Lost 40 333

Lost 333
When the plans washed away, the community was still there.

To everyone who has been part of Lost 40,

I wanted to take some time to address the greater Lost 40 community from my personal perspective and share some thoughts and feelings I’ve been having about the gathering and where I think it should go from here.

I had this really sad moment sitting along the flooded creek near family camp after everyone had left the festival grounds. Seth and Duo were still there with me, but they were off in another part of the grounds. I was sitting there by myself, watching the water rush by. I was moved to tears.

All the plans and everything I had worked toward for the whole year had just washed away with that flash flood. It was really difficult to pull the festival together to the extent that we did. And I was really grateful for everyone who helped and that we got through it safely. No one was seriously hurt or drowned. I felt so tiny and helpless, and grateful beyond words. The world is truly outside of my power. We survived, and I’m grateful life showed us mercy.

Even before the rain, I knew something needed to change. About halfway through the season, I started realizing that the way we were organizing and funding the event wasn’t sustainable. I had pushed a formula far past the point of no return. Commitments had been made, and we were already deep into the season. It was too late to fully change course.

Sitting there, I had this sad moment of clarity about a bunch of things I’d been personally holding on to, including a continued belief that I could exponentially give more to the project every year until the end of time. In reality, I had hit my wall long ago in terms of time and capacity, but I never quit promising more. Humility is good. I am actually the bottleneck of the operation. And also the only person who can change that.

All the promotions, the ticket sales, even the bands and the light and fire shows—all the things we think make up a good festival—none of them were truly at the core of why people were here. It was more about friendship than anything. Despite it all, when the dinner circle finally came together on Saturday, it happened. World peace existed for a brief moment of silence. WE DID IT!

It reminded me of the gatherings of old, when we were deep in the forest, before we became a festival. I had this feeling that so much of what I’d been fighting for the past few years—promotions, advertising, sales, sponsorships, the budget—had pulled my attention away from what truly was at the core of its meaning: the circle of friends. People helping people. We never needed to organize a music festival; we just needed to show up. It’s us. We are the festival together.

And it was one of the most meaningful things of the weekend. The music was amazing, the fire show was amazing, the lasers and bubbles were amazing. The flood was amazing. We survived and had a sweet concert in the mud to celebrate.

And there, in that realization, I found myself at a crossroads.

What was really awesome about the weekend was that it made me realize our festival group is definitely capable of going deeper into the forest. And I think a lot of us are wanting to do that. Despite the flash flood, the difficulties that came with rescuing all of our gear out of the water, and the frustrations that came along with it, most of us had this unifying feeling that perhaps this was one of the best festivals we had ever been to—although definitely for its own unique reasons.

The forest broke us down and tested us and reminded us how fragile we are. And at the same time, it made us realize how strong and resilient we are. That’s the beauty of the way of it: to test our spirit and make sure the human inside is still alive.

Through most days of our lives, we go without being reminded that we are children of the forest. Somehow the flood helped show us that. And I think that connection was what we were truly searching for when we left home for the festival.

I think at Lost 40, we’re a bunch of forest protectors—or at least, you know, we want to be. We could go deep into the national forest again and have more remote gatherings. It would be beautiful. We are capable of that, I’m sure.

But on the other hand, we’re a bunch of festival kids too. There are a lot of people in Babylon still, and they really, really need us. They need Lost 40. And we actually really need them.

They’re not necessarily going to go deep into the forest on their first festival expedition. We could probably get more of our families and friends to come if it were a little more of a civilized experience— an established venue or park scenario that could accommodate people’s needs in a more comfortable way.

For people who live in houses and aren’t big campers, walking long distances with gear to a remote campsite and dealing with mosquitoes and bugs isn’t necessarily their type of weekend.

Of course, I was optimistic that the Valley of the Green Giants was going to be that middle ground for us. A halfway step between the national forest and the festival grounds, where it all came together and worked. We had spent months battling with the county just to get the campground open to us. I had a lot of hope tied up in that place.

But as the water rushed past me, I realized I was thinking two-dimensionally about where to go.

We desperately needed a free gathering in the forest. But we also desperately needed a music festival in a park. We also need to have a campout in Iowa again.

I started thinking that three connected events could work better than one. We could carry the energy from one into the next instead of working so hard to promote everything from scratch every year.

But that meant looking at my own part in why things weren’t working.

A lot of the difficulty on the business side had to do with me thinking I could do everything myself, not knowing how to ask for help, and learning that I need to teach people how to do things instead of being frustrated that they don’t already know how.

I needed to get out of the way of Lost 40. Not necessarily leave, but get out of the way of it, you know? My job is just to help build the consensus that we’re all showing up at this time and place to share art and music. I don’t actually need to do anything besides let people be people and build their festival at their own pace. People waiting on me to tell them what to do slows down progress and overwhelms me.

At the core of why Lost 40 is still working is everyone. It’s everyone’s friendships, wanting to see each other and be part of something together. That’s why people came.

And so I want to take that energy from the circle and find a few people who want to form an inner circle of community organizers to free up the flow of communication.

People who care about the community. People who want to see things like this grow and go forward. People who think it’s worth our time to have open discussions, do workshops, and work collectively and communally to feed one another.

These are concepts to develop together. There are lots of conversations to be had about how each part could work, what we have the resources to do, and who wants to help make it happen.

I’m looking for people who want to join our board of directors and become that organizing team. The commitment is $20 a month, and it includes your entry fee. We’re pooling money to create a monthly budget, with everyone putting a little into the project and working together to decide how to use it.

We’ll have monthly board meetings with the option to join remotely. A place to bring ideas, make decisions, learn from each other, and take responsibility for a piece of the work.

Lost 40 can’t get to its next phase unless we bring the community together at the core of the organization. And I want to help make room for that.

If you’re interested in joining the board, please text us at (206) 865-6357. Even if you’re curious and want to learn more about what being involved could look like, we’d love to hear from you.

I know some of you have already talked with us about joining. It’s been a few months, so please text us again to remind us that you’re interested. We want to bring everyone into the conversation and make sure nobody gets missed.

The flood washed a lot of things away, but the community was still there. This is my attempt to put more of the event into the hands of that community—to take what we found in the dinner circle and bring it into how we organize, how we make decisions, and how we take care of each other.

With love,
Clarke