The Man of Action

Of all of the advice I’ve stolen from ex-girlfriends, for raw figures of everyday impact, none can compare to some I heard rather offhandedly about two years back.

The circumstances around the advice aren’t reallly worth reconstructing, but advice given is always advice needed, at least in the mind of the advisor. In this case, the ex was given the advice as an intervention. A stab at getting her life back on track. “Look at yourself now,” the ex’s mother said, “what would the middle school version of you think if she could see you now? Would she be proud?

I think about this all of the time.

What you have here is this smaller version of yourself presented as an ideal interviewer – showing innocence without stupidity, inexperience without ignorance You have no choice but to care about what Past You thinks about Now You, unless you throw all concern for consistency out the window.

But when I sit down to interview myself, I’m always just getting home from high school. For me, high school was the last time when I felt really sure of anything, myself included. Self-worth in those years was just so basic. If I took AP classes, I was smart. If I talked to people at lunch, I was popular. If I got an A on a paper, I was a good writer. My opinions, once created, were unshakable and always, always right. If I woke up and wanted to wear a tie, I’d wear a tie without endlessly retracing the same steps in some search for meaning – is a tie too formal or too gay? What does it say about me now that I have gone out once wearing a tie? Is this some rigid precedence I’m setting? – because, fundamentally, a tie was a fucking tie.

What I can see now is that my high school self wasn’t wearing a tie, or indeed any other clothes at all. I was living a blissful inexperience without challenge. And the really sad bit is that I know I can never go back. It’s like “Glory Days” on repeat, even though instead of glory, I’m more nostalgic for not having to worry about glory or creativity or anything else, for that matter.

But, as dumb as he is, when my high school self sits down to chat, all I can think about is making sure he thinks I’m cool. The closer the peer, the greater the peer pressure, and when the peer is you, it gets mighty strong.

To keep up my image, I practice stories of my coolness. By now, I’ve told the main ones so many times it seems like even people I meet for the first time have heard them already. And so my life is now a continuous struggle to gather more stories, more evidence of my coolness to appease my young inquisitor.

Maybe you’ve heard these already:

My family sells fireworks in South Carolina for 50 years in a huge store known across the state.
I grew up very, very poor and on welfare before moving to Michigan.
At Michigan, I was a late-nite DJ on WCBN FM.
At the Daily, I snuck into the ‘04 Democratic National Convention in Boston with help from Michael Moore.
As a photographer, I saw so many free concerts, traveled across the country, went on adventures in abandoned buildings.
I graduated college with a degree in Neuroscience.
I slept on a cargo boat from Minnesota to Michigan.
I slept in an aluminum refining plant.
I slept with my chemistry professor.

And now the latest story:
I moved to Los Angeles.

Not Quite Graceland

Two weeks ago, Manchester, a small town west of Knoxville, became the sixth-largest city in Tennessee. Normally, the ebb and flow of populations in small southern towns isn't something worthy of print. The migration of 100,000 or so people is a bit different.

The massive migration past the Mason-Dixon line is like many other wildlife migrations: It's seasonal. Locals even have a name for it: Bonnaroo.

Yes, June has come again, and with it that most famous of ongoing outdoor festivals. For four days in Tennessee, hippies from around the world gather to watch jam bands, buy prayer beads and smoke pot. And for the first few years, that was the image that stuck in the minds of concertgoers; if you struck Bonnaroo with an atomic bomb, three quarters of the American population of hippies would go up in a mushroom cloud. But the people behind Bonnaroo had a different image in mind.

It wasn't quite the music of Woodstock they seemed to emulate; it was more the singularity of the moment. Every teenager in the country wanted to make the drive to upstate New York to tune in, to drop out. Our cultural tastes are too diversified and personalized now to ever see such a thing again, but 2006's visit to Manchester by Radiohead certainly came close.

Since last year's festival, the artist lineup reflects a desire to be more inclusive, and with this year's artists including Spoon, The Hold Steady, Feist, The White Stripes, The Flaming Lips, Cold War Kids and Wilco, the crowds gathering before shows looked even more like the indie-rock set you'd expect to see gathered at the Blind Pig.

Except, of course, that you don't normally have to live with the indie-rock kids in a farm of tents for four days. In that sense, it's difficult to write reflections on Bonnaroo without disclosing what a deeply personal experience this festival really is. It's one thing to mull over an artist lineup on the internet and quite another to spend a long weekend without a proper shower, quickly becoming primal in a desire to seek water or shade or food at all costs and trying to survive long enough to stand up for the bands you drove to see.

As with festival concerts of all types, the story of your concert experience will be written by your walking shoes, the $4 cup of frozen lemonade and your bottle of SPF 45. Or, as is more likely, the absence of these things.

The best bands can make all of the dust and the heat fade away. The best concerts don't seem to take place in Manchester. The Flaming Lips show, for instance, happened to take place on a set looking like the Moon. The worst bands make it very evident that you are locked into a grid of tents and can't leave for four days. The throbbing noise from Tool shot almost a mile from the main stage into my tent, turning my night into a crazed headache of rolling and moaning and praying for silence and death. I have never wanted to be home more than in that moment.

But it wasn't all bad. The Hold Steady proved that it can bring its rock and roll tent revival to a thousand people as easy as it can a bar-full. The crowds for Spoon screamed so loudly for an encore (typically forbidden at Bonnaroo) that lead singer and rock android Britt Daniel even allowed himself a brief reaction: "You guys are hard core." The Black Keys got to be very loud; Feist got to be very quiet. And, on Sunday night, I got to drive home.

Like sneaking into clubs or sleeping in the library during finals, Bonnaroo has become one of those foundational college experiences that everyone should have. Here's why: When Sting came on stage for the reunion of The Police, arguably the biggest draw of the entire festival, he addressed the crowd repeatedly as, "100,000 people from Tennessee." Salty rock journalists took this as a sign that Sting filed his set from the tour bus, unaware of where he was or what concert he was playing. But the crowd didn't boo; for that weekend, we were all citizens of Bonnaroo, Tennessee.

Originally in The Michigan Daily at: http://www.michigandaily.com/content/not-quite-graceland