Hansen: Has the fantasy lost its luster? Just take another look

If you’ve lived in Laguna Beach for any length of time, there is a tendency to slowly pull back from events: the endless festivals, pageants and art walks.

It’s event fatigue.

When friends ask if you’re going to the Sawdust Festival, you reply, “Oh, is it here again?”

Or you conveniently never answer.

You’ve been many times before. You’ve seen the regular artists. You know the work.

You’ve watched artist Doug Miller’s miniature train derail around the same curve every year.

You’ve watched as the glass-blowing guy stoically spins the blob of hot lava — and spins and spins.

You’ve sat in the music square as the grizzled acoustic guitarist plays a polite version of every 1960s-something hit, and it dawns on you that maybe he has never left. Maybe he lives at the Sawdust.

So over the weekend I was not intending to go to the Winter Fantasy. It wasn’t a Scrooge thing. It was just … meh.

But a colleague invited me to a performance-art event right next door, so I was in the neighborhood. The event, by the way, was a strange but intriguing mix of poetry reading and interpretive dance while artists sketched the dancers.

Anyway, I really had no excuse not to stop by the festival. So I went and did what I always do.

I said hello to Miller and watched him fix his train.

I watched the hot-lava guy.

And I listened to another rendition of a Beatles song.

But of course here’s what happened along the way: I lost my Scrooge face.

The first break of the facade occurred when a little girl agonized over which Cracker Jack toy to pull from Miller’s free-toy box. The toys are all beat up and random — Hello Kitty badges, plastic soldiers, beads, rubber balls — but it doesn’t matter to kids. Free is free and random means choice.

The girl would look into the box, up to her dad, over to Miller and back to the box. Sensing her paralysis, Miller said, “You can take two.”

And it made all the difference.

She grabbed something pink and another with a ribbon and jumped into her dad’s arms.

Feeling more generous, I went to the glass-blowing booth, and the guy was just starting in on his creation.

Instead of watching him work, I watched others. It’s like a PBS special. People get hypnotized by the slow movement.

This type of art — perhaps because there’s a mechanical aspect to it — is accessible to everyone. It’s not some brooding artist alone in a studio. It’s part craft, part art, part volcano.

And people love it. You can see the fascination in their eyes. You can tell who is patient and who is not.

From there, it was lunch in the music square called the Tavern area of the Sawdust. This area has a small but nice music stage with a hillside as the backdrop and a full canopy of trees. It’s an intimate setting where people are forced to huddle more closely.

I was standing near the back, people watching and trying to decide what to eat, when I overheard a couple from Minnesota walking by. They had just arrived at the festival, and you could tell it was their first time.

Both were looking around slowly at the full scene — the infectious music of the Salty Suites, the eclectic people, the color, the beer and mirth — and they finally just slowed to a stop.

“This is cool,” the man said, smiling.

The woman, already smiling, simply nodded.

And then I smiled too. Yes, it is pretty cool.

Some things in Laguna Beach should never become a chore. If they do, it’s on me.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.