I don’t really remember when I cut mine off. In fact, I don’t remember where I was, what I was thinking, or why exactly I did it. About all I do know is that it’s currently in the bottom of a very messy drawer, and that I cut it a bit after meeting someone here that had attended the 2006 Pukkelpop and was still wearing his band. I recall that while it had great sentimental value, as soon as I was no longer around friends who were familiar with the event or had also attended, I really didn’t want it to be noticed by anyone or to come up in conversation. I’m usually a sentimental person, and I like to keep mementos of things, but I find that when something is really significant to me, I don’t really like to share it with outsiders. When something of that nature happens to me, at first I like to talk about it; after enough time has passed, and I’ve “moved on” from what happened, the memories become much more personal, and talking makes me frustrated and depressed. I think the most frustrating aspect of significant events of this nature is facing how you haven’t changed, or at least not in the way you expected. After Pukkelpop, and the summer, I felt incredibly changed. I still do, certainly, but at this point I can no longer feel the difference as I did then. Instead of an almost tangible impact, it’s just a vague feeling now. When I speak to people about Pukkelpop now, I usually just describe where it was, what bands played, maybe who I was with, how well it was run, etc. Afterall, that’s really all there is to say on the matter to someone who doesn’t know anything about it, or my friends, or my past. Describing such a significant event always on those terms, never really having reason or chance to express the significance of it, but still being reminded of the significance everytime the innocent question of “what’s that ribbon for?” came up was just too much. Of course, it was a gradual thing. I don’t know if I even really could express this when I cut it, but I realize it now. Maybe it was just a way to combat the gradual dull of the impact of it. Instead of letting the experience be debased into some superficial repetitive conversation piece I just cut it off. Or maybe it was just that the experience had ended, and that I would rather banish from my everday thoughts to those of nostalgia and flashback.

I still have my big Pukkelpop poster on my wall, so I guess having the reminders around me isn’t the really the issue, so much as having to explain it to outsiders, as the ribbon would inevitably require.

And thanks, re: the colors!

Renee: It was a great festival, completely enormous yet extremely well-run, great lineups, and I was with a bunch of my best friends!

Heather: But then I would just covet the diamond! Maybe I would put it on a ring and get a crappy ring tan! It would have been all for naught!

Frank: One of my Czech ex-dissident profs. told me that under the Soviets, he’d never write anything down because it was too dangerous to have physical evidence of anything. So nowadays if he writes something down, he won’t remember it at all.
He’s rewired his brain in crazy ways. Me, I don’t trust my head to hold on to anything, so I’m probably doing the exact opposite of my prof. and training my brain to never remember anything by writing everything down.

And it is quite colorful, yes. I’m pretty happy with how this one came out.

I barely care about picture based memories, I keep anything important in my head and even though I’m retarded and it gets scrambled somewhere between my brain and mouth when I’m trying to tell some one about an experience, at least I remember it. Selfish, I know.

Also this is definately one of your most colourful strips no?

also, maybe you just cut it because you were tired of having a bracelet tan.  the answer doesn’t always have to be so profound.

That must have been some amazing music festival…

Beautiful coloring, Ian! You must be drinking some wild coffees.