Remembering Glastonbury 2017, and All the Moments Lost in Time

An ode to life, love and all the people we met along the way.

by Ryan Bassil

London, GB

by Jake Lewis

by Chris Bethell

June 29, 2017, 11:32am

There's something weird about endings. On the one hand, a new chapter is about to begin. On the other, there's a knowingness things will never be the same. You're on the other side now. Soon the memories will fade like old photographs dampening in the rain, blurred and no longer vivid.

The days following a festival can be fragile. The long walk home, the brain zaps, the fucking night terrors and sweat. These are the physical conclusions. Riding underneath them, burrowed into our skin, are the moments. The ever-long snapshots we cannot forget but also cannot ever fully remember. Snatched glances across shared dance-floors; careening across fields of grass and MDMA; bonding our souls with something that feels beyond friendship, at least for now.

Whether you're slumming in pop-up tents, stumbling around the VIP area or working, everyone at Glastonbury has these moments. It's part of what makes the festival so special. The view from the Park Stage and its dream of endless possibility; seeing the Pyramid for the first time; running into a friend on the railway track, and then another, and then another; strange men and women in Shangri La; political freedom, equality and togetherness; early mornings and never-ending nights; the idea this place could almost be utopia and it should never end, but soon it will. Love.

Defining our past, our present, our future – we long to experience these moments again. The pain is knowing we can't. Yet somehow they come together to form a whole, connecting us with what we know to be life. The happiness of it, its impermanence, the ultimate power of the present we will never be able to live through again. For you and yours and anyone else going through the sentimental throes of a comedown, here are some photos celebrating exactly that.