Into the Campfire
Revival 2027: Inanna
Let’s be honest about what we do. Every year a few hundred of us drive into a field in the mountains, build a temporary world, stay up too late, and go home slightly rearranged. Somewhere in there, usually late, usually by a fire, the real questions come out.
How will I get through this. What can I count on. Who can I count on. What happens next. Was it always like this.
Those don’t get asked across a campfire so much as into it, half hoping someone on the other side has it figured out. Nobody does. There are never answers, just perspectives, and you forge your own as best you can.
Was it always like this
Yes. The earliest author whose name we know was asking the same things. Enheduanna, a priestess, more than four thousand years ago. A revolt threw her out of her temple and her city. She prayed to the god she was supposed to pray to and got silence. So she turned to Inanna, queen of heaven and earth, and wrote her hymns we can still read today. She wasn’t retelling the goddess’s story. She was using it to get through her own.
This year, so are we. Liberties have been taken.
The descent
Inanna had everything above. A throne, a city that sang her name, the whole of heaven and earth. She was unapologetic about what she wanted and who she was. What she had never known was the place below: death, grief, the depths. And she heard it calling. Instead of ignoring it, she listened, because she knew her wholeness needed it.
So she made a plan. She told her closest ‘friend’, Ninshubur, exactly where she was going, and what to do if she wasn’t back in three days. Then she put on every piece of who she was, and showed up to the underworld dressed for a party.
Seven gates stood between her and the bottom, and at each one something she wore was taken. The crown first, the title everyone had agreed on. Then the necklace of easy words that keep a room comfortable. Then the breastplate, the shine that says look at me and the seal that says not too close. The rod she used to measure the world and herself. The ring she pressed into things to prove they were hers. The robes, the well-told version of her life. And at the seventh gate, the last thing, the one she’d never noticed she was wearing because it was never off.
She gave each one up. Not because she was beaten, but because she had decided the experience was worth the price. She arrived at the bottom with nothing, and was hung on a hook.
Three days passed. Ninshubur went door to door, and most of the doors said no. One said yes. From the dirt under a fingernail, two small creatures were made, small enough to slip into the dark unnoticed. They didn’t fight the queen of the dead. They sat with her. She was in pain, and nobody had ever sat with it. When she groaned, oh, my inside, they groaned back, oh, your inside. When she cried, my heart, they cried, your heart. Because she felt heard, she let Inanna go.
Inanna climbed back up through the same seven gates, picking herself back up, one piece at a time. She came back all of herself, and she knew what every piece she wore was for.
Changed, and still me.
Seven
This is Revival’s seventh year. Kintsugi, Metanoia, Pando, Tessera. For years Revival has been a place to go down and set things down. With Inanna, for the first time, we’re asking about the way back up.
Seven turns out to be a useful number. Seven gates could be seven hours: down by dusk, home by morning. Seven days to the bottom, and two weeks from now you’re back at the top. A month. A year. A descent has a duration and a floor. Knowing that is part of what makes it survivable. Lay it over whatever you’re in and see where you are.
Some days take everything you brought. Inanna dressed for that day anyway. She put on her best knowing the gates would ask for it back, because the far side was real and she’d planned to get there. We could do the same: show up as our best selves, unafraid of what the day might take, because tomorrow is the ascent, and what’s ours can be picked back up.
What are you wearing
Everything she wore did two jobs. It protected her from what she didn’t want and drew in what she did. So does everything you wear. When do you wear your kindness, your curiosity, your patience, your ambition, your anger? What do you take off, and for whom, and why? The title you’re introduced by at parties is a crown. What family means, chosen or born into, what status looks like, what your time is worth: those are the rod, the ring, the robes. All of it is something you put on or take off. Which means all of it is something you choose.
Six things come back changed. The seventh doesn’t come back at all. Something goes down in your place and stays.
Three questions for every piece. What are you wearing. Do you know why. Does it serve you.
What comes after
We’ve spent a long time naming our wounds. This year we’re curious about what it looks like to name how we’ve healed. Maybe healing was learning you could survive the question. Maybe what comes after is a willingness to keep going down on purpose, to keep chasing a life that is honest to you, and to come back each time a little more yourself. To notice who around you is descending and who is climbing, and to celebrate both.
Who’s coming with you
Notice what saved her. Not her power; she’d been stripped of all of it. A friend who kept knocking, and two small strangers who listened. The dark is witnessed, not defeated.
So who knows your plan? Who knows what to do if you’re not back in three days?
Back to the fire
Not with answers. With her perspective, and better questions.
How will I get through this. She got through by going down.
What can I count on. The return. Changed, and still me.
Who can I count on. The one you told to come for you. The people who choose you for you. Are you telling them, and are you listening back?
What happens next. That one stays open. It gets asked again, every time, and it’s yours.
We’re not asking you to find Inanna in yourself. She is she, and you are you. Did Inanna save Enheduanna, or did Enheduanna save herself?
Seven gates. Dress for the party.
June 17 to 20, 2027, at North Fork Park in Eden, Utah. Early bird tickets open November 27.
