the coachella weekend has practically left me in a state of daze. this year was three days of 100 degree heat in the middle of the desert (compared to two-days the previous years), but the important fact is not the struggle of co-existing with 165,000 other people under the scorching heat, but the fact that such an amazing lineup of artists are all playing at the same festival and having the opportunity and blessing to be able to experience it in my third year as it has been with the previous two. even though there were many bands that i would've liked to catch (new pornographers, !!!, tokyo police club, the lemonheads), there are no regrets. highlights for me this year were silversun pickups, anathallo, regina spektor, travis, air, a little dose of the teddybears (cos i'm a punk rocker!), getting trapped in a massive pit of sweat and collective moshing a few feet in front of the stage for kings of leon and arcade fire. it's fun to pretend being like a fish gasping for air above your head, being crushed from all directions and have your girlfriend tell you that her feet aren't touching the ground - literally. spent maybe four hours in that spot without breaking, and finally gave up the space because we wanted to see red hot chili peppers, not die.
as kat used to say, this is 'the woodstock of the now'. each moment will always have a magic of it's own. until next year... there's always so much to look forward to. i am still in a state of shock.
here's a little excerpt from zack dela rocha during 'wake up':
If the same laws were applied to U.S. presidents as were applied to the Nazis after WWII, then every single one of them, every last rich white one of them from Truman on would be hung to death and shot. And this current administration is no exception. It should be hung and tried and shot, as any war criminal should be. For the challenges that we face, they go way beyond administrations, way beyond elections, way beyond every four years of pulling levers, way beyond that. Because this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel, that in order to sustain itself, it needs to destroy entire countries and profit from their reconstruction in order to survive. And that's not a system that changes every four years, it's a system that we have to break down, generation after generation after generation after generation...
wake up.
