Reality continues to punch me in the face.
The last few days have found me in a state where I want to slap no less than half a dozen people upside the head repeatedly. The end of high school was nothing compared to this. Tonight I said the first real goodbye of this summer and it hit me that we're reaching the actual end. Loose ends are ambushing everyone; it's surprising what sort of garbage one can rack up in the first eighteen years of one's life. I'm so angry at so many people and I want to get rid of as much of it as I can before the finality of August 31st. I hate knowing that more things are going to come up and at least some of it will remain.
In less than a month, my friends will be scattered. I won't have Maegan, Moriah and so many other people a few minutes away. I won't have the default hang out spots, the familiar faces, the comforts of knowing what's what. I can only hope I don't have a ton of baggage left from home. I want a clean slate so I can launch into the fall with a good mindset.
But right now I'm so incredibly angry that I want to senselessly destroy things.
Hearts,
Julianne
Thursday, August 8, 2013
BEDA 4: August 4th
We woke up hungover on cheap wine and freedom. I vowed to avoid substances for the somewhat near future out of self respect and honestly being entirely turned off them. Small reminders of what had happened the previous night
were hanging around, such as a floor coated with crunched up ramen
noodles and the lipstick coated rim on the box of Pure Breakfast,
reminding us that we had chased the worst wine in the world (decidedly worse than Strawberry Hill) with juice
straight from the container.
I guess the trip had gone too smoothly until this point because everything was a trudge from this point on. Maegan and I trudged out to Saint Catherine Street to go shopping while Hannah slept and thanks to a pickpocket, Maegan is now missing her phone and we missed Icona Pop because of our hopeless backtracking. Nausea and defeat were present simultaneously. It was in this state that we ate MacDonald's and in the elevator found that a guy who is a known drug dealer from back home was staying in the room next door to me.
We made it to the festival grounds at 5pm and saw some of the Holy Ghost!, the loudest and most serious synth pop band of all time. We tried to see The Lumineers but we arrived a few minutes after it started so finding a decent spot was a hopeless cause. We left and devoted ourselves to finding prime spots for Father John Misty. It worked and we found ourselves in the 2nd row from the front. Father John Misty was hilarious; he gave me a new appreciation for booty. He works his dance moves and his tight pants like no other white man I've ever seen. His in between song banter was fantastic, as were his frequent trips to his decanter of tequila sitting on an amp. A lady of at least 30 in front of me decided to drink in sync with him from a flask she produced from her purse. She offered some to me and both still being in a 'yolo' mindset and being too passive to say no, I took a swig and immediately regretted it. My system is disgusted with it for the time being.
We were so incredibly tired and hungry by 8 that we decided to miss Mumford and Sons. I'll be forever be a little disappointed in myself for missing that, mostly as a claim to fame, but we had attained the special kind of exhaustion to voluntarily not go to Mumford and Sons. We got Mexican food and I nearly fell asleep in it. I set my alarm for 4:30am and mentally prepared for a day of riding the bus back.
Hearts,
Julianne
I guess the trip had gone too smoothly until this point because everything was a trudge from this point on. Maegan and I trudged out to Saint Catherine Street to go shopping while Hannah slept and thanks to a pickpocket, Maegan is now missing her phone and we missed Icona Pop because of our hopeless backtracking. Nausea and defeat were present simultaneously. It was in this state that we ate MacDonald's and in the elevator found that a guy who is a known drug dealer from back home was staying in the room next door to me.
We made it to the festival grounds at 5pm and saw some of the Holy Ghost!, the loudest and most serious synth pop band of all time. We tried to see The Lumineers but we arrived a few minutes after it started so finding a decent spot was a hopeless cause. We left and devoted ourselves to finding prime spots for Father John Misty. It worked and we found ourselves in the 2nd row from the front. Father John Misty was hilarious; he gave me a new appreciation for booty. He works his dance moves and his tight pants like no other white man I've ever seen. His in between song banter was fantastic, as were his frequent trips to his decanter of tequila sitting on an amp. A lady of at least 30 in front of me decided to drink in sync with him from a flask she produced from her purse. She offered some to me and both still being in a 'yolo' mindset and being too passive to say no, I took a swig and immediately regretted it. My system is disgusted with it for the time being.
