Evolution

"The cat came back, the very next day, the cat came back, they thought he was a goner! But the cat came back, he just couldn't stay away..."
- Fred Penner, The Cat Came Back

A week ago tonight I returned from the Evolve music festival, burnt out, dirtier than I have ever been in my whole life, and extremely happy. It was an interesting trip (heh) for many reasons.

I went to the festival with a group of dancers, under the impression that this was "a working vacation" and that we would be dancing for a lot of the performers there. What ended up happening instead was three days of wallowing in the mud and smoking weed, with a very memorable hard-to-remember section of Saturday night in which I had my first special brownie and then watched Fred Penner (yes, the guy who sings for little kids) open for Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes while experiencing an amazing full-body high.

Gandalf spent a lot of the weekend with me, which was real nice of him since Ringleader seemed to think I would be fine on my own despite the fact that I had no idea what was going on even while I was sober. Other than watching the artists he came to see, I think his favourite moment of the weekend was when I was high and followed him to see Yancarlos Sanchez (who btw was an amazing beatboxer!). I stopped watching the performance and stared at the ground for a full song, then slowly bent down, ripped a piece of grass, and stood up saying "I fixed it!" I then explained to him that the offending piece of grass had looked sad, and nothing should be sad because we were at Evolve.

Also, I feel it really important to mention that we travelled to and from the festival in a minibus so beat up that I'm not positive it was entirely legal to drive (no exaggeration... Ringleader kept talking about needing to keep the bus "under the radar"). We used hammocks to hold our luggage over our heads and picked up the same hitch-hiker twice (once on the way there, once on the way back).

I really loved the whole experience. There was no running water, so I used outhouses and hand sanitizer all weekend. I had to wade through a puddle to get into and out of both the tent I slept in and the bus I was keeping my things in. I woke up two of the three days I was there already feeling heatstroke symptoms because the tent thought it was an oven as soon as the sun rose. But the music was excellent. Everybody was crazy friendly. Even though I know there was a lot of alcohol and a lot of drug use (much of it, I am sure, harder stuff than marijuana), the whole place just felt safe to me.

Plus, I didn't wear shoes all weekend. Boo yeah.