The journey to this amazing festival – for Gardenia Music – started off quite gloomy. You see, we had to deal with complicated coordination that drained both our energy and emotions (emotions are energy too, right?). So here’s the thing, all the plans we made in advance about how we would get to the city of Cirebon became quite chaotic as the day approached. And to add to the chaos, at 4 a.m. on the day we were supposed to leave later in the afternoon, I suddenly decided to create problems with our guitarist, Mr. Christophorus Adi Prasetyo, bombarding him with brutally honest messages on various matters. As a result, his exhaustion, as the person most overwhelmed with accommodation arrangements, reached a whole new level.
Dermaga Festival Cirebon
However, all of that was relieved when we arrived in Cirebon and received such a warm welcome from Nissa and Yogi, the two organizers of the event. Cirebon was still the same as when we visited back in 2019 during our first album tour, “Meadow Of Heaven”. Hot and filled with mosquitoes, but the people were so warm-hearted that we forgot about the physical sufferings of the earthly world (heat and mosquitoes).
I was very excited to perform at the event because I already had a makeup idea that I wanted to apply to my face. Voila, Mother Earth transformed me into the most beautiful woman according to my own version (readers, please refrain from protesting). But what made me even happier was that all Gardenia members, both core and additional, were willing to have their faces painted alongside mine, yeay!
Gardenia Cast A Spell
However, no matter how smoothly and impressively an event may run, there will always be some grievances from anyone involved. Actually, there’s only one thing I want to express, and it’s regarding the performance schedule. You see, maybe for other bands, they don’t mind their performance time, but for Gardenia, with our well-defined concept, we should have been able to perform when the sun had already set. Because our concept of “dark is beauty” is deeply ingrained in us, flowing in our souls. So it would have been lovely if we could perform with the enchanting night atmosphere, with lights set according to Gardenia’s concept. But it turns out, we were scheduled to perform when daylight still dominated, so oh well.
Why did I surrender and say oh well? Because it seems that Gardenia is not yet big enough to perform at night. I understand that very well, as it is part of our crawling process (even though it may seem like I’m complaining too much, I actually understand, alright).
However, despite these little grievances that I may have exaggerated a bit, indicating that I got a bit emotional because Gardenia had to perform early in the event, the first Dermaga Festival Cirebon was a great success. The event was truly harmonious, and we met many new people and shared invaluable experiences.
After Gardenia’s spell party, we spent a little time enjoying the performances of other cool artists, although at that time I had to convince my cranky teeth to compromise with the situation (hahaha).
Lady Magnifica