Lounging In Langerado
Intern ruminates on his first music festival.
As my final spring break and the end of my college career both approached rapidly this year, I knew that I had to plan some last hurrah of a trip. Not eager to begin my life of business dress and early morning commutes, I had to take this opportunity to do something wild, strange and memorable. After a little internet exploration and a lot of phone calls between friends it was decided: we were going to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to attend Langerado.
The hippie music festival is a staple in Boone. It seems that a strikingly
large percentage of the population has experienced at least one of these
events. Until Friday, March 10, I hadn’t. I had many expectations.
I was expecting to enter a world that was unlike anything I had seen before,
a world that was drug-saturated, untouchable by any state authority, and
attended by the poorest and dirtiest of the hippies. I was expecting a constant
party at the campsite and constant music coming from the fields. My expectations
were far from what I experienced.
As the morning sunrise chased the moon, previously the color of a blood
orange, the rest of the way down the western horizon, we found ourselves
in Florida. A heavy, hazy mist blanketed the road and everything on it for
the final stretch of the trip. It was thick enough to swim in and, when
combined with the haze of sleeplessness that I was viewing the world through,
put an interesting perspective on the world. The fire of the sunrise reflected
off the tiny prisms of water vapor suspended in the air, giving everything
a supernatural glow. I had driven from Boone to Jacksonville. From 8:00
PM until sunrise the next morning. We still had a few hours ahead of us,
and I did not sleep at all.
The sun reached higher into the sky and burnt the last of the visible moisture
from the air. We dropped half of the car’s occupants off at a house
a few miles from the venue. After the ordeal of waiting in far too many
lines, we began to set up camp.
Our original site was dangerously close to the port-o-potties. Thankfully,
a staffer warned us that where we were camped would prevent the cleaning
truck from accessing those little fiberglass boxes from hell. We moved to
a quiet little cul-de-sac in the temporary settlement. The community seemed
like a cross between a Brazilian favela and a depression-era Hooverville,
yet with fewer hustlers and more fireworks. The tents were as diverse as
their occupants: various sizes, qualities and ages were all represented.
Sleeplessness’ fog kept a hold over me for the remainder of the trip.
Everything around me seemed completely surreal. The many strange sites were
most noticeable the first day. As time wore on, the guy in the gator mask
and tail with a sign that said simply “love is hope,” that skipped
around the crowd seemed almost commonplace. I only turned my head once at
the person perched upon 9-foot stilts carrying a sign that said, “YES!”
I wondered briefly where he found white pants with a 108” inseam.
The music was good. The highlights were the Greyboy Allstars, Soulive, Explosions
in the Sky, Widespread Panic (of course), Toots and the Maytals and Taj
Mahal. The list could go on and on, but if you’re that interested
in who played what, take a look online.
The most striking experience while I was there was neither the sites, nor
sounds, nor even the smells. The sense of community that developed by the
end of the weekend was the best part of the experience. People from all
walks of life had come together to experience not only the music, but the
feeling that rises within a person when he is surrounded by those that are
strikingly different yet fundamentally the same as himself. True, I don’t
know what it is like to be the mother of 3, dressed up like a horse and
pulling a small plastic covered wagon filled with pioneers under the age
of 5, but I do know that the horse and I, though separated by many years
of life experience, are the same in some way.