I dreamed I went to a kingdom on a cloud. A lush green cloud covered in winking emerald grass, floating in a robin’s egg sky and sprinkled with faces as stunning in their beauty as they were becoming in demeanor. Where giant Trojan knights set the main stage, seeming to alternate betwixt an intimidating stare of warring enemies and the gentle head tilt before a tender lovers’ kiss.
I dreamed of an adventure, where mythic wooded roads tested my strength and character upon desiring to enter the sacred space. My soreness and sweat rewarded warmly by a jeweled night circus tailored just for nomads like me. An outside library under a rainbow carnival tent, food and drink for all day merriment, and a giant pineapple made of balloons, from whence forgotten 90s music from my childhood rang out and sang, “TIME FOR BRUNCH!” The bubble fruit wobbling like Jell-O in the wind pierced my jaded heart like a smiley face belly ring on a preacher’s daughter.
Such was my Mysteryland 2015 experience. Mark my words tribespeople, this was the number one best festival I have ever attended. Sure, it was cold Friday night. But we knew that was gonna happen and we brought all the warm stuffs. Besides the chill, which left us almost completely by Sunday… The lines were short. The equipment worked. The staff was super friendly and more often than not super eager to chat it up. The crowd was polite and fully decked out and everyone was watching out for each other. The overwhelming mass attitude seemed to be one of seeking wonder. Playful enchantment and release from the doldrums. I sensed I was not the only one happily exploring the corners of a orange colored sky dream.
Friday. We set out from New York City early, my trusty three amigos and I. We shall call them, for reasons I cannot entirely remember, Meg-Bear, Steve-Bear and Marty-Bear. See here for examples of their awesomeness (hint: it’s terrific sketch comedy about music festivals!) When we reached the front gates, we joined forces with an ancient family, having been around since the very first Mysteryland (wink), the legendary Camp Pickleback! This mainly NYC-based tribe is made up of comedians and Pilates instructors and college professors and actor slash bartenders and mathematicians and finance-y business-ey people. Having made the journey early in the day, we made it through the outermost gates relatively quickly in the thin but thickening crowd. The dirt road walk to the camping area though, inspired every individual through a thorough rethinking of what was actually necessary in the 9,000 pounds of what-the-hell-did-I-bring weighing down their load.
But we made it. Friday evening’s opening party had The Boat and Big Top stages open for business. A-Trak was a massive highlight for me. Damn those slick and funky beats. The Boat was a little uneven, we enjoyed it more on Sunday when TJR showed us how it’s done, dropping the entire breakdown from Bohemian Rhapsody to the joy and rapture of the harmonizing crowd. I kissed two girls, because kissing girls is fun. One blonde in a weed leaf leotard and a raven-haired beauty clothed in not much at all. This was the turnt locale. At the main stage there was lots of swaying and grooving. At the boat, it was a T Pain music video.
That night, we were delighted to discover a massive over haul of the holy ground camping experience. The way the grounds were prepared for people to inhabit and spend the days this year put last year to shame. There was basically a mini-fest behind the main-fest. We frolicked there with two stage areas complete with playground, full liquor bars, hammocks, picnic tables, grass to snuggle on, tons of food stuffs, and velvet armchairs and couches maybe lifted from your weird but cool cat lady neighbor’s place. In fact… She might be here right now…
Bang-On’s set up was like a playground for adults. We spent a bunch of time inside the pastel hippie caravan with the slide on top. It was a lovely little refuge from the icy air. Plus, the lights were low and good for stealing kisses while keeping warm.
Side Note: Dear Girl with the tiger hood who walked off with our prism glasses, we think you meant to come back and forgot. But we support you in your quitting of your lawyer job to teach yoga full time. You go, girl. Enjoy the new look on life, and the prism glasses.
Saturday. Sleeping late. Noticing the huge amount of beautiful humans camping around you while locating the closest bathroom. Deciding the shower line was crazy long and we can totally make it another day. Begging Dmitri to buy me a coffee too when he vowed to wait through the longest line we saw all weekend, the line for coffee. Next year, I’ll bring a big thermos to share. Or I could bring lots and sell it. There was lots of selling and buying happening in the camp grounds.
We dressed and headed for the first real full day of Mysteryland. Security was a breeze, no line whatsoever to enter. The hardest thing about getting in? The hella steep hill you gotta overcome before you reach the activities. This hill is so steep, many stop and take a breather between the bottom and the top. Me though? I like the challenge. I like that Mysteryland makes us work for it. This isn’t about speed, this is about delicacy.
I took an hour for myself just to wander around and see things. I bought watermelon from a vendor, huge and bright pink and glistening in the late afternoon sun. I found a young man at a table under some trees making paper cranes. We said only a few words but we shared the fruit as I watched him skillfully crease and fold the paper. He was so quick with his hands. As he finished them, he would stand and hang the almost pixilated birds from the bowing limbs of the closest teenaged tree. The sunlight streamed in at an angle that seemed to paint everything Technicolor. I blew bubbles with girls who offered me a dripping rainbow wand. A handsome blonde camera boy walked by and caught us as we giggled. Australian. Or Swedish? Maybe German. Anyway, he spoke in gorgeous accented English and we all shared the last pieces of my watermelon. “This is Mysteryland,” I thought.
This is also when I glanced at where the Sin Salida stage had been last year. Gone was the dark and warm Dia de Los Muertos set up… This year it was like a hello kitty store threw up. It was culturally insensitive to say the least. Why did a Mexican theme not offend and an Asian one did? I did not return to this part of the festival.
