Lights. Lots of lights… an unimaginable amount of lights, laser systems, and a sound system that I have yet to find the words to describe. To say you could feel the sound would be an understatement of magnificent proportions. I guess you could say you wore the sound or perhaps swam in a pool of sound, but even then, that doesn’t do it justice.
I’ve been trying to look up the facts and details about the 80-foot high, 300-foot wide, 500-foot long structure that I found myself spending a large portion of my 72+ hour stint in the desert this weekend past. Only then would I be able to put things in perspective. For the purpose of comparison, those dimensions exceed that of an NFL football field.
I had the unique pleasure and opportunity of having said yes to two people who recently entered my life to join them and 24 of their closest friends on a very well-organized trip to Palm Springs to experience Coachella. Yeah I know… maybe a little late to the game here, but I have never been one for music festivals, overly-crowded stages, and masses of people whom I generally believe are more likely there for the party than they are for the music— the type of people who find it absolutely necessary to talk in their “inebriated” voices about nonsensical things at ridiculous volumes, while I try to listen to my favorite song. Ever frustrated by the forced use of port-o-potties with lines of zombies who have horrible aim and whose diet I cannot even fathom based upon the overall condition of said port-o-potties within an hour of the gate opening.
But my inner Nike prevailed, and I said to myself “Just Do It.” I booked the ticket, checked the line-up, and was pleasantly surprised to see some bands I would actually want to see, even if all of you veterans out there are complaining about how “weak” the line-up was this year. It was my first go, so for me, it was good enough.
When I arrived, I was handed a silly watch made in some factory in China where quality control is not in their vocabulary. Hands were missing from faces, which I guess technically doesn’t even make them watches. The bezel was bejeweled with fake diamonds, and I shuddered internally as I removed my perfectly-manufactured, Swiss-precision timepiece, which would be packed carefully away in my bag until it was time to leave. I strapped on the purple-banded fashion misstatement and clicked what I thought would be some sort of timer button, which activated several tiny LED’s and turned my left wrist into an explosion of lights that pulsed and blinked like a mini dancefloor attached to my arm.
I sighed… “What in the hell have I gotten myself into?” Well at least it was purple—Mom’s, David’s, and my favorite color. (Sidenote: It is the reason we use the purple paisley for the foundation to honor David and my mother.)
As we arrived at the grounds, the picturesque sun was setting behind the desert mountain range. A light breeze carried the scent of the desert and a faint hint of equestrian familiar to me from my aunt’s horse farm in Newtown, CT. Not an unpleasant smell, mind you. It’s the smell of dirt that connects you to the earth in that primal way a campfire or the forest does.
I attempted to make my way to the main stage when, all of a sudden, 18 of my newfound friends grabbed my arm. We took a sharp right and plunged into an ocean of people, away from the band I thought I had come to see, away from the familiar choruses and riffs, away from the sweet crooning of the mostly-heartbreak lyrics that I so regularly find myself plugging into my head through the earbuds that are connected to my perfectly-tuned Spotify account that I had taken so much time editing and revising for this particular trip so that I would know every lyric of the bands I wanted see.
WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP. The ground was trembling like a giant alien spaceship as we approached this gargantuan airport hanger that spewed lights that would make Spielberg blush with envy and make Close Encounters of the Third Kind look like a hack B-Movie on a ten-dollar budget. All the while, my 18 companions keep saying something that sounds like “Saaaaaa Haaar Ahhh” in their Belgian accents and with little quips of Flemish, a language that seems to have a total of about 12 letters obscurely mixed up in some sort of Germanic-like variation.
The leader of the pack reached down and clicked his “party watch” and let out a “ayyyy YEE” call, almost like what I would imagine a cowboy would do to herd cattle. Like a high-pitched “YIP! Gettt along little doggies.” In tandem, the group all activated their watches and repeated the call, their left hand held above their head and right hand holding the hand of the person behind you. We were a centipede of color using this “ayyyy YEE” call like a dolphin or a whale uses with their sing-song sonar clicks and whistles to keep the others informed of their location. It was a unique sound that I instantly realized cut through the ambient sounds and instantly let me know where my companions were should we get out of visual view.
We were a centipede of LED lights weaving through crowds of people. “Ayyyy YEE… ayyyy YEE” back and forth, responding and reconfirming our locations. Our pace intensified. WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP. Silence……
As we crossed the threshold of the hanger, a massive flash of white light popped. Like a camera, my eyes caught a single frame of a thousand people in various poses. I blinked and could see the reverse image like a negative against my eyelids: the crisp detail of each individual captured for just a moment a single strobe.
I looked into the chasm of the hangar at the opposite end as the entire hanger flooded with a wave of light and wall of sound. You didn’t only hear the sound—it rippled through you, occupying the entirety of the space and its inhabitants. I was indeed stepping into the belly of an alien spaceship.
At the far end, a single being (a silhouette, really) on a platform was at the master controls surround by millions of LED’s each reacting as if the entire stage was a living, breathing platform. I can only describe it as a giant electric altar to which the thousands of other occupants focused their entire attention. The entire interior of the hangar was illuminated with every spectrum the human eye can see in organized chaos, pulsing and flashing with the beat.
My group dove deeper into the crowd, the now familiar “ayyyy YEE” guiding me. I could only feel the hand of the person in front of me as my “party watch” blinked its rainbow of colors that somehow mysteriously timed with the sounds emanating from the walls.
We apparently had found a suitable position within the belly of the beast, and the centipede broke into 18 pieces. Immediately my companions all fell into a semi-coordinated, yet entirely unique, what-some-would-define-as dance (a doctor would define it as possible seizure). Either way, they were entranced with the being at the altar and consumed by the sound. Slowly but surely, I felt myself involuntarily moving: My body started swaying, then arms started moving, and before I knew it, I was jumping about to the music and lost any inhibition about what I might look like to other people.
At that moment, I found myself being transported back to a moment years ago when David worked as a bartender. What I call his “CLUB CLUB” years or “Boom Boom Davey.” A fist-pumping, house-loving, two-diamond-studs-one-in-each-ear, gel-coated stage in his life where he regularly tried to convince me to come out and play until all hours of the night dancing carelessly to a primal beat that moved a room of hundreds or, in this case, a hangar of thousands.
I only then got it: I realized what I was missing those years I was poking fun at him. It was truly an opportunity for a carefree moment. A space of time where you listened only to your body and not to your mind and let go. It was then in a flash of a strobe that I could almost see his face just for a moment next to me, just doing the little dance that was unique to him, his eyes closed, his dimples and smile just radiating. I thought to myself, “Tonight, this is for you. I am so sorry for making so much fun of you… of course you were ahead of the times when it came to stuff like this.”
I apologized to him and to myself, and then I completely let go… I danced my ass off for the next four hours, not giving a shit about what it looked like, just imagining he was right there beside me the whole time while we had what was arguably one of the best times of my life.
