I started to write a really long, chronological account of everything that had happened at Bonnaroo but realized the quiet joy I felt most of the festival would be drowned in a sea of way too many words. And writing that much lately has been a motherfucker.

So here are five really neat things about Bonnaroo, and five things that I will someday pile onto on a golden red fire shouting, well, at least we tried dammit.

Robin and I were skipping the skippable first day (I hadn’t heard of any of the acts) and planning on arriving late Thursday evening. We left around five forty-five and saw an honest to god I didn’t know they still made those rainbow. It was to the East as we drove South, which isn’t really important,  and I tried to point it out coyly to Robin, “Look, do you see what I see?”

Nope, she didn’t see it. I hadn’t taken any drugs yet. Something is wrong with her. “Are you sure? It’s over that sign.”

Nope again.

—So you’re saying you don’t see the fucking glorious, best omen ever  rainbow? Jesus, women!

Minutes before we had seen a sun yellow Dodge Caliber with the license plate AEROFAN 8 from Illinois plastered with Aerosmith stickers, which is pretty funny, but it was important to me that this not be her lasting memory of our trip down to Bonnaroo. Instead of appreciating natural beauty, we were the two assholes making fun of someone because they made his or her automobile into a shrine to a real shitty band. (Brief aside: There are eight Aerosmith fans in Illinois drivin’ ’round?) But then she saw the rainbow gracefully bowing into Kentucky, and we saw it together, and it was perceived as a good omen. (We might’ve held hands.)

