You may have noticed
that I have missed what should have been my last three entries. The first few
days weren’t entirely my fault: I got really sick. The kind of sick where getting
up from the couch requires leaning against various pieces of furniture and you
have to sleep cradling a box of tissues like a faceless, rectangular teddy bear.
Any of my family members/former roommates/boyfriend can tell you that I am not one
of those people who gets sick and then still goes on about their lives like
everything is normal. When I’m sick I’m sick.
I like to say that too, several times a day, elongating the “i” and adding a dramatic
sigh to remind anyone in my vicinity of my weakened condition: Matt, the cats,
houseplants, contestants on the Price is Right. I honestly do think that I get
sicker than other people, but nobody believes me. Just like I get more tired
than other people and hungrier than other people. The point is I can’t do much
when I’m sick, so I didn’t write a blog entry.
After the Great Plague
of June 4-6, Matt and I went to New York to go to the Governor’s Ball Music
Festival. We had been planning this trip for a while and I was a little
nervous. I’m not really a music festival person. I mean, I had never been to
one before but I was fairly certain it wasn’t really going to be my thing. Like
I said, I get more tired than other people so standing around for three days from
12 in the afternoon to 11 at night wasn’t exactly something I was looking
forward to. Also, I’m just not cool enough to go to a music festival. Once in
college my friends and I decided to have the stereotypical college spring break
and we drove down to Daytona Beach. I ended up spending the week visiting my
friend’s grandmother’s retirement village, going for long runs, and being
annoyed when a girl in a pot leaf bikini spilled vodka punch on my cardigan in
the elevator. And there’s this little problem: I am not a music person. Yup, I’m
admitting it on the internet for everyone to read. I like music. I listen to music when I drive in the car and
occasionally at home I turn on a Pandora station while I do the dishes or get
ready to go out. But I’m not a music person. All of my CDs melted when my dad
left my car in a sunny spot while I studied abroad in 2008 and that was the last
time I owned full albums of music. I have six songs on my ipod. I know you
think I’m exaggerating, but I have six songs on my ipod. The rest of the space
is taken up by podcasts. I don’t scour record stores for new bands, I only read
Rolling Stone when an actor is on the cover, and occasionally, I hear popular
Beatles songs that are totally new to me. The most stressful question anyone
can ask me: what kind of music do you like? You might as well ask me: How many mathematical
formulas do you remember from Algebra II? I’m just going to stare at you and
then nervously mutter something about logarithms, probably for both questions.
(Side note: Wouldn’t The Logarhythms be a great name for a band that only
performs songs about math? This is what I mean about me not being cool enough
for a music festival.) I like a lot of things: food, television, books,
running, cats, crafts, so I feel okay saying I’m just not that into music.
But regardless of these
things, I decided to go to the festival. It was the most money I’ve ever spent on
one thing that didn’t involve aviation/providing me somewhere to live. I didn’t
really want to go, but Matt wanted to and I wanted to go to New York. I didn’t
know that many of the bands, but I was really excited that a Korean BBQ food
truck I had seen on the Food Network was going to be there. I decided to go in
with a good attitude.
The first day was the
worst day of anything that I have ever done in my life. The festival was
outdoors and the website declared it would be going on no matter what the
weather did. Even if it tropical storm Andrea-ed, which is what it did. It
rained the entire day. Not just occasional sprinkle, it poured so intensely
that within minutes of being at the festival my hands were pruney like I’d just
gotten out of long bath. It was cold. There was mud up to my ankles. I’d
decided it was a good idea to bring a giant bag which I ended up having to
carry underneath my poncho for seven hours which was both inconvenient and embarrassing,
nobody else brought a shoulder bag full of granola bars and extra socks. The
entire inside of the porta-potty bathrooms were covered in mud. During the
second to last show, Feist, the rain was so bad that their equipment shorted
out and they had to stop playing, I was secretly relived we finally got to
leave.
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| Don't be fooled by the apparent protection from the poncho and umbrella, everything I was wearing was completely soaked by the time the first day was over. |
I can’t say much about
the second day because I spent most of it at the Museum of Modern Art. After
the frustration and aquatic-ness of the first day, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to
get back to the festival grounds. I gave my ticket to my friend Chase and
instead hung out in New York by myself. I ate dumplings, walked through Central
Park, and saw Starry Night. It was the best.
But on the last day of
the festival, I decided I was going to have a good time. I was prepared this time: I
ditched the mom bag, my muddy shoes had dried off enough to wear them again,
and most importantly, I snuck in a hip flask of vodka. The ground was still
muddy, but I was with three of my best friends from college, we had a view of Manhattan,
and I even actually knew some of the bands that were playing. Plus, we ate the
Korean tacos and dear god, that was worth the entire ticket price. Then Kayne
played and even I love Kayne. His show was amazing, but what’s more amazing is the
way he got everyone excited about the performance: purposely starting twenty
minutes late while flashing an image on the screen above the stage of his face
every few minutes. He was even in a good mood, someone accidentally hit him
with a glow stick and he didn’t storm off the stage or anything. As we walked
home through Harlem that night I felt tired and muddy, but also proud of
myself. I made it through the musical festival. Just like when I get sick, I
often let myself wallow in being unhappy doing things I don’t necessarily want
to be doing instead of having a good attitude. Governor’s Ball will probably be
my first and last music festival, but I’m glad I did it once. And now I can
tell my kids I saw Kanye West in the middle of a marijuana saturated mudpit in
a crowd of thousands of people, shoved up against my boyfriend and a very drunk
Australian man attempting an American accent. And thanks to the state of the
porta-potties, my squatting muscles have never been stronger.
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| Much happier (and drier) friends on Day 3 |
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