Wednesday. Ananas spilled on my Salomons. Chopped ananas in a plastic package. Apparently, it couldn’t resist the pressure drops on the plane. I hate those Salomons though… bought them on Vinted. I always take the same size, but this particular model somehow turned out to be a bit smaller than usual. Still, it’s the only gore-tex pair I have at the moment. And it might be raining. Sweden is so beautiful from above though: pine forests, dark lakes, remnants of tiny islands.

I’m heading to Stockholm and then to a place called Norberg, where I’ll attend a music festival of the same name. I’ll also be participating in my first LARP (Live Action Role Play), organised by OMSK Social Club. This particular project is called the Fourth World (reference to Paul McAuley’s work "Fairyland"). I’m extremely excited but also scared… and there are complications.

The Norberg Festival has been held at the site of an abandoned mine for over 25 years. It seems they’ve always focused more on local, Scandinavian experimental sound artists, leaning toward noise and academic music (but how very little I know). This year’s lineup includes, for me, the most exciting: Julek Ploski. Plus a few acts featuring more “classical” instruments, and of course some familiar faces from the DJ scene.

I’m arriving the night before the LARP starts, so I can be there on time the next morning. And the campsite is still closed to visitors right now. I was planning to go there today anyway and just camp wherever, but my flight was delayed by four hours now, and it takes three more hours to get there, sooo I’ll be arriving late at night. Not ideal, given the uncertainty and my ever-present anxiety. Decided to ask friends around if I could crash in Stockholm somewhere. Planning to take the 07:43 train to Norberg in the morning. Turned out that the only two people I knew in Stockholm — female artists I met at a residency last summer — had both moved to Berlin, lol. A friend (from the Russian leftist community in Berlin) connected me with a Russian-born artist I could stay with. Yay.

She turned out to be half Puerto Rican, half Jewish, and has lived in Sweden for 30-something years. A really wise and funny woman who cracked a lot of cute jokes about age, sex life, life in general, and learning languages. Her husband, apparently Catalan and a PhD in some kind of physics, came home drunk with a colleague in the middle of the night. They made really funny (apparently) and loud jokes till 2 or 3 a.m.

Thursday. Woke up at 6 a.m. to eat breakfast, going to the subway, waiting ten minutes for the metro-train, aaand… still somehow manage to miss my 07:43 train because of the sheer size of the central station. Why do people feel the need to turn everything into a shopping mall? Some utilitarian, functional places could just stay that way. I’m just afraid I won’t be able to stay in a good state of mind over the next couple of days. Especially with this 12-kilo backpack that feels like it’s about to snap me in half the next time I lift it. Fantasising about the time when my personal robotic drone assistant can swoop in and rescue me from this backpack-induced suffering.

On the train I’m writing a message to our group chat with my friends: Remember how I wanted to go to another music festival after that one? And then for a long hike in the mountains? NEVERMIND. Just please, next time when I decide to do that, slap me in the face right away. Anything that involves a backpack heavier than five kilos.

I sent an application to participate in this LARP long before I even buying a ticket to the festival. When I was accepted (in the role of a Meme Hacker, which I chose myself), I still was full of doubts… I had just broken up with my boyfriend and wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea and if I even had the resources (both material and mental) to go through it. Or?.. maybe it’s actually the right thing to do and would be great way to recharge and shift perspective.

Arriving to the address of our LARP meeting place an hour late all tired and nervous. But the building is closed. I think I’m going to snap right now. Bye.

Ok, contacting a caretaker. They sent me a link to the actual coordinates of the place, which is five minutes away. Few. Found it. Thus one terrible journey ends and another beautiful one begins.

Our LARP group or more correctly to say RGP group (Real Game Play — © OMSK Social Club) is mostly consisting of Meme Hackers with a small sprinkle of other fractions like Wizards (two people), Love Bombers (about the same number), Fairy Hunters. We started by introducing ourselves and sharing our expectations, then moved on to body-tuning exercises. There are about ten of us, several of whom are already experienced and familiar with the specifics, aesthetics, and philosophical language of the RARP universe of OMSK. Couple of hours later we already fully immersed in our synthetic (or maybe more real?) universe of Trappers, Coaxers, inverse memetic engineering, distributed intelligent processing, communication and amnesia protocols, and so on.

