Movement is essential to the human experience. And thus, dancing. It’s the mark of freedom entering our limbs, flowing to the center of us, blood rushing to the heart. It’s how we divest ourselves of our consciousness, our ego, our big-footedness on the earth.
And there’s nothing better for movement than a good old-fashioned stomper, drawing in everyone from the frat flickers to the techno animals. So of course there I was, on my way to North Coast music festival to get my fix. Straight out of a Spanish exam and into the thumping drum and bass. My North Coast family is one I hold close to my heart, a rotating cast of some friends from home and some from school. Most of the time, they don’t know each other, and I get the honor of connecting them and watching new friendships form, the “next year?” already thrown out before the weekend is over. Because it is an honor, getting to bring people together and then stepping back and watching the birth of bonds that might last for years. It’s the events that bring us together, but it’s the community that fulfills us.
The music raged and we raged harder. Sullivan King and Subtronics headlined the first night, a drum and bass delight. I’ve always found Subtronics to be the perfect stomping tempo, but I had never seen King before and as it turns out, he got my bass face going. I'll never complain about that. The second day had Shaq playing, an oddity in of itself. He says it better than I could - “breaking necks like they’re backboards.” In between cracking my vertebrae I had to laugh as I wondered what this man’s life was like. He even put his hooping highlights up on the big screens during his drops. Cool dude. And at night there was so much to see, a fire dome that had its own set and spit fire like a domesticated dragon, a glowing walkway, and the raver’s kryptonite; a little tent to trade knick-knacks set up like a casino, playing Shrek on an old TV. Seven different stages to bounce between, stomping my way across like Shrek through his swamp. Grinning easily, swapping little plastic cows and sprouts with whoever’s vibes I liked. I was too busy doing this to go up in the giant Ferris wheel, so the jury is still out on that one, but I’ll let you know next year. And the second night’s closer, Illenium, made me feel as if my heart was exploding with the sheer volume of euphoric sound washing over me. I felt like I was seeing the whole jumble of human experience, impossibly complex and tangled and interwoven, neither good nor bad, just breathtaking, laid out before me. We missed most of Sunday's headliner because I was too busy getting down and dirty to Slander as he shot my brain through with lasers and gave my body no choice but to move. But we caught the last 15 minutes, and as it closed, the three of us sat together in the main stage stadium seats, arms around each other as we watched the fireworks arc and race into the sky as the crowd screamed in frenzied joy.
A short trek back to the campsite later, I went to reach into my pack for my phone flashlight. You know that feeling when you miss a step on the staircase, and feel like you have a heart attack for a second? That’s what I had when I found my fan, gum, tiny plastic cows, a half-eaten slim jim…but no phone. And I knew I hadn’t checked it in hours but had kept it zipped in my pack. Shock warred with incredulity and I had to just sit down and touch some grass for a second while I made some fast decisions. I could let this ruin my night. But what’s done is done. And I would much rather accept it and spend what I had left of the weekend lying in a hammock with my friends, my little found family, laughing about Will’s methods of “cooking with the ladies”, as he called it. So that’s what I did - let the sounds of the songbirds and the wind in the leaves wash over me and just let it go. We talked until the sunrise, unwilling to let the day slip away and the real world sink back in quite yet. Talked about the things we loved in each other that made us laugh, about one of us maybe moving across the country soon, about this blog and the bigger-than-life dreams I have for it. The things we needed to, the fears and desires from the outside world that we could give voice to in this little temporary home made out of a tent, two hammocks, and a flashlight under a bottle of Tito’s acting as a lamp.
Sometimes I struggle to write these articles - I’m afraid of not giving the beauties and wonders of the human experience their due justice. But fear has no place in love, and I love this world and its people with a burning, biting passion. The wonderful, ordinary, endlessly valuable people I get to know. Alive in our small moments, a blip in the universe but somehow simultaneously so consequential to each other. In a moment like this, mid-set, I looked around and realized how strange it all was. The man dressed as Captain America just absolutely tearing it up next to a girl bedecked in pom-poms, two people who ordinarily might never meet. But in the music we become one, we understand each other through our communal worship of the beat. It’s the youth’s revolution of sameness, of community, in a world that constantly tries to draw lines and divide us - a way to connect while we dance and laugh off the weight of the ever-spinning world that so often seems to make us powerless.
When the world gets dense - we forget everything. We move.
Sincerely,
Esther
