I Sing The Body Electric

Now and then things fall into place. The stars align. The world spins in exactly the way we want it to. And everything seems more or less right under the sun. Well, under sun where we are at least.

It was that way at Electric Picnic, in Stradbally, Co.Laois, not far from the centre of Ireland, over the weekend. "The weather didn't just make a difference," promoter John Reynolds told me on Sunday afternoon, with a gentle sun caressing the festival site in the small rural town and warming everyone within its sweet embrace. "It made all the difference. You and I would't be standing here talking if it was raining. When the sun is shining everyone is in a better humour. The fans are in a better humour. The staff are in a better humour. The artists are in a better humour. It makes everything easier and more pleasant. So it's been fantastic."

We've all been there, squelching through the mud at Irish festivals and running from tent to tent between showers. You try to grin and bear it. People are good at camouflaging just how betrayed by the elements they can feel. Some hardened festival goers have long ago decided that, if the deluge happens, the best thing to do it so wallow in it. Fine for them: their gumption is to be admired. Others are less indomitable. The more caked in mud they become the soggier their spirits get. They have dressed for an open air ball; instead of being able to flaunt it they are forced into cowering under any form of protection they can find. It's been that way more or less all summer here. Finally, however, over the weekend, the Gods smiled. And it was good.

That was the universal verdict about Electric Picnic 2012: it was a fantastic festival. People were raving about the music: about Christy Moore turning in an astonishing performance on Friday night; about the marvellous, raunchy New Zealand starlet Kimbra, in the most brilliant style wooing those who were smart enough to catch her on Saturday afternoon; about the high priestess of punk poetry Patti Smith taking everyone to a transcendent place on Saturday evening; about The Cure, in her wake, rolling out the hits in extraordinary measure; about Of Monsters and Men, who hit No.1 this week in Ireland with their very fine debut album My Head Is An Animal, pulling three times the anticipated crowd to the Crawdaddy arena on Sunday, so that the audience – enjoying the music even though they couldn't see the stage – spilled out onto the hill surrounding the tent; and about Glen Hansard, who brought the same Crawdaddy tent to a magnificent and emotional close at midnight on the final night.

Festival experiences are made of memories like these: of course they are. But they encompass so much more than that too. The human animal is a wonderful creature and, gathered together on a warm and festive afternoon at the end of a disastrously wet and in many ways gloomy summer, the 35,000 strong sell-out audience confirmed this in all sorts of unexpected ways.

It wasn't just the fact that this was the rock'n'roll tribe putting on a show, dressed for fun and frolics, letting it all hang out and looking full of sass and sex appeal (okay that was mainly the women but you know what I mean!). This is a country where people used to be so screwed-up about their bodies they wanted to hide every inch of flesh, preferably behind something grey. At Electric Picnic, there was colour and self-confidence and vibrancy in evidence at every turn.

It is one of the joys of being human that no two people will always agree on who or what is beautiful or attractive. Tall, thin, fat, slim, small, in between: there is usually someone for everyone in the audience and the more we observe humans as creatures, the better we can tune in to what it is that others see in those that might at first not seem like paragons of whatever it is that generally strikes a deeper chord or makes the earth move for us.

Besides, as any student of Walt Whitman (and Patti Smith) will know, it is often in their vulnerability that we can find the true beauty of people. And in the sun at Electric Picnic, there is so much of that visible, in glorious close-up, that it is genuinely fascinating: the sunglasses perched on the head betraying a fantasy self that only the wearer could ever fully explain; the mis-choice of short shorts exposing something unintended and not really flattering but utterly human; the suit worn in a particular way to disguise a hint of encroaching girth; the shaved, bald head beginning to show the effects of the sun when a little bit of factor 50 could have rebuffed the ultraviolet; the face with everything in some way flawed that somehow adds up to much more than the sum of its parts...

And then there are the ones who get it right. The tattoos positioned snugly across a half-bare spine; the indian head-dress that sits as if it was made for the head and the face it frames; the hair cascading down around narrow shoulders pushed back suddenly to reveal a smile; the day-glo face-paint imparting an aura of mystery and, smeared in the right way, just a hint of recklessness; the look of expectation barely contained in curious eyes; the movement and gesture of animated conversation as it flows out across the arena in clusters and in waves and ends in raucous laughter revealing gleaming teeth; a hand grasped firmly and shaken; a joke well told; enthusiasm communicated so that you wish you'd been there or you shift ass in response to catch the last two numbers of an artist in action; friendship renewed in the fading light, as the sun finally decides that it is time to retire for the night.

In the Mindfield area, the Hot Press Chat Room was buzzing throughout. Having done his interview, behind the scenes John Cooper Clarke reminisced with us about the show Hot Press promoted for him back in the late 1970s in the Project Arts Centre. How, after all the ravages, does JCC look so the same? Glen Hansard wandered through the zone and seemed thoroughly at home, posing for pictures with fans and embracing The Frames' manager from the old days, Frank Murray; Ryan Tubrudy told yarns about crossing paths with Terry Wogan, and aiming to turn the old maestro on, to Villagers; Miriam O'Callaghan did her homework quietly beside the Mindfield production office – "once a swot always a swot," she laughed – before her stint in Leviathan; Booker Prize-winning author Anne Enright scurried by on her way to the Word Stage; Paddy Cullivan turned the Pistols vandalisation of 'My Way' on its head by doing a jazzy version of 'Anarchy In The UK'; and all around there was a sense of serious purpose in the air but an absence for the most part of the kind of po-facedness or people taking themselves too seriously that is the ruination of a good vibe. In so many ways, it felt idyllic.

From the stage Nick Kelly of The Fat Lady Sings described Electric Picnic as his favourite festival of all, anywhere in the world. It was a comment that echoed Robert Smith's observation in the cover story of Hot Press last issue, when he said that the bill at Electric Picnic was the best of any festival he was playing this summer. Well, with the sun shining and the atmosphere loose and friendly and not a hint of hassle or undue pressure in the air, that I could see at least, all of those plaudits seemed justified.

Now and then things fall into place indeed. Well, we deserve them to. It has been a difficult summer for Irish music fans and promoters alike, as indeed it has been in innumerable ways for the wider community. But it has ended well. The traumas at Swedish House Mafia in Phoenix Park were consigned to the past when the three shows at Marlay Park, and in particular the David Guetta gig, went off without a hitch. And the good time, sun-soaked, hassle-free nature of the Picnic offered a final healing balm.

It would be idiotic ever to deny, or even to minimise, our capacity as human beings to do terrible things. But on days like these when the stars do align, it is possible to believe that – no matter how badly wrong we can go at times – it is good to be here, where we are, in the autumn of 2012.

Onwards and upwards. The future is ours. There is much to change and cure along the way for sure. But in the meantime, let us sing the body electric and enjoy the lives that we are living to the full...