• Except it wasn’t. When we arrived, Manchester was under a tornado watch, and as we waited in line to enter the site, a thunderstorm warning was declared, and it poured in thick waves pelting my car with a sound like a snare accompanied by thunder on the kick drum. The warning passed as we waited, and by the time we were on site, everything was pure we’re here glee. We started to set up the tent, and of course, it started raining just as hard as it did before, this time without the politeness of a NWS warning. The girls next to us were all wee, wet tee shirt contest, and I was all, fuck this, I’m smoking a bowl. We got the tent pitched as quickly as possible, but as the rain cover goes on last, the floor of the tent was full of standing water. Robin and I slept in the car, clothes soaked. All the space for reclining our seats was taken up by the mounds of camping shit in the back of my car, and so we both formed sad little Vs to sleep, feet on the dash and back pain in our future.
• But really, I’m pretty much used to sleeping in my car. I understand Robin isn’t, and really, who’s used to anything to anything Bonnaroo offers? Sixteen hours a day of music, comedy, cinema, and other events; ninety degree heat; torrential Summer rain; drugs as diverse as bug life; and seventy-five thousand people from all walks of life. Given the uncertainty of anything past the set we were attending, a lesser person might’ve cracked, or at least been kinda grumpy. Robin and I had our moments: I do not like cars that go slower than seven to nine miles over the speed limit; Robin doesn’t tolerate it well when cars can’t escape (lines). We were never agitated at the same time though, and while that might be more happy coincidence than anything to do with us and our personalities, I kept score over the weekend, and in the end, Robin easily floats inches above the people underneath when it comes to being easy going. And while for the most part I just tied a string to and pulled her to the shows we both wanted to see, we didn’t feel forced to be the dynamic duo the entire weekend. When our interests diverged, so did we.
• So some of the shows I ended up watching by myself. The confidence to be alone amidst seventy-five thousand people, all neatly paired off, has built up inside me only in the last few years. It’s not that I’m looking to be an island; it just feels good to know I can stand on my own. And maybe I’m just that creepy old man on a bench in the mall, but I can always take a lot of great pleasure in people watching, especially when some of those people are girls wearing only bikini bottoms and body paint. Or, you know, hippies with dreads. They’re fun to look at too.
• Still, I wonder if I’m not getting a little too good at this Charles Lindbergh thing, a little too resigned to not be found with my Amelia heart. The people camping next to us were perfectly nice and clumsier with their tent than Robin and I with ours. I could’ve offered them a hand or some of the too much food we brought—at least my name. Or the group of girls behind me at Bon Iver who kept squirting the back of my neck and head with their water guns, daring me not to smile back with bright eyes every time I’d turn around. Or the couple at Bruce who offered me a spot on their blanket and a smoke from their spoon. The girl had Annie curls and the boy wore blue Kanye glasses at night. I should’ve learned more names. I should’ve come home with a pen pal, or the phone number of a new friend. I should be more outgoing. I should feel like some part of myself is worth sharing.
• I suppose one poor excuse for not being more social was good music functions—good art of any kind prescribes a particular emotion, and at a rock concert, we’re all standing right next to one another, and so why bother wasting time talking when we’re pretty well trained at responding to those musical cues? At Katzenjammer, the first band we saw, I smiled  and shook loose all my awkwardness doing an awkward rooted feet dance. I was there when Dirty Projectors made all the academic angles and sharp rhythmic turns into beautiful, propulsive, catchy musical architecture. I bought stock in a good time friend’s band Heypenny and watched the stock split, then split again as their magnet music drew in everyone within earshot. That was maybe the most joyful moment of the weekend. And I raised my voice up in chorus when Bon Iver started the saddest campfire singalong ever, a spruced up for the outdoors version of “The Wolves (Acts I & II).” All of these shows took place in the Bonnaroo’s tents (This Tent, That Tent, and Other Tent), where the weekend reaches its loftiest heights. The tents are intimate with everyone packing in messily underneath them to get out of the sun. Also, to my tin ear, the tents help acoustically.
• The stages (Which Stage and the main What Stage) require a little less intimacy and a lot more rock though. While Wilco and Bruce attacked with love and scored direct hits, most of the big stage shows were swallowed up by the murmur of too large crowds and thirsty for sound open air. Animal Collective’s electronic noodling kinda blew, and as the crowd got restless, the show got harder and harder to appreciate. Nor did TV on the Radio fill their space. Band of Horses, one of my favorite new bands, maybe even top five, seemed pretty lackluster—having seen them in Bloomington at Bluebird a couple of times, I know what they’re capable of and this show was did not maintain that previously attained level of soul shaking rock. And phuck Phish, I don’t care how many dozens of minutes you can make a song’s bridge.
• That sort of stuff amounted to minor quibbles when I’m stoned out of my gourd most of the weekend. Pot, if I haven’t mentioned it before, I enjoy quite thoroughly. But the drugs I bought there didn’t work. I’ve been wanting to try ecstasy and some LSD doses for the first time. Too many tabs of acid were about sixty bucks.  None of them worked, and I had to watch Robin take off on mushrooms while we were trying to listen to Phish. I had taken the FDA recommended dosage, and that wasn’t working, so I took it all. Had it merely been slow to work, I might’ve ended up like blue boy from Dragnet. But it didn’t, and I learned a lesson. Some drug dealers are not very honest. The e I bought later worked, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t actually ecstasy, and so I guess that means another lesson: Most drug dealers are not very honest. Least not the ones runnin’ ’round ‘roo.
• But at least I didn’t overdose on something and end up dead, baking in a tent in the Tennessee sun.
• All in all though, it was a beautiful weekend, and I’d be hard pressed to cram it all into a story. There was too much to do and not enough time to do it in. I missed bands I wanted to see because I was tired. I missed bands I wanted to see because they were scheduled against other bands I wanted to see more. All that weariness—next time I think rather than making a sandwich out of moldy work bread and tasty Bonnaroo lunch meat I’ll ask off for a little more time around the festival to allow for stormy weather, avoid lines, and accentuate how awesome not working at the cinemas is. And there will be a next time, next summer, hopefully as a last hoorah before grad school.
• Ten: And there’s always home. That first shower in days, the soft arms of my bed. Trying to form memories into words, expanding them into stories, and then trying to condense them back into something meaningful. Finally, those fragments I didn’t write about, those few images from Bonnaroo that are poems; those are mine, and there is some joy I always want to keep only for myself.