Read Part 1 here.
I can’t remember what I told the 27-year-old, but it was something along the lines of, I'm too fucking high, help me. He grabbed my hand and told me to picture him as a tree, and that his hands were branches, and his roots went down into the earth, and that’s when I stopped him and exclaimed, “I can’t talk about roots going into the earth right now!” I looked around desperately. “It’s too much,” I moaned.
Okay, okay, he said. He pulled me closer to him, and I awkwardly put my head on his shoulder, frightened, and he put his arm around me. I kept watching everyone walking by, but it didn’t feel like earth. Who were these people? I tried to calm myself by saying, you’re just too high. You took a big hit, you’re on shrooms. Just let it pass. You’re going to be okay. Or, was I going to be permanently crazy?
I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually my reality started shifting back to something I could recognize, still strange though. “I think I’m coming back,” I told the 27-year-old, as I began to take deep breaths. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed he had to babysit me, or maybe it was just me being paranoid. I felt on edge, so I said, let’s get up and walk around, shake this off. Okay, he said.
We began to walk back to the Orion stage because The Bravery had already started playing. But as soon as we started walking around, my reality shifted again and suddenly everything seemed foreign again. “I’ve never been this high,” I moaned. I had only done shrooms three other times in my life so I’m a lightweight when it comes to tripping. I prefer my brain getting totally sideswiped with serotonin from molly instead. Problem is the coming down kicks my ass now so I rarely do it if ever anymore.
I could hear myself explaining to the 27-year-old, there’s two of me right now. I’m talking to him, yet I’m also somewhere else, and then he said he had to use the porta potty. “Me too,” I told him. He said I should probably wait like an hour. “Okay,” I said, confused. “Why?” You shouldn’t go in a porta potty this high, he said. I nodded, good call. But he still needed to go.
We entered the porta potty area, another new reality. Sure, there were porta potties, and grass, and people, but why did everything seem so goddamn fucking weird?
He finally came out and we started trekking towards the Orion stage, when a tent with a mister caught his eye. We should go in there, he told me. The mist will help you snap out of it. Okay, I said reluctantly. We walked over to the mister tent. I walked in like a frightened little girl. This random dude kept poking the top of it so the water would drip on us. He laughed, and everyone started to laugh. And then I started to laugh. I was beginning to get the giggles, actually. Oh sweet Jesus, I think I’m coming out the darkness. The cold, tangible water had saved me. I informed the 27-year-old I was feeling better, and we should go see The Bravery.
I walked over in a daze, clutching onto the 27-year-old (The Bravery’s big screen graphics were very psychedelic), and now after some sort of sunny version of hell, I was finally feeling the magic. We found a spot on the grass and danced. The bad kind of dancing where you just don’t give a shit. Everything was really coming together perfectly now in my new reality. In between dancing badly, I fixated on people walking by. I got a freeze frame, close up of their faces, and each one was glowing and shimmery, and not to sound cheesy as fuck, but they looked like souls visiting planet earth, floating past me. “Everybody looks shimmery and glossy,” I tried to explain to the 27-year-old. I think he wished he was as high as me.
After the set ended with “An Honest Mistake”, it was a bit of a blur. The Walkmen were coming on next and I vaguely remember dancing some more, and then we decided to go check out Peaches playing back at Stardust.
Dude, is she topless? the 27-year-old asked, when we got there. I think she’s wearing pasties, I said, squinting to see more clearly since we were pretty far back. Yeah, she’s wearing pasties, I confirmed. I like her pants, I said.
At some point Peaches and her two dancers stood in a line, one behind the other, wearing some pale pink costume thing with horns on it that covered all of them, and with their heads peaking out. “Is that a vagina?” I asked. No, I don’t think so, said the 27-year-old. Suddenly one of the dancers popped out of the pink thing with some weird blonde baby head attached to her stomach, gyrating around the stage very suggestively. “It is a vagina,” I said. “I knew it.” But why does it after horns on it, he asked. I shrugged. A group of parents in the crowd with their kids began leaving, one after another.
