probabilityfields

I wasn’t planning on going to this year’s Austin City Limits Festival, but Saturday morning I got a call from Zach that a free ticket was available. I had to work Saturday, so I went Sunday.

Bev, Zach, and I went to a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant and had micheladas, chips, a variety of salsas, and tacos, then hiked through the streets and woods to Zilker Park. We started off the festival with Rilo Kiley. Interesting little band, hot, talented chick, even hotter weather. It was 108 degrees, but it barely felt like 105. Thus much of the day was spent in the shade of the Gospel and Blues tent where I saw Ruthie Foster (Zach said, “Her voice is too big for that little band”) and Brave Combo, who’s performance of “The Hokey Pokey” was the best performance of the day…seriously, it was awesome.

I wandered over to the Arcade Fire who seemed to sufficiently enthrall a sizable audience, but to tell you the truth I don’t get it. They just fall into my hipness blindspot I guess. At 5:30 The Decemberists played. I love this band, but maybe it’s mostly because I want a band with a couple of girls that play accordian and violin respectively. Zach and Bev had never heard them so before the show I danced around singing “Legionaire’s Lament” and much to our delight it was on the set list. Though the soundman left something to be desired in the way of accordian, organ, and electric guitar levels the band lived up to my expectations.

Wilco came on immediately afterward and proved themselves once again to be the awesomest band ever. Well, not really, their show was pretty similar to the last time I saw them and they ended with “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” a very interesting but long and tedious rocker. The rest of the show was pretty great though and from the beginning Jeff Tweedy announced he was coming out of his shell and asked for audience participation to bring more “soul” to the performance. When the audience seemed heat-weary he asked for more enthusiasm and excused himself adding, “Grovelling…it’s the new cocky.”

Wilco was the last of the bands on our list so we got food, a Kenichi noodle bowl, and sat on the ground where grass had been before the dry heat turned it to dust to be kicked into the air and breathed into our noses making our nostrils black and our eyes water. Ahead of us Tortoise played music that made me want to kill myself and I was tired-trapped in my own head thinking about shit I didn’t want to think about.

We left as Coldplay took the stage at the opposite end of the park and heard about things that were “Yellow” as we walked through the gates towards the Barton Springs pool. At 9:00 the lifeguard that Zach sardonically called “Superdude” let us in without charge.

Sunburnt, exhausted, and covered in dust I stripped down to my boxers and twisted them to the side to avoid any overexposure and jumped into the 67 degree water that barely felt like 32. I surfaced and hyperventilated, felt faint and dizzy, like I was really dying with a smile on my face. I treaded and swam a little but I couldn’t feel my body. I floated on my back and stared at the sky and could hear Coldplay in the distance singing Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” but I didn’t mind. Floating there I tried to remember all the things that were making me feel bad and I tried to feel the pain of walking in the dusty heat all day but in that moment all I could think was that days that begin with micheladas and end in Barton Springs are the best.