In October I traveled to Austin, Texas, to attend Austin City Limits. It was my first “business” trip, and my first time attending something so huge on my own. Usually it comes naturally to me to want to write a show review, event highlights, or something more typically journalistic. This time, instead, my quiet reflections screamed their way onto the page. They are scattered, rhetorical, and sometimes feel pretentious, but they are real.
10/15/22 (Afternoon)
It’s the third Saturday in October and Austin is still the sticky kind of hot that makes you seriously contemplate if taking all your clothes off would be appropriate. If there is ever a socially acceptable time to strip in public it would probably be here at Austin City Limits. Zilker Park is swarming with pretty girls dipped in glitter, frat boys dipped in muscles, and young adults dipped in families. There are cool people, drunk people, freaks, cool drunk freaks, separated parties searching for their friends, partners searching for the American Express Stage and me, alone, searching for some kind of profound experience I can write about.
There have been a few moments today where I’ve stood still and let the crowds move around me, just to observe the ways in which they veered. It’s dizzying to come face-to-face with the illusion that my feet are rooted into a stagnant patch of earth while she continues to rotate around me. My body is still but my mind is racing. I feel like a breathing juxtaposition.
10/15/22 (Evening)
I could have pretended to be someone else, but instead I pretended to be nobody. It’s better to observe as nobody than it is to observe as somebody. I didn’t make any kind of ripple today. My only spoken words were “one water please” under the big bar tent, and “thank you” to the bubbly festival girlies who complimented my outfit. Maybe tomorrow I’ll experience being the festival girlie. I’ll have people take photos of me and push my way to the front of the crowds and sing along to my favorite songs, competing with the wall of sound as it hits me in the face.
10/16/22 (Morning)
I’m at the restaurant below my hotel for breakfast. I’m sitting at the bar like a real professional traveling for work, eating my eggs and toast. I started talking to a pair of girls that came in and sat on my right wearing Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirts. They both used gold and blue glitter as highlighter high up on their cheek bones. We talked festivals, Chili Peppers, temporary tattoos and where we grew up. Having not spoken to many people the past two days, I feel hyper aware of the words leaving my mouth.
On the other side of me there’s a dirty man counting his money on the bar. He has it all laid out in front of him and every few minutes he yells out something like, “I have a dollar for anyone who can name which states the Hoover Dam borders!” Myself and a couple across the bar entertained his conversations for a moment when he first sat down, but eventually the couple picked up their phones and turned their backs. I opened my notebook.
When you go to a music festival you have the easiest chance to connect with as many people as you’d like- and not every connection needs to be made on festival grounds or even with festival goers. You can make easy connections with the hot girls wearing merch from one of your favorite bands, or you can make unorthodox connections with the smelly locals at the bar. Why do we choose to limit our connections?
10/16/22 (Afternoon)
I’m here taking photos without a photo pass, which has been interesting. I’m trying to capture the fashion and the culture in my pictures because you don’t need a photo pass for that. There’s a boy in sparkly white platform boots that I’ve been trailing behind for the past few minutes, waiting for the right photo-op. For someone in platforms slightly struggling to walk, he’s not exactly the easiest to keep up with! I followed him and his friends to the bedazzled ACL truck, where I snapped some photos crouched down like a bug in the grass.
I crawled around and captured a group of dancing cowboys, a woman in a butterfly cape, and a hula-hooper. I’ve taken all of these pictures from the same angle: in the grass, looking up. It was not a coincidence- I feel small and observant, so that’s how I angled the photos. Still, I think to myself, change it up! and I do. I put myself in the crowd for The Front Bottoms and Wallows, and in the mosh pit for Oliver Tree. Clicking through the photos on my camera, I feel myself in every shot. A part of me hopes my audience doesn’t notice, but another part of me feels that they should.
The Quick-Moving Platforms.
Dancing Cowboys.
The Front Bottoms.
Oliver Tree Mosh Pit.
Paramore.
Festival Goers.
Red Hot Chili Peppers.