By six or seven in the evening we are done for today and heading to the festival camp. It’s extremely difficult to choose a proper spot for the tent / sleeping place for the next several nights (while accumulating some last bits of energy left). So we just pick a place right next to the open-air stage named 303 where most of the bass music was playing. Lol.

Btw festivals of this size (like 2000 people max) are my favorite. Can’t imagine being at a huge ones like Фузион (more than 70,000 visitors) or Meakusma (around 200 artists), where there is no chance to encompass everything that is happening (with my OCD and anxiety is a torture). Here it’s perfect. Also worth mentioning is that the crowd here seemed more mature, like 30+, which was different compared for example to the Lost Festival in Italy where I was last year. So if you want to go to some fest in a summer but you have your boundaries or you feel like your capacity is limited, I highly recommend this one. Oh and there was only one set of toilets (with about 6 booths) for the whole festival and it was always… clean. And the queue never took more than 5–7 minutes. Don’t know how, probably some black Scandinavian magic.

After the long or even infinite day, we didn’t have any inner resources to go to the town to forage some food supplies. The only food truck on the festival territory served Arabic food (I love Arabic but my stommy doesn’t know how to digest falafel properly (dummy)). And those guys were grinding like possessed, visibly drained. It would’ve been nice if there were more paths to share the burden. That kind of frantic hustle could summon serious coin for the food temple over just one weekend.

Anyway, I rushed to see Julek Ploski. I’m a proud disciple of the vibe. This person is so incredibly talented in so many ways and at the humble beginnings of a future legendhood. I love how those crazy sound collages are built from quirky sounds and unexpected combinations of styles. But also how recognizable motifs run through all of the pieces. Like a meme within a meme. And all of this is accompanied by no less talentfully made visual collages, which also solo-birthed by Julek. After the performance, Julek thanked the audience for their spent time and attention. That ultimately disarmed me and melted my cold little heart.

Coming right after that to my tent around 10 p.m. for a power nap and can not manage to get up anymore. Through dreams, I feel the vibrations of the bass coming from 303 stage with my whole body. All these bringing me joy and somehow serenity and slowly becoming part of my dreams. Accompanied by “Scandinavian moodcore silly dance music,” the rhythm of my dreamscape creating hundreds of narratives per minute, including the main spatial nodes and landmarks in the constellation of our LARP universe, even those that I had yet to see and learn about.

I really wanted to be present there during CRRDR DJ set, well I guess I did in some way.

Friday. Somehow woke up feeling rested at 08:00 in the morning. The walk to our base camp takes about thirty minutes. We always starting with breakfast and it takes some time to warm up, but the sequence of events, actions, narratives, and our goals is shifting so quickly. I’m amazed by the coherence of the group, everyone picks up each other’s ideas instantly, supports them, and together we held up a realm without stepping out of character. Insects, for example, are always treated as bio-digital nanobots.

We are constantly splitting into new teams for all kinds of exchange of experience, giving each other workshops or going on exploratory missions to scout the area, check dead drops, or look for trapped fairies. My favorite part is being the cartographer — mapping and reimagining the landscape, navigating the unknown, adding fresh dots to the ever-expanding territories.

The hardest part for me is keeping everyone’s names at the forefront of my memory bank. Which I finally managed by the day three, just in time to say goodbye. My character, Amari, was meant to be dramatic and violent (a real troublemaker), which got me pretty excited. I thought I’d finally get to fully unleash and play out that side of myself. But so much is happening every minute that most of the time I’m just zoomed out, trying to comprehend everything, to weave it into a coherent picture.

At 6 p.m. we’re heading to the sauna. Amira is genuinely devoted to her self-care practices. While jumping naked into the cold Swedish lake we’re being yelled at by the woman running the sauna. Apparently, there’s no Frei Körper Kultur in Sweden like there is in Germany. Uups. Like real mafiosi meeting in a sauna to discuss the most important and secret matters (safe from surveillance), we’re recapping the day and exchanging intelligence. By 7 or 8, we’re already heading toward the dancefloor.

