Festivalgoers

The reason I haven't posted in too long is that I spent the whole weekend at a music festival. One of my very dear friends drove down from Delware (Dela-where?) and she, Chris, and I camped out and got to hear some truly phenomenal artists. One such artist, whom I've mentioned before in the Ryan's Recommendations section (remember that? It's down and to the right, folks), is Josh Ritter. His performance blew me away, and I immediately found his website upon returning to the world of connected people. He writes this blog about being a musician that is eloquent and beautiful, just like his songs. You can check it out here if you're interested. Also, if you click on the "pictures" tab on his webpage (http://www.joshritter.com/) and then click on the "Josh + Love Canon @ Festy 10/10/10" you can see pics from the performance I attended. And, in the 9th picture (with gorgeous mountains in the background), you can see me with some friends front row and center (I have a baseball cap on if that helps!). Very cool.

Anyways, music festivals always attract the strangest people. It seriously never fails. Of course there are the hula hoopers, the fire-swingers (I don't know what they're actually called, obviously), and the middle-aged tie-dye wearers. But then there are always the people that surprise me. Like the guy walking around with a wooden staff with a giant, fake bird duct-taped to it. Or the guy walking around with glow sticks attached all over his body. Or the middle-aged woman who accepts pyschadelics from a stranger and then barks at the performers while trying to rub her scalp on other people's scalps in a feeble attempt to "do an experiment to grow hair" after pissing herself. Like I've said before, you just can't make this stuff up. People are so very strange.

Then there are the drug people. And when I say "drug people," I mean the people who go to festivals just to do drugs; these are the people who don't even leave the campsite at all to listen to the music. They just know festivals are places where they can get away with openly doing illegal things, so they frequent them. I realize some people use drugs to "enhance" their listening experience, but these other "drug people" just want to do drugs, that's it. You can find them walking around with balloons full of Nitrous at all hours to make some money to buy MORE DRUGS.

And then there are always people who are easily swept away by that mob-mentality thing; they just want to use their power in numbers to do something, anything. For instance, an artist is sound-checking. Mob-mentality people try to get the crowd to start yelling "we want music, we want music," even though there is nothing they can do about making things start sooner. Sometimes mob mentality people accomplish cool things like encores, other times they accomplish bad things like yelling, screaming, and pushing.

Then there are boring people like me who want to be close enough to the artists to see their hands, and who want other people to give them some space so they can enjoy the music. Simple. I'm not one of those people who feels the need to chuck glowsticks at unsuspecting spectators (you. know. who. you. are.).

We came back with some war wounds: mainly sunburns, chapped lips, and my friend got a hole burned into her fleece by someone's cigarette. But, we also had a great time, heard some great music, and, obviously, saw some very interesting people!