After we got our fix of the gyrating baby dancers, we had to deal with some logistics. Hot Chip was coming up on the Stardust Stage and Future Islands was going to be playing at the same time over at Orion. I wanted to check out both, and the 27-year-old wanted to see the whole Future Islands set. So we split, and I went to Hot Chip for a while, then wandered around in a daze until I found the churro stand, stood in its long ass line, and finally got my churro (whilst Future Islands played on the big screen in the background), and at that point I felt extremely satisfied. I meandered over to a grassy knoll at Orion, munching on the churro along the way. I wasn’t really “tripping” anymore, just really spacey and really digging my churro while watching Future Islands play “A Dream of You and Me” and “Seasons”.
Something triggered me with “Seasons” though, as that song always tends to do. I always think of a certain someone when I hear that song, and from my satisfied churro state I went into a very retrospective era of the evening. I looked around the crowd, feeling alone, but also not? Missing him, but also knowing the ‘him’ in my head is, and has been, a fantasy for a long, long time. I sat there on the grass, contemplating my life as golden hour was fading and the sun was setting. Also, wishing I had gotten another churro.
But I had to snap out of it. The best bands of the day were coming up. I jumped up to go meet the 27-year-old at our agreed upon post Future Islands meeting tree. I got to the tree first and put on my pink crop top turtleneck and was anxious for 27-year-old to get there, A, because he had my fleece, and B, because I missed him a little during our time apart. He emerged from crowd smiling at me, and I was thankful I was at the right tree. I kept forgetting Empire of the Sun was playing next, ironically because they were one of the main reasons I bought a ticket. He was standing in line for a beer, and I was talking about the MGMT and M83 set coordination (they were playing at the same time) when “Standing on the Shore” came on and I practically died.
We found another grassy knoll near Orion to watch the show. The tripping portion of the day was over. Now this was just about the music, and to be honest I was glad. I didn’t want to be out of my mind or in some other reality (made that mistake doing ecstasy at Street Scene way back in 2009, and missed the entire Silversun Pickups set cause I was rolling so hard). No, this was the slow down and enjoy the light show, cuddle a bit, sing along with the crowd time.
Pre-Just Like Heaven, everyone on social media, including myself, was bitching about MGMT and M83 being on at the same time. Truly, I don't know what the powers that be were thinking, but this is how it went down. MGMT was going on twenty minutes earlier than M83, so we were going to stay for that portion, then head over to Stardust. I had to see both, I informed 27-year-old. I wasn’t completely sure he was on the same page given his body language, but if we had to split again, so be it.
The thing was, the MGMT set was fucking insane from the start. They were playing their Oracular Spectacular album in its entirety, but they began with a visual show that was so weird and confusing and nostalgic, the whole crowed seemed to stand there quiet and mesmerized. Then they went right into “Time to Pretend”, and the entire first half of their album including “Youth”, “Electric Feel”, and “Kids”. I mean, come on.
I knew after “Kids” it was time to go, but then some techno song with a giant green skeleton dancing on the massive screens (from what I can remember) sucked me in again. I could tell the 27-year-old wasn’t ready to leave MGMT and I was getting anxious. After the next one, I told him. They’ve played all their hits. So we stayed for one more song, and afterwards he said, ready to head over? Hells yeah I was.
M83 was more of a rocker look and feel, but still very synthy, which for those of you that know me, know I effing love. The drummer was insane (and insanely hot) and the set was a blur (a lot the newer songs I didn’t know), but tremendously good (so good that two days after I bought a ticket to see them at the Shrine in September). I danced very badly during M83, my favorite kind of dancing. The kind of dancing where people look at you in envy because you’re having such a goddamn good time. They ended with Midnight City, duh, and another epic song that my fried brain cannot remember.
That was the end for me. Yes, we went over to see the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, and yes, they was awesome too, and if there wasn’t gobs of people at the fest and getting out wouldn’t have been a total bitch, we would have stayed until the bitter end. I will say I was bummed I missed “Heads Will Roll”. We walked back, made out in the car, and then got In & Out. Not bad.