We were so incredibly tired and hungry by 8 that we decided to miss Mumford and Sons. I'll be forever be a little disappointed in myself for missing that, mostly as a claim to fame, but we had attained the special kind of exhaustion to voluntarily not go to Mumford and Sons. We got Mexican food and I nearly fell asleep in it. I set my alarm for 4:30am and mentally prepared for a day of riding the bus back.
Hearts,
Julianne
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
BEDA 7: The Gradual Descend
I've gone to this youth weekend called TEC every May for the past few years and I've seen some weird similarities between it and my Osheaga experience. Which is funny considering that TEC consists of 50 people at a summer camp with Jesus and Osheaga consists of 40 000 people on an island with music and an array of substances.
Yet, the amount of parallels I've found are weird. At both, I've found myself fully surrounded by passionate people who are fully present and want to get every last drop of experience that they can. Rarely can you find places where people aren't trying to find distractions. Also, both places allow friendships to be formed extremely fast because there is an insane lack of judgement. Everyone has a starting point for conversation and you probably have things in common or at least a few interesting things to talk about. And most of all, both are an escape from the real world. TEC isn't reality, Osheaga isn't reality. Everyone is living in the moment with full acceptance that the experience is temporary and there's certain freedoms that come with that. Though those freedoms are different, they have the same effect where you can feel out who you are without the usual barriers. At the end, you find yourself thinking about this "real life" thing you have to go back to.
One difference, however, is that they don't give you a "Life after Osheaga" talk on your last day. You have to go back to reality and stumble through the gradual descend from euphoria on your own.
The best part about the trip by far was seeing Maegan legitimately happy for the first time in about a year. The worst part is wondering how long it'll last.
Hearts,
Julianne
Yet, the amount of parallels I've found are weird. At both, I've found myself fully surrounded by passionate people who are fully present and want to get every last drop of experience that they can. Rarely can you find places where people aren't trying to find distractions. Also, both places allow friendships to be formed extremely fast because there is an insane lack of judgement. Everyone has a starting point for conversation and you probably have things in common or at least a few interesting things to talk about. And most of all, both are an escape from the real world. TEC isn't reality, Osheaga isn't reality. Everyone is living in the moment with full acceptance that the experience is temporary and there's certain freedoms that come with that. Though those freedoms are different, they have the same effect where you can feel out who you are without the usual barriers. At the end, you find yourself thinking about this "real life" thing you have to go back to.
One difference, however, is that they don't give you a "Life after Osheaga" talk on your last day. You have to go back to reality and stumble through the gradual descend from euphoria on your own.
The best part about the trip by far was seeing Maegan legitimately happy for the first time in about a year. The worst part is wondering how long it'll last.
Hearts,
Julianne
BEDA 3: August 3rd
I've always found the middle day of anything to be an awkward day. I don't really like in between phases and the second day of a three day music festival proved to be a little eugh at times. Some smart ass planner probably intentionally placed Jimmy Eat World in the middle of the the middle day so they could play their ever catchy hit of 2001, 'The Middle.' I wish I was joking.
However, we did see some fun bands. Flogging Molly was amusing and the lead guy's banter between songs was hilarious. He dedicated a song to a guy in the front row because "he has the best fucking mohawk I've ever seen." The camera on the crowd found the mohawk guy pretty fast and he was crowd surfing before long. The lead guy cracked open a can of Guinness on stage at 4pm with the explanation of "Say hello to breakfast!" The large percentage of openly drinking performers during the weekend leads me to believe that festivals are the best to play at because everyone just wants everyone else to have a good time which extends to everyone being allowed to do most thing without judgement of any kind, including the performers.
