As I (the Russian/Gypsy/Gay/Jew) stood with my Armenian-American friend Julie next to my Asian-American life-partner Derrick, and looked out across the park at boys, girls, men, women, old, young, every color of the rainbow and every hue in between, dancing together, eating together, playing together, laughing together….. I wondered, “Is this heaven?”

Of course the line came to me from the wonderful movie Field of Dreams, where Kevin’s long-dead baseball-loving father comes out of the corn fields onto the baseball field his son has built in the middle of nowhere, and seeing the wonderful field asks “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.”

Well I was having my Field of Dreams moment. No, it wasn’t heaven, it was El Cerrito.

Each year some incredible people pull together a WorldOne Music Festival for the 4th of July. We’d been invited to the event by its organizer a few years ago but this was the first time we could bring our little roadshow to that particular event. From the moment we arrived we were blown away by how beautifully they had decorated this park. As soon as we get to our video camera I’ll post some images so you can see what I’m talking about. I especially can’t wait to get some footage of the very thin man who turns up at events like this in the East Bay, who looks to be at least 60, wears a tie-dye shirt, and dances and dances and dances and dances for hours and hours to whatever music is being played.

The thing that made it feel like heaven was how incredibly diverse yet completely integrated the people at this event were. The organizers had these HUGE blown up plastic balls that kids could roll and jump on and play with and at the particular moment I was gazing across the field there were around ten children playing together, rolling around that ball, laughing, falling all over each other, and race seemed invisible to them. They were just kids, having a great time.

In another spot there were teens playing with hula-hoops, again, a complete mix simply having fun together.

Strolling in front of our booth were two teen boys, one black, one white, talking and laughing and elbowing each other.

There was plenty of diversity in food too. Some families had brought their own picnic baskets, sharing family classics like fried chicken and Indian curries with rice, others were chowing down on festival food (Chinese, Texas BBQ, African, Ethiopian, Indian, and of course Sausages and Hamburgers).

The festival was free for attendees. Rich, poor, middle, whatever, could all come and enjoy this day in whatever way they pleased. Vendors like us paid a bit to be there, but not much compared to most events. Donation buckets were scattered around the park and the DJ would remind folks once in a while that to help pay for the festival it would be great if they would throw a few bucks in the buckets, purchase products from the vendors, or visit the festival booth where all kinds of goodies could be found. “Spend some of that pow-wow money you brought with you.” His banter throughout the day was amazingly diverse, probably one of the most “culturally competent” people I’d ever listened to. If you didn’t hear something from your particular culture or generation referenced at some point during the day, you just weren’t listening. Perhaps that was part of the magic, given that the DJ is also the spouse of the event’s organizer. The organizer had told me that they created magic every year. Now I believed.

The morning started with a tribute to Michael Jackson, as the DJ played a whole bunch of Michael’s music, of course including his hit, “It don’t matter if you’re black or white.” Next there was a wonderful folksinger, followed by a band that launched their act with a song that declared that “murder in the name of religion is crazy.” The dancing tie-dye man seemed to agree as he whirled and whirled and whirled.

We do a lot of festivals and conferences and get to see a whole lot of people thrown together but I’ve truly never seen anything quite like this. And perhaps I’m overstating the experience, but I don’t think so. For me, heaven would be a place where it didn’t matter who you were, what you looked like, how much money you had (there’s no cover charge in heaven), what your politics might be, what you call G-d or if you call any at all, whether you were old or young, short or tall, chubby or skinny, whatever….. on the day you all came together in that place called heaven, or that town called El Cerrito, there’d be a voice on the loudspeaker that somehow spoke to you directly and a very skinny man wearing tie-dye and a beard would be joyously dancing hour after hour after hour just because you came.