You lied when you yelled, “hot coffee, coming through!”  to bump ahead at the Saturday show. Thoroughly aroused (being alive is sexy) and dirty.

You howled at the moon and wore a cape.

You remembered, to open like a sea star, even with a missing leg.

You delighted in and thus became fluent in music. You felt sound coiling—into the body—thousands of bodies, dipping beneath the shadows of trees who once breathed the same air as your ancestors.

You saw music and listened to colours. Dirt kickin’ music or hand-over-your-heart-as-you-sway-with-tears-in-your-eyes music. This. And that. And the get down funk. I want to get funked up.

You rolled down a hill like floppy dynamite under the silver pepper of sky. Your perma-grin released newness in your fascia (which wraps around the muscles and organs like tights)—a spider web of direct and indirect currents and pulses.

Before being swallowed up by nightfall, a single stroke at photographic memory—a sense of awe not yet a story. There’s always your third eye camera.

*

You bravely looked at yourself—peeking at your own pain and the pain experienced by others.

In waves, the people surrounding you reveal plenty of non-traditional families—you know that, “we all got problems.”

I got problems too.

*

Your washroom dazzles you anew. “Wow! Nice washroom!” you praise upon landing back in civilization (and also, you are Canadian).

You wish the children of the festival could stay with you and skunk spray those (especially couples arguing 3^rd row at a music show) who need crazy wisdom to penetrate their neurosis.

*

Now when you approach someone to talk for the first time, it feels harder.

You have a lot of laundry. Leaves in your jingly skirt. Your top hat (which when donned helps you better embody the nonsense).

You get your face painted like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at a children’s birthday your first weekend back.
You make loud comical-hypothetical commentary. There is no alcohol served.

You have to drive to see friends.

*

Your miraculous, complex, healthy body brings home a post jam funk and you find yourself in bed.
May you find ease in resting your feet. Your feet are really f****** tired.

Your legs are stronger.

Your back is sore from cleaning up every last trace you made in the phenomenal natural world.

Scribblings of quotes, handwriting that goes off the page of your notebook—which doesn’t even touch experience, but it’s a start, “Only 1 % of strippers make it!” is scrawled emphatically in cursive.

You are inspired to make with your hands with the seed from a daydream.
To work hard, to fight the good fight.
Your animal heart is more whole.

*

If you do it right, one festival a season is enough. It’s more comfortable to stay put than to, as David Bowie sings, “Lets face the music/ And dance.”

Listening when you can’t sleep. The buzz of power-lines and a chorus of crickets fades with the dawn. You can hear the faint strings of a violin, the banjo trembling, footsteps vibrating confidently to tell a bittersweet tale of human experience, inviting you to rise.

Relephant:

Making Things Happen: My Bucket List of Music Festivals.

~

Author: Emma Blue

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Author’s Own