Soundsystem

That’s how it starts, with a forty minute walk to the corner of a pier. I don’t know anyone attending this event. The sun belts down upon my face. Each passing second makes it increasingly apparent how I’m alone. All the hand-holding and cup-passing and the Dude!!! How have you been!!!’s. I’m walking fast to beat the line. I’m late.

An officer against the barricade waves traffic along in an official manner. Carts of charred meat swarm the perimeter. “Hotdog!…” A voice echoes. A motorcycle rips past the sidewalk. The appeals for hotdogs are ignored. I trail the outside of the path, cutting away from the crowd.

I’m sweating. I check my phone. There are no messages. I rub the back of my hand against my brow, and it comes away with a film of moisture. I planned to arrive far earlier than one should arrive to a festival. I’m wearing a t-shirt with an artist’s logo on it. They are the first performance. I intend to see them.

Security begins to search my bag, then changes their mind. They deem I am not a threat to the public. Despite my fortune, I am still late to the artist I want to see. I stop a maintenance worker to ask where the stage is. They pull out a map to look, which defeats the purpose of me asking them, but it’s okay. They point to a section of the map and I give them a thumbs up. When I arrive I am one of twenty people standing pressed against the railing of the largest stage in the entire venue. People are dancing halfheartedly. People are wearing boots with very large heels, and dirt-washed denim of dubious origin. Everyone’s kind of nodding along, in a self-conscious way. I bounce in place, waving to the beat.

Two girls in matching camo shorts purse their lips to the rear of their phone. They take turns filming each other against the railing, swaying and sashaying, pausing in between to check their videos. The man on stage is a set piece, a decoration like a flower vase, that happens to produce sound. He is halfway through his set. Upon my arrival he points at my shirt, and smiles. This small action makes my entire existence worthwhile. Thick bass notes mix with guitar twanging. I let my ears ring through the noise. It is okay to sustain a slight amount of corporeal damage for your own enjoyment. His set ends. I rush inside a portable toilet and change my shirt, which is soaked.

It’s funny how far impulse can take you. I kind of jumped the gun on this by a few months. I paid two hundred dollars more than the tickets being sold the night before the event. That’s just who I am. I am eager. I am overexcited by big speakers, and the promise of dancing. But admittedly it’s early for this sort of thing. For the drugs and the drinking and the two-stepping in place alongside a sixty-acre cargo pier that, in the absence of melodic techno dance music, handles the logistics of several types of shipping containers in an efficient, cost-saving manner.

Thirty minutes until the next performance. I walk to the middle of the asphalt venue. I voraciously scan the perimeter, as if my eyes and ears were pitchers to be filled up to the brim, overflowing with sound and color. A sign in big, blocky font says, “BAR.” I buy a can of beer from “BAR.” I stare at the screen and tip a dollar out of pity, which, for all I know, goes to the void, where it is reclaimed by an unseen, expansive system.

I see artist after artist. A woman from Los Angeles screams in Japanese to the backdrop of a pulsating techno beat. She thanks the crowd politely after each song. Two malnourished-looking men in leather with cigarettes clinging to the corners of their mouths sing about Colorado. The crowd moshes to this song about the western state, gyrating in a messy circle of elbows and knees. I dance alone, ferrying myself from stage to stage like a vulture in search of another meal, while the sun begins to dip below the horizon.

In the absence of light the air is cool. The crowds grow in size, and in the dark you can feel the collective hunger of thousands, mobs of people gathered in faith of a shared religion. That is the appeal of the festival. To dance yourself clean. To let the sweat dripping down your neck lead you to rapture, to be subsumed into something other, something that enables you to outlive yourself. Great stacks of speakers gift you a second heartbeat for which you substitute your own, and in the blur of the crowds we are all one mass, with this universal mega-heart, thumping away like a kick drum stuffed into our ribs, one begging to be let loose so it can dash away like a wild dog.

The evening nears its close. I stand towards the back of the crowd of the last set. I am comforted by the night that graciously turns us all into one big, murky soup, where our bodies and faces blur like smeared charcoal paste across a canvas. A single note drones on. The silhouette of a man walks onto stage. A pause, then a flash of light. The crowd erupts, gushing out cheers and applause. From my vantage point, in this grand middle view, I feel like I can taste a sip of some truth, some secret which only the immensity of the performance can give me. But why bother thinking about it?

The drums roll in. Then the buzz of synths. The crowd shifts and lurches. We dance, and dance, and dance. From the top of the stage, strobe lights ceaselessly whip at the stars above.