Present Tense Pt. 1

A funny thing happened this weekend, I found my voice.

I know that is something that I say a lot, but I am back to being on cloud 9. I am back to being selfish about my bank account of Love and right now it is overflowing with deposits.

I have left you for a little time here. I write these blogs and leave these little clues into my mind. It is like a scavenger hunt of my events being translated into my emotions. The past few of these entries have been trying. I look back onto these events and how I have spoken of them and I feel like it is a different person. I feel different. I feel like those were accurate but music has let me shed my skin. It let me remove the negativity that life had splattered onto that shell and I was found renewed. Maybe all I needed was a little mud to go ahead and clear up my mind. Maybe I just need the rains to wash away the gunk that had attached itself to the under belly of my conscious. Maybe all I needed was a little Vedder to remember that we can be thirteen years old again and have the world as we know it, in a cradle within our hands. With much ado, here is life in the Present Tense.

Thursday

This weekend started with stress. Like anything worthwhile there was a struggle. I was to leave my house with my girlfriend and her sister to go to a house a little ways away. The details are unimportant except know this, I was selfish and negative. I provided no assistance and was aloof, only worrying about my incredibly dire situation. (Please catch the undertone of sarcasm with that statement.)

This was a Thursday morning and I met with my Austin best friend as we enjoyed coffee, a breakfast taco, conversation and live music. Yes, in Austin, TX you can go see four live performances of music with a full bar before 10 AM. Yet another reason to love this place. The interesting encounter with my friend and I was this, we were there to watch the same performer at the same venue that we would be at twelve hours later to watch him do the same thing. This proved the determination that my friend and I had, or was the first sign of how lost I was and in need of a connection.

The conversation was good and like any conversation that concludes with the solving of the worlds problems, it was lost the moment it left our lips.

Thoughts and hearts fade my friends.

That Thursday morning I do remember how much I knew; which was nothing. I had that feeling when understanding the world is impossible. You know when the task of taking a shower seems too much. Or, rather than get gas to go grocery shopping, you sit at home and eat ice cream for all three meals. Well, this was my mental health on Thursday. I was to deliver fliers for one of my internships and seemed to get caught in every last drop of Austin traffic. This caused me to feel like I was about to break down, my life that is, caused me to second guess my move to Austin, caused me to second guess any decision I have ever made in my life after the age of thirteen, caused me to wonder why the hell we are all here and when the hell are we all leaving.

This was Thursday morning, afternoon and early evening. This was until I realized that I was the problem. This was until I was sitting in the Zax pub by myself, as I had alienated anyone that would even considering spending time with me with my negative thoughts and judgements, drinking a beer when I read something in the “Austin Chronicle.” The article was the beginning of the deconstruction of the cracked foundation. I read by myself. I drank a Pecan Porter and ate a pork quesadilla. I was captivated with the words as they felt like mine. The titles will give you the idea.

“The eternal winter of our discontent.”

I left that pub with a smile on my face and a mint in my mouth with the keys to my weekend.

I am not alone with these feelings.

People have been here and have survived worse.

I am the maker and keeper of my thoughts, which in turn, motivate my entire life.

I am smart and gosh darn it, people like me!

With that I crossed the street to the famous Threadgill’s for the anniversary party of the rocks that I have here in Austin. It was the same spot in which life spun out of control hours before; I was back for redemption.

Bob Schneider’s Texas Bluegrass Massacre was the music for the evening. If you have been reading, you know that I have spoken about him before. There is no need for further introductions other than this; he is playing bluegrass this evening, something I have never enjoyed.

Friends gathered inside the bar. They congregated around the couple in which the party was thrown. Everyone enjoyed each other. Small talk and light drinking was happening. I was meeting new people and trying to remember old faces. I was determined to have a good time, it just had to happen. I had just found out the keys to life, what more could I ask for?

I fell in Love with myself that night, again. Like all of my Love affairs it does not make any sense and happens in a moment. I love the feeling of falling in Love that I think that I have to do it at least once a week. That means of course, making myself fall out of Love or the much healthier approach of finding something new to Love. See, I had fallen out of Love with Austin. Simply put, I had fallen out of Love with everything this blue marble had to offer. I was wallowing in a holding pad of depression and no exterior force was good enough to break it.

It is a lonely and dismal existence to have no answers to the endless questions in your mind.

This Love affair started like any other. I spoke with myself at the bar. Bought myself a few drinks. Danced with myself and was impressed that I finally knew how much I had in common with myself. I enjoyed the same music and leisure activities. I hit it off immediately with myself. I took myself home safely and did not take advantage of myself. Never on the first date!

