those assembled. I remember someone talking about candy-flipping. I remember not being too taken aback by a large amount of nudity and dancing about. I heard of plans for theme camps for the next, larger, event – Flipside. The blueprints of mayhem were sketched out. I met Nekked Jim, and was pleasantly surprised to see he kept his cowboy hat on. Presumaby that stopped burning embers from singing his hair. Well, some of his hair.
The next things I remember in flashes. One was the thought that I was cramped. The next thouht was that I really should find my car keys so that I could open the electrically operated passenger side window to allow my feet to stick out. I was woken an insane o’ clock in the morning by a passing princess who tickled my feet. This wasn’t so hard for her to do, as I had opened the passenger door at some point in the night to allow my legs to straighten as I slept.
“Good morning, how are you?”
“Waaaahh. Er. I’m fine thanks. Wish I could find my car keys. Oh hang on. Doesn’t matter.”
“Where’s your tent?”
“In the boot. I mean in the trunk. Oooh. Look. My car keys were in the ignition all the time.”
The princess (I’m not embellishing or fantasizing, she introduced herself as a princess) showed me a nice place to put up my tent and helped me do so. I disappeared within and emerged later in the afternoon. By this time, the majority of the camp had assumed I had disappeared or been eaten by carnivorous cows in the adjoining field. Which meant that people would come up to me and say,
“Ah. You’re that English dude. The cows didn’t eat you after all.”
or,
“You’re alive! We thought we’d lost you.”
or, and this one was really quite novel,
“Do you know how to break into cars? I have three sets of car keys and they’re all locked in my truck.”
After the briefest of rest periods – about as long as it took to find my car and the cider therein, the random motion continued. Saturday saw the Slackers take my tail-gate party virginity. We sat in the back of a truck called ‘Big Red’, drank, had our toe-nails painted blue and giggled. This, by all accounts, is a tail-gate party. They are fun. The party later developed into a puppy pile. Many people sit in the back of the truck for this, and form a human and canine lasagne, with sprinkles of blankets and pillows. Warmth is shared, bongs are passed around, and beef-jerky is consumed. For some reason, my brain is wired to say trailer-park party instead of tail-gate party, and I can’t reprogram it to say the correct words no matter how hard I try.
A man in a psycho clown suit arrived, and a while later, people are launching increasingly dangerous objects from a three-man catapault. Being a ‘Leave No Trace’ community, this requires people to scour the field for launched items such as cans of beer and a variety of balls. By this point, I have learnt what “Are you on the two-thirty train?” means. Limes become the favoured ammunition of the launcher. There’s nothing as funny as watching people who are “balls-to-the-wall tripping on potent psychedelics” wander around a field of grass looking for a lime that has been flung from a catapault. Trust me. It’s great. One particular hero proved to be worth his weight in citrus gold by managing to find the proverbial needle in the green haystack time after time.
A giant of a man walked around with the lady who had locked her keys inside her truck. Again, I am not embellishing or exaggerating that this man was a giant.
“I’m fucking huge. A total giant. Six foot eight,” he told me. He also explained that the lady had thankfully stopped throwing up now, and could keep down water. She didn’t react well to some of the tablets she was taking for fun. She never did apparently.
Things were burnt on Saturday. This included a large ship effegy. Fire was danced with. Everyone had brought something to the energetic, sprawling party. People were very friendly – there was a real community. It was pointed out that the Kingdom of Slack was a complete misnomer for a group of obsessive compulsives who work really hard to be able to slack during such events in their theme-camp. They have a fully stocked bar put up in the midst of the trees for example. My hero Slacker, fond of a “drinky-drink”, vowed he would be brewing two kegs of beer and bringing all of the necessary dispensing apparatus in addition to the bar next time. The community was strong. People would point out when others were on fire. Everyone had something to give and to share. I brought my accent, and it amused people to try to make me sound ‘ghetto’.
“Don’t be frontin’ on the 187 if you don’t got the juice,” I was heard to say when someone pretended to threaten me with a switchblade.
I woke on Sunday afternoon in my tent, and was saddened to see people packing up and leaving. I decided to sit out the thunderstorms with some fine Chardonnay and slept another night under canvas. A handful of the hard core remained. I never got to wear my silver cowboy boots. Hopefully I will get my hands on a ticket to Flipside at the end of May. I can wear them then.