three weeks in August

I packed three cameras for this excursion, and as many pairs of socks; three pairs of socks do not last that long, even if one manages to keep them less than odoriferous. Instead of washing my socks or venturing to buy new ones, and they were available, I took spent my time taking photos. Being impatient, wanting visual stimuli, I had rolls developed while on the road, at any lab I could find; the results were costly, though the prints are of fair quality.

Documenting the people I saw, family and friends and strangers, and the places, another set of stories can be related. There are, of course, the easily told stories, the first ones that come up when someone asks about the trip; common high school friends long lost; frat boy stereotypes actualizing, disgusted; sunsets countryside, etc.

Here are a few that might not have made a story had I not clicked the shutter. The rest can be seen here (there, on Facebook).

dust, drugs, thugs

This sprawl comes a few weeks after the event itself. The whole ordeal was unbelievably exhausting as was trying to regurgitate my feelings about it. You can tell the result is sloppy, flawed and erratic. However, I think those words authentically convey the Pemberton experience, a weekend of highs and lows.

A member of my camping party just referred to his haircut as a “brohawk” and I have no clue where I am. Our camping field is open but filling up fast; sweaty people are streaming in looking both rushed and flushed. One of my group took a stand and negotiated a large expanse of land to accommodate the horde of Deep Cove affiliates who, in a short while, will contribute to the deplorable conditions of our three day home.

We paid sixty bucks for this. It was easy for me to sensationalize the festival camping experience – the parties, the drunken babes, maybe even a slight wind of camaraderie and brotherhood. Maybe I thought I would get laid (WRONG!). In reality there’s a bunch of garbage and fucked up idiots (myself included).

Everyone had reasons for being here. It could be the bands or the party, or maybe even just to say they were there. After all it’s the first one, and everyone knows you never forget the first one.

It’s Thursday and the campsite is taking shape, hints of the eventual evolution into a cesspool are already visible. Anticipation, for the beer tent at least, is building. Once those floodgates open the gouging of the wallets will begin, and won’t stop, for another three days.

It’s Friday and bands are playing today. The sun is hot. A quick scan of the campsite reveals that it has indeed developed into the inevitable favela. I eat a shitty breakfast and feel ready to take on “Pemby”.

Minus The Bear ends with “Pachuca Sunrise” and the outro is disrupted by the unfortunately close proximity of the Guitar Hero truck/stage thing.

Some people were under the impressions that being here is, in some hyperbolic way, comparable to being at Woodstock. This is heinous. Our generation is too fractal, too divided in it’s agendas and interests, to a point where a music festival is barely an instrument of unity.

Wolfmother takes the mainstage and the high five bros show themselves. There is good music somewhere amongst the nostalgic solos, but it has been diluted, packaged, for the Guitar Hero slaves, devil horns included.

I mentioned high five bros. A lot of other bros are present: hackey sack bros, cowboy hat bros, and “Tapout” shirt bros. Most of them wear board shorts. A few hipsters can be spotted slinking about. Some fleeting pixies, braided belts adorning their soft heads, run by.

Stumbling through this melting pot of social sects is intimidating.

I rendezvous with the other half of the clique and his companion, mutual friend (and all around great guy) Connor Knickerbocker. Interpol is so gripping our jaws hurt. Immaculately dressed and sounding totally on point they tear through their time slot, with almost equal portions of Turn On the Bright Lights, Antics, and Our Love to Admire.

Fuck NIN. We’re rolling hard. Beer tent.

Blackout.

The next day follows a now solidified pace; up early, waiting/drinking, some bands. This evening brings my sole reason for attending Pemberton.

Tom Petty’s music has been seared into my memory since early adolescence. His tunes always found an opportune place to nestle into your life. “Even the Losers” assured my 14-year-old self that one day I would get a blowjob, while “Don’t Do Me Like That” helped console a heart stretched across continents. Tom Petty conducted himself with the grace and eloquence you would expect, the Heartbreakers corroborated their status, and I went home happy. We were all grins and glow.

The next night I drank enough to forget Jay Z ending with “Numb/Encore” and to blank two songs into Coldplay.

mount currie madness, or, high five bro

There is a lacking that flits around my wrist as though an appendage, once there, is missing. I've heard of phantom limbs before, but what is gone is nothing close to as serious as a lost leg or amputated arm; whats missing are the wristband festival passes to the Pemberton Music Festival.

Most of my acuantinces there religiously chanted their mantras of 'get'r done', 'party don't stop at Pemby', or 'give'r'. All the aforementioned shouts could seem to suggest, from their syntax, continual progress and charity, asceticism and altruism. In reality, it was consumption that ruled the crowd's minds for three days: musical intake, excessive alcohol and drug intake, excessive spending and ogling and fawning. I gave a few beers away, a few cigarettes and a ride to a hitchhiker, and that is about it.

The late afternoon sun sparked the dust that rose underfoot, rising up and engulfing everything. The crowds and commotion, while walking through the dust storms, conjurered images of the Middle East and roaming post-apocalyptic gangs a la Mad Max. Faces were covered; sunglasses and high-hitched bandannas, an attempt to keep the dust and sun out, adorned large numbers of nomads. We had paid to live in conditions which required visits to water stations to fill up bottles and carry them away, to line up for food, to pack like sardines to listen, to sleep in dust, mud, grass, and sun. Anyone how spent some time on the campsite sides of the fences would tell you that it bore some stunning similarities to how they would make a refugee camp out to be. This analogy is a bit much I'll admit, but it does bear some consideration as the condition of the place were such that one could consider it uncomfortable, and in many cases sickening.

Close to squalor, close to freedom, it was quite appropriate that Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers should perform the chart topping act they did. I held hands and touched a beauty during Free Falling, and part way through, as though synchronously timed, lost touch with her; 'Even The Losers' always gets a crowd to simultaneously look back at a time when they were lucky enough to be with someone out of their league. This was the set of the weekend. His stage presence was uncanny, his patience with the performance moved the crowd to the point that all knew when to sing those beautifully familiar lyrics. Those are lyrics we've sang during car rides from your driveway to your friend's down the way, sang as we drove down a deserted stretch of desert highway in Nevada, and on rooftops while smoking cigarettes and staring at the moon.

I don't know what else to tell you, save that I sure hope no one caught any photos of me throwing up the horns.