As I was wooing myself into a second date, I noticed everything that evening. It was the first time in a long time that I noticed the details again. I remember the weather being very pleasant. I remember the many discussions concerning impeding weekend of music. I took notes and it felt like I was back in Austin for the first time again. The most important think I remembered was the Love. We were there for Love. It was dancing around most of the evening as Rob and Michelle had a ball. It is amazing what music can do to soothe the soul.

I left that Thursday with nothing in my mind of my past questions. I cannot change them, so why worry about them. We can only change the future and live in the present.

Friday

Friday was the kick off party. I was able to get off of my duties at the film studio to enjoy the festivities. Bonnie and I went to ACL with the gratuitous fortune of VIP wristbands from Rob and Michelle. This allowed us to enter an area with food, drinks, Internet and massages. The bathrooms were wood paneled and the Frito chili salad was flowing.

ACL is short for “Austin City Limit.” That is the name of a television show that has been on the air for 35 years. The show is filmed and produced for PBS in Austin, TX on the University of Texas Campus. The popularity of the show and the understanding that Austin is the Live Music Capitol of the World, combined in creating a music festival that is currently the biggest in the US. I had been to a few music festivals in the past on the wings of my best friends and musical gods. But, this would be the first festival that I enjoyed any sort of VIP treatment as I was usually very sweaty and thirsty by the conclusion of the other festivals I had attended. With that said, I would not change a single thing about those other festivals because of the people I was with and what they meant to my life.

I arrived in the VIP area. There were chairs and tables set up in each and every direction. There were two different bars serving free water and alcohol. After a few moments, I realized that I was no longer experiencing a music festival in the sense that I understood. To me, a music festival was about connection. About meeting new people and surviving the elements for the common joy in the heart for the beauty of music. This is my metaphor for the experiences. Keep in mind, I did enjoy the VIP, but it just felt fake to me. Not fake in that it was not happening, but fake as I felt removed from the vibe of the people. Ok, metaphor time. My experience in the VIP was like having a Cuban who is expecting to defect on a boat made of twigs across the Atlantic and give him a first class ticket on a cruise line. Of course he is going to take the cruise ticket, but he missed out on the journey of survival across the ocean. I felt like I was at the festival, but I missed out on the discomforts that provide the journey to the surreal climax of music at the end of the day.

The bands that I watched on this first day of ACL was the Avett Brothers, Phoenix, Dr. Dog, Andrew Bird and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. The music was good. The highlights were Phoenix and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. I do not really count Dr. Dog and Andrew Bird as I Was sitting in the VIP while listening to the music. I did not see the stage or watch the actual performance.

The VIP had left me unsatisfied with the music until the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs started their set. They are a band from New York that are very well known for the live shows they perform. I was disconnected and walking around by myself at this point. Bonnie and her sister had left to watch The Kings of Leon. We had plans to meet at the front after both sets concluded and this allowed for me to take in a little live music on my own.

This proved to be a lifesaver as the set they performed had me dancing around in circle and making new friends. I have no idea who they were, but I do know that they were dancing and loving life just as much as I was. I will forever have them named as my Yeah, Yeah, Yeah friends.

It is amazing what life music can do. One single performance can create thousands of people to connect on a level that nothing else can do. This is what I took away from Friday.

A music festival is less about the music and more about the people. The people you meet, the people you see, the people you watch and the people you Love. It is a spectrum of humanity that cannot be fully felt until you through yourself out there. I had to break away from where I was and go into the trenches to find the people I wanted to be with.

Saturday

Mud Day!

The second day of ACL will forever be known as the mud day. The rains started early and lasted late. There was mud everywhere. There was rain in every direction. Water was building a river around the festival and people were loving it.

If Thursday was about identifying who I was. Friday was understanding that everyone is human and music is what ties it all together. Saturday was simply about survival and the will of a person.

The best part about Saturday was that I did it alone. This is not to say that I did not enjoy the company that I was keeping, but there is something that happens when you are alone in a crowd of 80,000 people. Maybe this proves that I am a loner, but this is the ultimate selfish act. You have the power to have the best time in your life or be miserable. I chose the best time and it did not matter what music was playing or how it was playing. I survived one of the most unique experiences that I could and I was able to have the freedom to do so. I rain around the mud and watched the smiling faces slip and fall all over themselves.

Saturday at ACL was the closest thing that I could ever experience to Woodstock.

Keeping the theme of the piece it would have been easy for me to be negative as the rain was coming and the mud was building. I could have been upset and it could have ruined my entire day. But, when living in the present tense, you understand that the moments are only as good as you can make them. There is no one in more control of everything that is happening around you then you are. So what if there is rain, I was at a music festival in the middle of Austin without a care in the world. Life was good!