The festival has four main stages. 303 (the one I already mentioned) filled with club vibes and all spectrum of deep bass sounds. Mimer is the most central and iconic venue, hosting the most spectacular experimental, academic or minimalist performances, which often require deep attentive listening. The Krafcentralen and Krossverket stages were somewhere in between. The curation was done at an exceptional level, with each musician perfectly matched to their stage context, creating a seamless and immersive experience.

I starting the evening at Krafcentralen with a set of Anna Butter, and I’m becoming mesmerized by those constantly crashing echoes of latino beats. Raw, one-of-a-kind rhythms that hypnotized the whole crowd into moving together.

That’s the moment I texted our group chat again:
Remember I asked you to slap me in the face next time I decide to go to a festival or on a long hike? NEVERMIND!

Next we meet at the 303 stage (named the Division Lab by our team). Behind the decks is brilliant Spatiosselet, whose musical range is endless: from dub to a trance, from latin beats to a sort of new wave?..

We were planning to test a prototype of the love-bombing antidote pheromone here at the Division Lab. Apparently, the operation went successful, even though there was very little trust toward our Love Bomber named Tatum, who led the procedure. From the beginning their behavior was full of suspicious signs. But when they were attacked by memetic entities (aka angry Swedish teenagers encountered during a foray into town) who shouted racist slurs at members of our circle it solidified the team, and any mistrust just slipped to the sidelines.

Moving to a stage called Krossverket (the word is striked through and replaced with “Bleed”). Kablam here is performing live. Bleed, as a Corporation, holds a key role in our lore. Apparently, they’re behind most of the evil acts, especially the enslavement of fairies, which we’ve been collectively freeing.

When we came to listen to HurHur at 2 a.m., we already were literally asleep. His hurdy-gurdy droney, even sludgy, I would say, melodies lulled us so completely that I don’t remember how got back to my sleeping place.

Saturday. Once again, breakfast, once again, a packed schedule. We were a bit disassembled after the intense day and night before. Due to my close friendship with one of the members of the Wizard representatives, I was granted access to a certain piece of pink and cute wizard tech (a watermelon-raspberry flavored vape), which I clearly was overusing.

Also, even though the official music ends at 3 a.m. at the festival, some people at the camping site, by some incomprehensible to me reason, brought their own speakers (huge and loud ones) and played their own music (not the best one) till morning.

In some voluntarily formed group we’re going on another reconnaissance mission where I’m finally actively participating in uncovering several missives from prospective allies (possible traps). In the process, we’re managing to liberate a multiple number of fairies. On our way to find one, we see a divine lake sparkling in the sun, surrounded by tall pines. A body of water now, but once a scar of industry, the lake was formed by flooding a former quarry.

Even though the festival organizers mentioned everywhere that the soil on the site is contaminated, I forgot about it and couldn’t resist eating some wild strawberries in a forest closer to the mine. I hope I won’t die from cancer lol (flashback).

During the day someone from our team made what seemed like a mischievous, chaotic and cryptic intervention at the festival’s radio, sending out messages to potential allies and representatives of the so-called Fairy Liberation Front (flyers from them had started appearing at all music stages).

Meanwhile, some of our members got compromised. There was some kind of fallout — trust between certain members was lost due to their excessive reliance on a certain mentor figure who turned out to be a representative of the Bleed Corporation. At the same time, the identity of a possible ally and whistleblower, whom we’d referred to as the Unnamed Driver began slowly reveal. And our final mission is starting to take shape. We were ment to secretly sabotage the functioning of the Ring Light Modulator Trees, which seemed to be parasitically rooted in the mine building and could potentially prevent the festival from happening in future years.

Also, our team had, throughout the festival, mistakenly (or mb not really a mistake) liberated fairies that were under the jurisdiction of the 303 crew, which triggered a wave of indignation. We were supposed to return them by 6 p.m. to the 303 stage.