We saw Madeon be the amazing skinny boy wonder he is. The crowd erupted when he played his Deadma5 remix. We rode the swings. I have the video on my cell phone. We sprayed each other with sun block and couldn’t help but notice the fantastic curves and lines of each others bodies. We danced to Kygo but wondered if can do more than his trademark darling-its-better-down-where-its-wetter (little mermaid reference boom) themed music. We watched Empire of the Sun explode onto the stage with a level of production, costume, choreography and spectacle no electronic dance music festival I’ve seen has ever even attempted. We all were spell bound and breathless while, in the last climactic chords of the entire set, the crowned singer king lifted and smashed, lifted and smashed, his gilded guitar over and over with the slowing beat, finally destroying the guitar into smithereens on the final orgasmic crash. The ghost of Jimi Hendrix nodded approvingly.
Porter Robinson. You guys. I have left this section last to write, because I, who worship at the altar of storytelling, basically saw the face of a benevolent and art-loving God during his set. Porter was our Pan, our Puck, our boundary-crossing agent of chaos. Spinning a mid summers sonnet cycle for all who came to stand witness. There was Adventure. There were multiple adventures. Great stag heads and tiny goddess visuals transported us to Robinson’s world. God forbid he put his hand through his hair, a moment of such hot rock star tortured genius it caused a whimper in my girl friend. Porter goes into a trance when he performs, a stunning creature to behold in action. He doesn’t do expected builds and drops, Porter is the Picasso of EDM, all Cubism and romance and angst. Porter, you said we each have a world inside us, but we just want to come play in yours.
Sunday. Chill, chill, chill. We managed to shower, the girls having to wait a full 45 minutes longer than the boys. Whatever, we talked and made friends and being clean for a second was worth it. We met an Irishman at the bathrooms who wanted very badly to talk to us but we couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying. He found this HILARIOUS and talked to us even more. We got gin and juices, splash of orange, splash of cran. Because the weather was delightful and we felt Gangsta. We ate our first real meal of the weekend and snoozed on top of red and yellow wooden tables.
And now we come to one of the factors that anoints ML as festival royalty– The fire dome. Mad Max eat your heart out. I spent about 30 seconds staring at it before I understood what was happening. I looped around the structure, looking for its operators. Trust me, best thing you can ever do to have marvelous adventures is to ask interesting strangers questions. I found the guy who built it. He was marked w the dark oil of a man who works with dangerous materials. A mad hatter smile and bright ice blue eyes next to his sun leathered skin. I introduced myself and asked his name, he lit up and we began a friendship that lasted the weekend. He pointed to the three domes, little, medium, and big in size. He just built a small one because he loves fire. He told me about how his mother used to watch him play with fire as a child and wonder what he would grow up to do. Great plumes of fire would shoot out of the top, sure, but the actual show was on the under belly of the great spider web dome. People kept saying there was a fire pit in the ceiling… It was simply a sheet of metal with spouts of fire across a random constellation of outlets. The fire, seeking escape upwards, would ripple like ember water across the ceiling. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. The mad hatter who constructed it introduced me to his blonde gypsy wood nymph wife. She said they had gotten married under this dome. She turned to kiss her husband and I contemplated taking sacred vows under the enormous fire blooms undulating in the darkness above our heads. I liked the idea immensely. The energy was golden here. Here was a beating heart center in the body of the wilderness. A celestial unknown winking beyond our comprehension in the ink stained sky, and a great and terrible orange Oz appearing and then disappearing mere feet above our fingers. I was trippin on real life… and the beauty and profundity of fiery, passionate endeavors.
Dillon was delightfully Dillon, an happy hour of bouncing tunes– Although I missed his goofier wackier moments. It seems the catapult to headliner is a difficult one to stay weird through. His set did include new songs from the EP but I wanted to hear him play to some of his characters! “DARLENE GET ME A BEER!” My favorite part was when his visuals went black and white for a “One Deeper” section. The crowd quite literally went, “ooooooooooh”. Also did anyone else notice Dill is looking pretty fit lately?
Diplo was delightfully Diplo, fun, but like the temperature *just* a little under. It was super to hear hit after hit after hit but I kept waiting for the wow this is amazing that never came. That being said, Dillon and Diplo had the misfortune of following the study in brilliance that was Porter’s set the night before. Two dime-pieces next to a quarter as it were ya feel me?
We fall asleep wishing it wasn’t the last night. We fight to stay conscious in our happy sleepy stupor. We steal kisses even though the weather is warm, or especially because.
The dawn comes too quickly. Rude in it’s loveliness.
We say goodbyes and wave farewell. Or punch farewell. Or salute farewell. Or poke farewell. Or spank farewell. Or smack farewell. Or smooch farewell. Or skip farewell. Altogether. Sometimes it happens that way.
We re-enter real life. Tired. Grinning. We fall into bed. We don’t even pretend. We’re thinking about dreaming it all over again.
The end.
Author’s Note: I met someone Friday evening and we played festival lovers all weekend long. My conclusions on the weekend being so utterly fantasy-like may be tinted with rose-colored prism glasses (Shout out to lawyer/yoga teacher girl!). But like me/Major Lazer says,
Blow a kiss,
Fire a gun,
We all need somebody
to make out with to Porter Robinson.
