Festival Season

When the weather finally cooperates, the thought is automatic: tent, friends, a field, music. Hurricane in 2012 had Die Ärzte, The Cure, Florence & The Machine, New Order, M83, Little Dragon—the kind of lineup where you’re constantly torn between stages, convinced you’re missing something better happening somewhere else. You probably are.

Festivals work because the gap between imagination and reality is so wide it ceases to matter. You go in picturing yourself present and engaged and reasonably clean. You get there and by hour four you haven’t showered, you’ve already lost one friend to the main stage, and the food situation is worse than you feared. None of it ruins anything. By day two everyone’s equally grimy and equally tired and nobody’s bothering with the social performance that matters at home.

That’s where it actually happens—that complete step outside. You’re crammed in a field with thousands of people and after a few days you’re eating together and sleeping near each other and not thinking about it. The regular world dissolves. When you finally get back, it takes longer than you’d think to readjust to basic things like showers and clean clothes.