The reveries of the solitary paleologist

Paleo Festival 2019 - Jonas Follonier

Paleontologists study the remains of living beings and their historical evolution. Why not do the same with the Paléo Festival? There are human remains in this mud. It's fertile ground for a little sociological analysis. Make way for paleology.

I don't hold Rousseau dear to my heart, either as a philosopher or a writer. However, like any genius - and I regard him as such - there are isolated areas that can speak even to those who don't find him brilliant in the majority of his work. So it is for me with Reveries of the Solitary Walker, a little nugget that founded the literary genre of the promenade. As a former student of Professor Claire Jacquier at the University of Neuchâtel, I had the opportunity to deepen my experience of this book to the point where, I confess, I sometimes identified with Jean-Jacques.

Loitering all week on the Plaine de l'Asse, on the outskirts of Nyon, for one of Europe's biggest festivals, I sometimes feel like a stranger. «My only luggage was / Words and images / For me every face / Was a new landscape / So I'd always be a stranger everywhere / Or would I be home one day, but where?», sang l'ami-ennemi. Music is my home. Whether I make it or listen to it. But outside music, it starts to get complicated. At a festival, this burlesque and tragic reality takes on its full meaning. So many people come to hear music, not to listen to it!

Read also | The noble Bob Dylan

Here's an initial distinction that's useful for our sociological analysis: there are souls who have come to listen to music, and others who have come to hear it. In passing, almost by chance, since the food and drink stalls are not far away anyway! And it's well known that you go to a festival to unwind. To let off steam, and tread the damp earth with your feet. And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. Once circuses, now festivals and a few Valais queen matches and wrestling festivals. There's something for everyone. The fact remains that at an event like Paléo, the space is so vast that its biodiversity cannot be summed up in a single category.

First, there are the current thirty-somethings. Those famous young people who never wear a shirt - because it's not the right thing to do. cool - and are very tolerant, except of anything that gets in their way. Then there are the forties and fifties, who differ from the thirtysomethings only in that they drink a little more wine and a little less beer, and often have a few redneck tattoos. Then there are the over-sixties. These are either ex-sixties or simply very open-minded and curious people.

So I'm left with a very positive impression of this joyful diversity. After all, music lovers may be as rare as my very good articles, and what's rare is precious. But what a sight it is to see all these humans wading through the mud like pigs. Do I really want to identify with them? I don't think so. I find myself daydreaming about my winter evenings, under the blanket, listening to some good original rock on vinyl. What a distance from this machination surfing about fashion and group effects. And then there's that famous sound, that little unexpected spark in a concert or situation that makes the joy of the’being-in-the-world Heideggerian spirit takes hold of me. Or perhaps this is even the beginning of being-in-the-world.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Paléo / Ludwig Wallendorff