In a little less than a week, I am set to drive with three friends from the heart of Texas to a music festival in Colorado. The drive will take two days, during which we will camp in national forests and other such preserves. There's a very good chance that we will not shower for the entire trip. Light dehydration is also likely. As are bug bites and excessive amounts of trail mix. We will not go to sleep until 2:30 A.M. every night, and we will certainly not be able to see everything we wanted to.
It’s going to be amazing.
If you have never been to a music festival, they are an entirely different world, temporarily beamed down to earth for a weekend here or there. They generally follow a certain type of music: folk, indie, EDM, and so on. Each festival has its own feel. The one that I will be headed to is going to have workshops and everything from permaculture to songwriting, as well as yoga all day every day. Some are more focused on music, whereas others are bubbles of raucous hedonism (not that there’s anything wrong with that). To an extent, it makes sense that people vibe well at festivals. After all, you’re there because you love Nahko Bear, they’re there because they love Nahko Bear. The atmosphere lends itself to quick and deep friendships. However, it goes beyond that.
My first music festival was almost on a whim, and I wasn’t entirely sure what was going to happen. The first thing that happened as soon as we walked in was a man about our age waving to us and yelling loudly, “You’re beautiful!”. For the next three days, this positivity did not let up. Everyone we talked to was extremely open about who they were and what they had done, something that I had never seen before. In the “real world”, when you ask someone “How are you doing?”, it’s a formality that doesn’t require a real answer. You ask, they shrug, and you both continue with your respective lives.
At this festival, when you get asked, you were often greeted with an actual response: “Man, I’ve been doing great! I just toured the art gallery, then I went and watched…” and so on and so on. What also shocked me was the ease at which conversations were started. The very last night, on a whim, I sat by a total stranger and started talking. I was there for easily half an hour or so. Perhaps what amazed me most was the attitude of “live and let live”, which permeated every social interaction. If you were gay, that was okay. If you were straight, that was okay, too. If you were Hindu or Christian or Atheist, that was fine too. People brought themselves to the interactions as they were, and no one asked anyone to change.
What is the result of unabashed, childlike love and acceptance? Within two days, I was hugging my newfound friend, David, both of us happily trading “I love you”s. Note that, I’m not talking about the immature phenomenon that is the “Bro Hug”, but an actual, honest to God hug. More so, even though this festival was two years ago, we still keep in touch from time to time. I can honestly say that music festivals have changed my life. If we let them, they could change a lot more than that.
The mindset of “love and let live”, that is almost a requirement at these events, is one of the healthiest mindsets that I’ve ever encountered. People realize that not everyone is like them and that it’s perfectly okay. There is no proselytizing or shaming based on belief or lifestyle. As a result, people are more open to learning from each other without focusing on what they can shove down the other person’s throat. What is even more remarkable is that when a person is not pressured into having to agree with the other person, they’re more likely to approach the subject under their own power instead of fleeing the other way as quickly as possible. If more individuals treated each other this way in day to day life, and not just long weekends, the effects would be staggering. Never mind personal relationships; how would world leaders treat each other without a preoccupying jingoism?
This weekend is going to be one of many festivals in my lifetime. It is not my first, and I sincerely hope that it isn’t my last. However, it will have just as strong an effect on me as the others, if not a stronger effect, being my first out of state festival. When I get there, I intend to dive right in and immerse myself. The real challenge happens when I leave. The challenge is to live each day like a festival: to not be afraid of social interactions, to assume the best about people and not the worst, and to love everyone with my whole heart. It’s very difficult, but it’s far from impossible. I challenge my readers to treat people this way, too. With any luck, the whole world will get to experience the joy that is a music festival.
