I'll work backwards.
I spent yesterday in the company of lots and lots of nearly naked female butts. These butts, on average, were a good fifteen years my junior. They belonged to the thousands of women alongside whom I attended HardSummer music festival. They all seemed, to my surely unwelcome gaze, to be in top form, no matter the size or shape - if only because they were so damn young. It's hard for me to find fault with any young butt these days, now that mine is flirting with forty. Oh, youth. You are so fucking wasted on the--wait, no, never mind. I'm not actually sure you are.
I've been to enough festivals that I am relatively unfazed by the dearth of clothing on these whippersnappettes. It's probably good for me, anyway. A semi-annual, bracing ego check and a reminder that we all pass the beauty baton eventually - what matters is what remains when we do. Brains. Heart. Spirit. Humor. Grace. A personal blog littered with incriminating anecdotes.
Anyway, despite being mostly inured to the sight of twenty-something ass, I am still occasionally struck breathless by an especially exquisite specimen. It's moments like these that my fandom is truly tested. How much do I love this stuff? Enough to spend the weekend with my (also upper thirties) boyfriend, bobbing like castaways in a sea of nubile collegiate flesh?
Good news, electronic musicians! The answers are still "a lot" and "yes". You win, for now. And you win despite being some of the most douchetastic, arrogant idiots ever to take to social media. Because I believe that being a fan of any artist means fanning the art itself, not the flawed human behind it (an idea I want to explore in another post). So yeah, brag about your sports cars and complain about the lack of Skittles in your private jet; I'll still buy your albums and come to your shows.
And then there's the last of the Challenging Elements: my age. The happy fact is that I'm rarely aware of all thirty-nine of my years - or at least, rarely uncomfortable with them. And my list of age-determinate Won't Dos and Can't Wears is still triumphantly (foolishly?) short. But every year I do become a teensy bit more self-conscious in the festival scene, and a teensy bit more relieved when I catch sight of someone even older. I'll keep going, though. Because if fun has an expiration date, I'd rather dodge an entire stadium full of festival butts than read that fine print.
Even older, she wrote, and then stared at that phrase incredulously. Who am I and what have I done with myself? Did I not rock a spirit hood yesterday, just for the joy of dancing in
Yeah. I did. I am. I will.
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| White tiger? Fennec fox? Your guess is as good as mine. |
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| They moved the festival from downtown LA to Whittier Narrows and WOW what an excellent change. Trees! Grass! Plus there's great flow and plenty of room to stretch out and adjust that tanga. |
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| LOL sober people |
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| The sun setting over the Porta Potties is always one of the most romantic moments of any festival. |
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| Sound was fantastic on all the stages, but the nuclear blast during Axwell's set seemed a bit excessive. |
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| Okay well it looked cooler in my phone (and in person). Here it just looks like a sweaty gymnasium. Wev. |
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| The best part of me insisting on taking these blurry night shots is I've forgotten who was on stage by the next day. |
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| LITE BRITE, LITE BRITE, TURN ON THE MAGIC OF INTENTIONALLY MISSPELLED CHILDREN'S TOYS |
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| I asked Terence how old he thought that other festival-goers would guess we were. "They probably think we just turned thirty," he said. I have no idea how he came up with that, but anyway, Christ do I love this man for indulging my Peter Pan complex. Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning, baby.
So far the tops we've seen (day two starts in a few hours!) are Oliver, Alex Metric, and The Martinez Brothers. I found Axwell to be a bit meh (overly long buildups), the Goldroom DJ set to be lovely, and Jack U to be a weaksauce imitation of Dillon Francis. Go back to your roots, Skrilly, and leave the moombahton to Dilly.
And that will conclude the esoteric EDM snobbery portion of today's post.
Also that will conclude the post itself.
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