This Year's Oddest Festival Review

It might be considered a contradiction, but I find myself uninspired by my time away last week. The yearly trek to Download Festival that used to give me so much muse and gumption to produce new content now inspires me just as much or as little as my daily walk to work.

It used to throw individualism and insight at me, but now I find it slings me back to the dull college student drudgery of looking for magic under every stone, pretentiously searching for hidden wonders that no others have apparently had the time or sense to trip upon.

Thanks to a fair amount of year-by-year consistency, Download Festival is now more familiar than Christmas.

But I'm not depressed or cynical, despite perhaps constant and obvious appearances. No, it's more like I've graduated. Congratulations Nick, you've reached the point where a certain depth of living and consuming is no longer sufficient to provide you with the sustenance you crave, and it's time to bound forwards into higher realms, searching for the next stage like some sweaty, drunk and bloodied Jonathon Livingston Seagull.

Nick