Tom Jeffreys journeys all the way to Wales only to be disappointed by the Hay Festival. Luckily concurrent philosophy festival HowTheLightGetsIn saves the day.
One little moment sums up Hay-On-Wye for me. Robin Ince wanders away from the HowTheLightGetsIn site and up the street. As he's pottering along, I overhear an excited girl: “Ooh, that's Robin Ince! I'm following him on Twitter!”. Ten yards further along, and he's stopped by a nattily dressed gentlemen. They exchange some enthusiastic words and promise to meet up later. The nattily dressed gentlemen is philosopher, doctor, poet and novelist Raymond Tallis. What a meeting of minds, right here on this dainty little Welsh street.
And yet, this little occurrence has nothing really to do with the world-famous Hay Festival. Yes, Tallis is speaking once at Hay, but Ince isn't performing there. So why are they here? They're here for HowTheLightGetsIn, a rather unwieldy name for the philosophy festival which runs in the village of Hay-on-Wye at the same time as the better known literary institution. I've never been here before and I only stay for four days, but HowTheLightGetsIn is brilliant; Hay though is a major disappointment.
It's hard to define what I dislike about Hay – is it the smugness? Potentially. The whole thing is like all the worst elements of the Guardian come to life. It's so sanitised and bland and unchallenging. Sure, it has big name speakers and performers, but however radical they may deem their opinions, they're surely utterly neutered by the context in which they're enclosed. Yes, the food's all organic or free range or locally sourced – but it's also expensive and tastes bad. The tents in which the talks take place are soulless, corporate arenas. The staff – basically bouncers dressed as Wimbledon attendants – are unhelpful, and the whole thing feels like it's designed to look good on a website – the actual event and the people who pay to come mean little.
Over at HowTheLightGetsIn, the only boring talk is by the new Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey MP. In jeans, suit jacket and Converse, he's relentlessly on message, dodging questions as simple as what music he likes. Instead he wants to encourage people to “participate in culture”. Urgh, what does this mean? Well what it means I think is Hay. “Culture” is there – I mean who could argue with a line-up that includes such names as Martin Amis, Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Marr and Quentin Blake? But this is not a meeting of minds; it's a place where people come to look at celebrities from afar. As entertaining as Beth Orton, Giles Coren, Jo Brand and Rob Brydon are, you can't really see Hay actually producing anything. I mean who thought putting Alain de Botton and Jerry Hall together was a good idea? It's farcically bad.
Meanwhile, HowTheLightGetsIn gets it spot on. It's small and cute, with a bit of a hippy whiff in places. But the setting is a delight (for a start, it actually integrates with the town around it), and instead of rows of plastic chairs, there are sofas, armchairs and church pews. The food is excellent, the staff charming and helpful, and the events brilliant. They're actually thoughtfully put together and (by and large) well chaired. Everyone here mingles together: there's much less of a division between important Artist and grubby visitor. And you genuinely feel that new ways of looking at the world might emerge from it.
A discussion of humanity as the “chosen species” sees a fascinating exhange between Tallis and the wonderfully be-hatted Mary Midgeley, introduced as “Wyatt Earp in the OK Corral of philosophical debate”; Ted Honderich – resplendent in a mustard corduroy suit – gives a passionate criticism of contemporary political morality, and also pops up to ask pertinent questions at various other events. Psychologist Richard Bentall gives damning evidence against our systems of dealing with mental illness; and a discussion about the prospect of a “new economics” following the credit crunch is involved and thought-provoking. Where else could you hear the insights of Will Hutton, the economist behind the New Labour project, brilliant Conservative MP Jesse Norman, and William Cash, the editor of a wealth management magazine, all by and large in agreement?
The evening entertainment is consistently varied and unusual. From an old pulpit Richard Strange gives the low-down on his eccentric career, Little Fish and Man Like Me get everyone all over-excited, and Beth Jeans Houghton combine the looks of Ingrid Z with some kooky folk weirdness. And they also lounge around in the sun fiddling with Tarot cards the whole of the following day.
Theodore Zeldin once said: “When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought.” And this is what I think happens at HowTheLightGetsIn. It puts interesting and diverse people together and revels in the results. Completely enchanting.
Hay Festival / HowTheLightGetsIn are at Hay-on-Wye from 27th May to 6th June 2010.
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