I’m stunned to spot an earthly, warm-blooded dog on festival grounds. I share my bewilderment with Angel, admitting I haven’t encountered this type of biological entity in days. In response, they confess that when they recently caught sight of a human todler offspring at the area, they instinctively mistook it for a fairy.

At that moment, we were conducting an operation on the Bleed territory, trying to find which doors matched the keys given to us by the Unnamed Driver. Just then, a woman wearing a hijab and abaya came out and began speaking in what we called the local language (meaning Swedish). It was understandable that she was taking a speech about Palestine.

That jolted me back into reality. I hadn’t been online so much last days except for messaging my parents and friends, being disconnected from the news. It brought us crashing back to earth, and reminded how strange this world has become, where genocide and violence have become just another type of social media content.

We’re performing a ritual of cleansing and blessing the liberated fairies so they could no longer be exploited by the corporation. We’re then returning fairies to 303 stage, in a way invisible to the human eye, without compromising the collective.

After another self- and mutual-care sauna session, I left everyone behind and rushed to catch a piece of the Teratai Åkande Quartet performance. I don’t know why I have such a deep-rooted affection for gamelan, and all other sorts of intricate percussive textures and soundscapes. I managed to catch 15–20 minutes of meditative bliss after the sauna. Just what I needed.

Somewhere during the Computer Station live set, the narrative suddenly began unfolding rapidly before our eyes. This is the moment when almost all of our team finally meet the Unnamed Driver and begin the process of curing him of Bleed's harmful influence. That’s when we found out his name: Helium.

Helium tipped us off that we needed to attend an event (which wasn’t listed in the schedule) at the Bleed location at 2:30 am — Stephen McEvoy’s performance. It begins with an verbal introduction about how in 2014, when they just started at some music Academy, their professor had told them to wear earplugs to protect the hearing. Very soon those earplugs caused an ear infection, which led to permanent tinnitus. The professor told them that this meant they could never become a music artist. The only conclusion I drew from this was: the Academy sucks.

The music pieces recreated the tinnitus of the author and others they had met or worked with. Some of the sounds were unbearable — others, oddly enough, sounded just like the usual sound-art noise palette we’d long grown used to.

We waited about 30 minutes since the beginning of the performance, and when the sound and light faded, Delta pulled out the electricity cables we had located earlier. Helium ran toward us, screamed for us to follow him. We’re running outside through the back exit and hiding behind a shipping container. It’s raining. A moment of full-blown collective catharsis.

Everyone went to the afterparty. I went to meet Morpheus, trying to accumulate the last remaining bits of energy before the next day’s trip with three transfers and, unfortunately, my very real and very un-evaporated 12kg backpack.

Sunday. Woke up at 7:30 to pack my stuff and be there in time for the final group debrief. We’re having breakfast, followed by group meditation to exchange intel and separate ourselves from our characters.

We’re sharing how we just start to inhabit our roles fully, and how a whole week wouldn’t have been enough for all the storyline twists we could’ve pulled off. Unfortunately, it’s time to say goodbye. We’re given hoodies by the ever-present Bleed Corporation. I put on my backpack, which doesn’t feel nearly as heavy anymore, and set off into the next chapter of the journey, accompanied by another Meme Hacker named Angel. Feeling lucky and blessed, like I’d just unlocked the next level, a brand new line/arc in my personal open-world narrative.

So the most challenging part of the whole thing for me was just getting there. But symbolically, it felt like I had completed my own kind of Hero’s Journey. Well, in the First World Problems kind of way (because that is were I literally was). The protagonist’s arc of transformation (by stepping out of familiar comfort zone). Through the Thorns to the Stars (Per Aspera Ad Astra).

I enjoyed having a goal, a mission, an actual task at a music festival. Also, appreciated not getting sucked into the endless loop of substance indulgence and intoxicative consumption. And even though I was pushing the limits of my capacities, running on maybe 5 hours of sleep per night, the LARP seemed to give back more energy than it took. I cherished being embedded in a community where care and support flowed organically, part of something vaster than myself, something that cracked open the familiar, extended the edges of my perception, and allowed me to inhabit a form I had never dared to try before.