School Trip

At Paradiso Festival, each day kicks off with an optional trip somewhere in Mérida, creating a lively rabble of people wearing backpacks. There’s a local tour guide hoisting up a little Yucatán flag on a pole, on a bus.

The festival doesn't kick off until 3pm, and by that time, new friendships have been made without the formalities. Moments have happened. At breakfast, people are learning about one another and there's not a speaker in site. In the cenotes - luscious natural sinkholes filled with brochure blue water - we bob around and drift towards one another in life jackets and say hello. I meet Ivan Cash this way, a talented filmmaker who I've recently discovered. Stefan Sagmeister and Oliver Jeffers are ahead of me on the bikes we hire to get between each cenote, but we are lost, and Stefan scratches his head, voicing all of our concerns that 'this doesn't look right.' It's funny, we are present, and it's a level playing field in which we're not competing, but sharing ideas and experiences.

Héctor Ayuso knows what he's doing. During the time I spent writing his biography, The Reason You're Doing It, he spoke of his love of this, of turning to the person next to you and saying what you might not say, that could lead to anything.

It creates a warmth, an atmosphere of mass conversation and curiosity. People listen to speakers, get dirty in artistic workshops, listen to local music, eat, and drink, and it all takes place in a Roman Bath rumble of connection and sheer possibility.