Nylena and I made it back from Beyond Wonderland.
Barely.
Barely in the spiritual sense, the physical sense, and the “why does every object we own need to come out of the BeBop immediately” sense.
For anyone new here, the BeBop is our camper, named after Cowboy Bebop, because apparently even our gravel camping situation needed a little nerd mythology.
We camped at Wildhorse again, on gravel, like responsible adults who enjoy pretending their lower backs are still under warranty.
Nylena’s knee had notes.
My back filed a grievance.
Both of us are currently walking around the house like two haunted action figures from a collector’s edition somebody opened wrong.
Worth it.
Absolutely worth it.
We skipped the pre party this year and did what old ravers call preparation, which is staying up too late on purpose so your body remembers night exists. Then Nylena made sure we were not getting financially murdered inside the festival, because love is real and sometimes love looks like chicken salad, roasted chicken enchiladas, and chorizo and egg breakfast burritos packed into a cooler by a woman who understands both marriage and war logistics.
We brought enough food to survive a mild apocalypse.
We ate maybe half of it.
The rest is now part of our estate plan.
The weather tried to make itself the main character, but it had to share the stage. Rain came through before we went in the first day. The second night, we left right before it came back. That is festival luck, and I will accept it without asking questions.
Saturday was the big one for us.
Seven Lions. Apashe. Sub Focus. Wooli.
Wooli was probably my favorite of the weekend, which is saying something because most of Saturday felt like Queen’s Valley was trying to vibrate my skeleton into a better version of itself.
Sunday we wandered more. Mad Hatter. Caterpillar. Back to the main stage.
This time we made sure to take a different view.
Middle level. Dead center. Right where the path crosses and The Gorge opens up around the stage like somebody built a cathedral and forgot to put a roof on it.
The sunset was unreal.
The colors came down over the main stage and somehow matched everything. The outfits. The lasers. The screens. The sky. The cliffs. The whole place looked like the world had decided to dress for the occasion.
Marvelous is the word I keep coming back to.
More lights. More bass. More people dressed like fairy assassins, mushroom royalty, cyberpunk raccoons, rave angels, glitter cryptids, and whatever the beautiful young man in the cape was doing.
Respectfully, outstanding.
That is the thing I keep coming back to.
The people.
Last year, Beyond gave us one of those strange little miracles where strangers near our camp became friends. Gabby, Jen, Heather, that whole pocket of Rave Queen energy, the kids dancing through the night, the feeling that we had accidentally wandered into a kinder version of the world and everybody quietly agreed to help keep it that way.
This year had that same heartbeat.
Different weekend. Same magic.
Compliments flying around like currency nobody was hoarding.
Tattoos admired.
Outfits celebrated.
People making room.
People checking on strangers.
People fanning each other in the crowd.
People dancing like joy was something you could protect by refusing to be embarrassed by it.
I love that. I really do.
I love watching young people be that open. I love watching them make space for each other. I love being reminded that joy is something you can keep choosing. I love standing there with Nylena, sore and happy and ridiculous, feeling older than a lot of the crowd and still exactly where we were supposed to be.
There is so much acceptance there.
So much strange, loud, sweaty, glitter covered kindness.
Every kind of body.
Every kind of beauty.
Every kind of weird.
Every kind of brave.
People show up decorated and vulnerable and feral from sleep deprivation, and somehow the overwhelming majority of them are still gentler than the regular world manages to be on a Tuesday.
That part gets me.
As a husband.
As a man.
As a writer.
As somebody trying to build fantasy worlds where desire, freedom, beauty, power, and love belong to more than one kind of person.
So yes, I am going to say the hard thing too, because love deserves honesty.
Men, we can do better.
Most of the men there were good. Most people there were wonderful. But there were enough moments this year where the looking got ugly. Where women were treated like scenery. Where people got judged, mocked, sized up, or talked about like they were somehow separate from the same shared human space.
A festival like Beyond works because people feel safe enough to be radiant.
Protect that.
Give the compliment cleanly.
Make room.
Say thank you.
Let people be beautiful without turning their beauty into something they owe you.
Then get back to dancing.
Because the story was love.
The story was acceptance.
The story was Nylena and me surviving another one together.
The story was The Gorge turning cliffs into cathedral walls and bass into weather.
The story was dancers who looked tireless, visuals that felt impossible, strangers smiling like we were all keeping the same secret, and thousands of people briefly agreeing that maybe the world could be kinder than it usually is.
Yes, pieces of it are coming back into the book.
How could they possibly stay out?
The lights.
The movement.
The bodies.
The longing.
The danger.
The kindness.
The way a crowd can become something almost holy when people stop trying to own each other and start making room for each other instead.
Festivals are rehearsals for a kinder world no one has built yet.
Damn if I do not want to keep writing toward that.
Now please excuse me while I put ice on something and pretend I am not already thinking about next year.
Keep exploring the world.
The books of Breath, Blood & Chain →