To quote Jean Paul Sartre, “Hell is other people”, and perhaps, the so-called "failure" of a large scale-art event is due to the same crowd. No doubt, GLOW had its issues. Absurdidly packed with close to 100,000, and generally lacking in enough points of interest to compensate for the “ready to rave’ masses, “GLOW” was a stunningly ambitious event, overwhelmed by its own viral hype. The public demand for ‘bread and circuses’ (google Juvenal) clearly outstripped Santa Monica’s ability to provide either. This being said, I’m not going to join those outright bashing the event. If you were lucky enough to be with friends who know how to entertain themselves and/or enthusiastically relate to others, then you probably had a good time. If, however, you expected to sit on your ass and get the visual extravaganza shoved down your eyeballs for you, then you should gone with a combination of 2CB and IMAX. (I hear the seats are VERY cushy) As for GLOW, my experience was more sociological study than visual feast. Fueled by the prospect of staying up all night to do Art, I led my blacklight paint-covered crew in a ‘Family Circus’-style trajectory across the festival landscape. My biggest regret of the evening was the choice of blacklight-reflective fashion over glow-in-the-dark, considering there weren’t actually many blacklight-centric installations to illuminate our UV couture. Nevertheless, my friends were ‘in it to win it’, and brought the interactive spectacle to the Interactive Spectacle. We split off into contingents that simultaneously led impromptu Butoh-Kabbalah rituals on the sand, mislead party-moms to non-existent beachfront bars (“yeah, just keep walking THAT way, appletinis await you!”), and indulgently posed for pictures displaying our “fashion that anticipates” aesthetic. Considering we were a highly-costumed freak-flock 10 people strong , we were often asked if we had any X, frequently told "the line starts back THERE" and constantly accosted with conversations starting with, ""blah blah blah Burning Man". Along the way, we met teenage gothravers, fratboy yahoos, friendly burnouts, jaunty preschoolers, Nazi stroller-moms, and a wide swath of art-history cognizetti/ ignoratti. We saw facial expressions alternately blissed out and pissed off, and could almost taste the bittersweet vibes of the crowd’s anticipatory energy curdling into disappointment. At around 1am, one lady stopped us in the middle of the Pier to ask, “I don’t get it. Did I miss the show?” We found this to be quite an existential question, one which could only be answered yes AND no. Truly, the most poignant artistic statements were in these people’s restless eyes, those desperately searching for ‘the party’, ‘the art’, and, ‘the bathroom’. Amidst the process of herding neon housecats, my internal monologue started a dialogue with itself that included the following round-table discussion points: 1. Why do festival organizers (save most burners) always underestimate the number of porta potties needed? (seriously, ALWAYS double the raw sewage expectations!) 2. Is this a radical democratization or a ‘dumbing down’ of public art? 3. If the idea behind this art festival was to externalize and illuminate an art museum, it begs the question, “what do 21st century citizens want out of 'art', or out of 'festival'? Discuss amongst yourselves. As for me, I’m still digging sand out of my ears and scraping day-glo paint off my scalp.