5:00 pm: Leave the office, board the N-Judah Muni train.
- Human Proximity Count: Lots
6:20 pm: Exit train.
- Human Proximity Count: Ahh, much less.
6:45 pm: All communication technologies become useless.
6:50 pm: Enter in to Festival.
- Human Proximity Count: Moderate.
7:00 pm: Decide to walk over to Beck
- Human Proximity Count: Holy Shit!
7:10 pm: Decide NOT to walk closer to Beck, decide to get drink bracelets
7:20 pm: Decide NOT to get drinks and instead head back to Radiohead.
7:30 pm: Short cut through woods via trampled fence.
- Human Proximity Count: I can breathe!
7:35 - 8:00pm: Long march towards Radiohead stage.
- Human Proximity Count: Increasingly unbearable.
8:00 pm - 10:00pm: …
A band that is truly of my times. A band that reflects upon thoughts and feelings that most of us only can catch slight glimpses of. Thoughts and feelings that normally remain shrouded in the shadowy peripheals of our life.
It is spooky music. Uncanny and sublime. Like a sunset mountain vista suddenly losing a rendering engine, its plastic reality suddenly snapping in to view. Or like the most beautiful face you’ve ever seen, only as you stare at it you realize the skin is synthetic and has started to bubble and boil in the sunlight.
They weave through media, masters of all of their instruments, but not only of the voice, guitars, and the multitude of synthesizers, but also the strategically placed digital video cameras and lighting units. They seem to be simultaneously reveling in technological breakthroughs while equally scared shitless of the questions raised.
I had true aesthetic experiences a number of times. The suffocating masses that had been surrounding me for the last few hours seemed to drift off in to and become the mists that rolled through the park.
And then, as the tape loops and modular synths ran in their endlessly out-of-sync loops, forever generating new music, the stage lights glowed bright, the illusion was gone, and what had become a field of calm disciples was once again a hoard of youngsters searching for signal strength on their mobile phones.
