Post-Festival Blues

LCD Soundsystem on the first night

Today's post is brought to you by my the giant balloon of pain and snot that my head has become — thank you so much, six-foot-four man who blocked my view of the Killers while periodically sneezing in my direction.

I went to the Wayhome music festival in Oro-Medonte from July 21-25 (the festival itself was 3 days but we got there the day before and left the day after). It was my second ever music festival, and the first one I had to camp at because I was there for more than one day (the first one I ever went to was Field Trip which was at Fort York in Toronto last year). It was absolutely incredible and I had such a good time, but let me just say, music festivals are nuts.

I mean honestly I don't really have any complaints other than the general physical discomfort of seeing The Killers on the last night, but damn there were a lot of people there. Food lineups were the worst — not to mention expensive...

I would go further here to make some kind of poetic point about the communal atmosphere of festivals and how incredible music is but I'm way too sick to do much of anything at the moment. As of right now I am eating curry soup and a heroic quantity of rice crackers and trying to pretend that I don't have to go to work this evening. My cold and working are the main reasons I took so long to write about Wayhome, but I also think I just had no idea how I could possibly express it in writing. If you've never been to a music festival, I highly recommend it (obviously they're quite expensive but if you consider the amount of concerts you're technically getting out of it, it's a pretty good deal). I also highly recommend seeing Arcade Fire live — they're not really on tour anymore so that advice is a little late but at the very least listen to some of their music. They are 100% my all time favourite band ever, and seeing them live was, pardon my language, fucking transcendent. They are so good I cannot even use all caps to fully capture how I feel about them holy shitting shit.

I saw a lot of artists/bands, most of them only partially as I went from stage to stage in between the acts that I really wanted to see all of, but the following is my sketchy unofficial list of my top 10 favourite acts:
**Note: this order isn't necessarily reflective of which bands I like the best, it's just a rating of the ones I thought were the best live (of the, admittedly limited, ones I saw)**

1. Arcade Fire

2. LCD Soundsystem

3. Stars

4. The Killers

5. Patrick Watson

6. The Paper Kites

7. Foals

8. Half Moon Run

9. Beirut

10. M83

Honourable mentions:
- A Tribe Called Red, who were amaaaazing but I only got to see for a few songs because they played during the only time I had to get dinner before going to see Arcade Fire.
- Unknown Mortal Orchestra, who were also terrific but I also only saw a few songs from because they played until 1:30am and I was exhausted and standing way too close to one of the speakers which I was pretty sure was going to kill me

AND NOW, PICTURES!!

The only picture I got of Arcade Fire because I spent the whole rest of their set trying not to die because of how good they were

Brandon Flowers of The Killers, while he was singing a cover of I Can't Help Falling in Love With You 

The crowd at Patrick Watson with sparklers during his last song

The Paper Kites <3

So yes, it was incredible, I got to spend time with a bunch of awesome friends of mine and see some stellar performances, and I do not regret a single second of it — even though I got sick.

The worst part, of course, is the week or so after it's over where you're still reeling about how great it was and how sad you are that it's over, but damn I'm glad I went.

Not sure where to from here. I'm hoping to get better soon so I can actually get on track with my whole sorting my life and routine out thing, but that's being put on hold for a bit while I get better. Sometimes the best way to take care of yourself is to let yourself off the hook.

Until next time,

- Ella

Pancakes and Resolutions

So I worked a 10-hour shift on Saturday from 2pm to midnight (the restaurant I work at was hosting a wedding), and seeing as I was about ready to shuffle off this mortal coil by the end of it, I decided that Sunday was going to be my official "day off". Of course, I still had to go in to work at 6pm that evening, but for me, days off are mostly about my mindset. I decided that I was going to be in no rush to do anything, I didn't have to get anything done, and god damn it I was going to be nice to myself!

Woke up at 11, had a shower, meditated, made some tea and a double batch of Lonely Girl Single-Serve Pancakes (yes, a double batch. I was hungry and these things are my lifeblood), and started The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. I got it as a Christmas present from my parents but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until now. I'm quite enjoying it so far — it's interesting to read after having read Infinite Jest around this time last summer. You can tell it's written by the same guy but it's got a kind of lightness that I never really got from IJ. I don't think they can be compared in terms of quality or anything (although, let's be real, there will never be another book like Infinite Jest) but I'm finding it cool that you can tell the difference in the age and maturity of its author at the time of its writing.

Back to my original point here though — that made for quite a lovely morning, but the rest of the day kind of devolved from there. I certainly wouldn't say it was bad; it was quite good, and I think days like that are sometimes necessary to keep me from going off the deep end, but by the end of the night I knew why I can't give myself days off every day over summer vacation.

I'm a person who relies a lot on structure. I'm trying to break myself of that, because on the whole it keeps me from going outside of my comfort zone and is generally not something one should be totally dependent on. It is, however, still important to have a certain amount of structure to keep from drifting aimlessly without purpose or ambition. I read Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving last month and one of the passages I keep going back to is this one where he talks about how to concentrate (concentration or mindfulness being prerequisites for loving, which is a prerequisite for being):

"... To get up at a regular hour, to devote a regular amount of time during the day to activities such as meditating, reading, listening to music, walking; not to indulge, at least not beyond a certain minimum, in escapist activities like mystery stories and movies, not to overeat or overdrink are some obvious and rudimentary rules. It is essential, however, that discipline should not be practiced like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one’s own will; that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behavior which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practicing it" (emphasis mine).

The point of structure is not to force yourself into things. The point of habit is not to make those things unconscious. Structure and habit should be used mindfully so that you end up enjoying and wanting to do the things that you know you should do — and being conscious of the choices you're making when you do them. When I get stuck scrolling endlessly through instagram, or stay holed up in my bedroom all day watching netflix, I know I'm not doing those things because I truly want to. I know they end up making me feel awful, and achieve nothing good in the long run, but I do them anyway because they're habits. I've learned to make those choices, to do the things that make me feel good in the short-term, but I don't have to stay there. I can choose to unlearn them, and make new, better choices; better habits. And they don't have to be externally forced on me through strict rules or structures. I just have to agree to try to do something else, and become cognizant of when I'm slipping back.

So really what I'm getting at with this is that I'm making some resolutions. Some things I've already started (like doing more yoga and learning French and writing more regularly), and other things I've been planning on doing for ages but haven't really gotten to yet (like going vegan and submitting some of my writing to various places). But I wrote them down on a piece of paper, folded it up and put it in my journal, and as of right now* I'm agreeing to try.

Here goes nothing!

- Ella

*although the going vegan thing is a little tentative for now until I move out at the end of August — the plan is to try my best but while my parents are still mostly responsible for our household food shopping, I'm happy enough with them accommodating to my being vegetarian

I'm BAAAACK!

What's up, it's me!!

So, it's been a while... I've been busy with school, mostly, and this blog kind of got sidelined in the process. But I figure now is a good a time as ever to start back up again and hopefully get into some kind of routine with writing. I have a lot of ideas, some of which may end up being a thing, some of which may not, who knows! I also have no idea if anyone actually sees or reads anything I put up here but that's alright, if anything this is mostly a place to archive my writing as well as being a reason to get myself to sit down and put things into words.

Until next time (when I will hopefully have something real to publish here),

- Ella