Depraved/Saved

Last night was the first of the four-day marathon of music that is the Calgary Folk Festival. You hear 'folk music' and you probably imagine a bunch of hemp-shirt wearing, patchouli-scented 50-something hippies with terrible frizzy grey hair waving their flabby arms in time with bizarrely un-hearable world music. Right? Um, no.

Folk Fest in Calgary is a Gathering of the Cool People on a freakishly grand scale. Folk Fest people are unwaveringly a la mode: elegantly tattooed, impeccably stylish, thoughtfully disheveled and all sporting heart-stoppingly chic sunglasses. This year is an 80s sunglass revival year: Ray Ban Wayfarers on the men and white-framed Cyndi Lauper behemoths on the ladies.

Don't get me wrong, you've also got your overweight women in peasant blouses and your skinny-legged dads wearing embarrassing hats, wool socks and sandals. But those folks fade into the background of a four-day tragically hipster fashion show of smart ass t-shirts, skinny jeans and Converse All-Stars.

This is our third year of Folk Festing. And the first year where, I suspect, the majority of the four days will be spent in the beer garden, making asinine small talk and missing all the fabulous music we paid $120 to see. It will be a hard journey, but I'm secretly thrilled because it's like this town's version of the Spanish bullfights. Which, since I just finished The Sun Also Rises, makes me feel rather chic in a 1920s Lost Generation kind of way.

I've been thinking about that lately. And not to take this post down a serious 180-turn or anything, but are we not lost? Are we not a generation of people casting about, collectively kind of pointless and decadent and spoiled? Seeking a way out of the meaninglessness by recycling our newspapers and pop cans. Or doing our hair like Edith Piaf and buying the largest, ugliest glasses we can find. Trying to connect to some bygone time where things seemed to make more sense.

Maybe these kinds of gatherings are a search for meaning. A writer friend of mine confessed yesterday that she believes God speaks to her through popular music. (Don't worry, her musical proclivities are a little more high-brow than Justin Timberlake or Miley Cyrus.) Time was, the folk singers were the speakers of brave truths. Though the 'beat-up six-string and a cause' acts are still part of it, it seems the new folk singers are super-hip indie bands with high-pitched vocals, full-sleeve tattoos and introspective lyrics.

Maybe this is our gospel church. And the simple fact of collecting in one place and letting music lift us, makes the fog clear, even just a little. Maybe, in the words of Blue Rodeo (Mainstage Saturday night), if we're lost, we are lost together.