We also saw Imagine Dragons, who put on a pretty intense show. Like Vampire Weekend, the crowd was fun and passionate but not off their rockers (*coughMacklemorecough*). There was a huge drum on the front of the stage and the lead guy pounded it occasionally and then threw the drumstick into the crowd. I saw a girl sitting on a guy's shoulders get smacked with one and fall over in my peripheral vision.
The way the main stages are directly next to each other, we caught a few songs from Jimmy Eat World, despite our greatest efforts to avoid hearing 'The Middle', and Macklemore afterwards. I enjoyed it way too much that Macklemore is a real person and not just a myth as I assumed up until this point and I heard 'Thrift Shop' live and thought it was the most hilarious thing this year that I've casually stumbled past.
After that we went to one of the nice grassy stages and consumed poutine and awful beer while listening to Explosions in the Sky, an instrumental band that made everyone feel high and mellow, that is if they weren't already... there was sort of a haze above the crowd. There were some intense lights happening during the show and sheet lightning started happening; it was perfect. There was a group of guys next to us who were having the time of their life. One began a group hug and I'm pretty sure everyone spilled beer on everyone else but he kissed our heads before walking away and it was still a good experience. Another guy just sort of wrapped his arms around people and started an entire line up of swaying people, likely to support himself in his state of intoxication at the time.
We went back to our dorm and the statement "We need to get rid of our leftover alcohol in the next two nights" was uttered, which it never should be, and I'm drawing a veil of mystery over everything else that happened after that. There's nothing too bad, I'd just rather it stay in Montreal for now. I have funny stories from that night that I'll tell my friends when I'm middle aged and nostalgic for being young. I got a lot of potentially bad things out of my system.
Hearts,
Julianne
However, we did see some fun bands. Flogging Molly was amusing and the lead guy's banter between songs was hilarious. He dedicated a song to a guy in the front row because "he has the best fucking mohawk I've ever seen." The camera on the crowd found the mohawk guy pretty fast and he was crowd surfing before long. The lead guy cracked open a can of Guinness on stage at 4pm with the explanation of "Say hello to breakfast!" The large percentage of openly drinking performers during the weekend leads me to believe that festivals are the best to play at because everyone just wants everyone else to have a good time which extends to everyone being allowed to do most thing without judgement of any kind, including the performers.
We also saw Imagine Dragons, who put on a pretty intense show. Like Vampire Weekend, the crowd was fun and passionate but not off their rockers (*coughMacklemorecough*). There was a huge drum on the front of the stage and the lead guy pounded it occasionally and then threw the drumstick into the crowd. I saw a girl sitting on a guy's shoulders get smacked with one and fall over in my peripheral vision.
The way the main stages are directly next to each other, we caught a few songs from Jimmy Eat World, despite our greatest efforts to avoid hearing 'The Middle', and Macklemore afterwards. I enjoyed it way too much that Macklemore is a real person and not just a myth as I assumed up until this point and I heard 'Thrift Shop' live and thought it was the most hilarious thing this year that I've casually stumbled past.
After that we went to one of the nice grassy stages and consumed poutine and awful beer while listening to Explosions in the Sky, an instrumental band that made everyone feel high and mellow, that is if they weren't already... there was sort of a haze above the crowd. There were some intense lights happening during the show and sheet lightning started happening; it was perfect. There was a group of guys next to us who were having the time of their life. One began a group hug and I'm pretty sure everyone spilled beer on everyone else but he kissed our heads before walking away and it was still a good experience. Another guy just sort of wrapped his arms around people and started an entire line up of swaying people, likely to support himself in his state of intoxication at the time.
We went back to our dorm and the statement "We need to get rid of our leftover alcohol in the next two nights" was uttered, which it never should be, and I'm drawing a veil of mystery over everything else that happened after that. There's nothing too bad, I'd just rather it stay in Montreal for now. I have funny stories from that night that I'll tell my friends when I'm middle aged and nostalgic for being young. I got a lot of potentially bad things out of my system.
Hearts,
Julianne
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