Wednesday, July 25, 2012

we live in an 'experiential' economy

i can't say enough about this architecture course i'm taking at pratt institute.  it has become the most tangible reference point of the re-emergence of my interest and inquiry into architecture.  my life has been absolutely jam-packed for three weeks now with the more-than-a-full-time job plus twelve hours of class each week plus at least that many hours outside of class each week working on the assignments.  my apartment is a complete mess right now - it appears as though a small bomb filled with art supplies has gone off in my kitchen.  my bedroom features the college-esque pile of dirty clothes that moves from chair to bed and back to chair most days (everybody did that, right?).  most days i'm eating a combination of hard-boiled eggs and wheat bread with a healthy dose of filtered tap water.  sounds tasty, no?

even with all the self-sacrifice involved in making an investment like this at a time when i cannot only focus on one endeavor, i can honestly say that this particular moment in my life is very clearly a seminal one for me.

let's start with music.  one of my best good friends, phil, and i attended the inaugural firefly music festival in dover, delaware (dela-where?...exactly).  i've known phil for a dozen years now and we've been to probably half a dozen music festivals together.  averaging things out, we've probably seen up around 100 bands together.  a perennial favorite is sxsw, which is held in the spring in austin, texas each year (in mid-march, often coinciding with spring break for the students out there).  npr typically hosts a day party (read: free beer, often free food, six-plus free hours of live music over 5-10 acts depending on the venue dynamics), which is where i've seen the likes of vampire weekend (below), the dirty projectors and polica.


the great thing about sxsw is, of course, the experience.  sure, the ostensible reason that i go each year is to see live music and many years i get exposed to music - often by chance - that is otherwise hard to find.  however, the special thing about the festival is what it represents for many of these artists - their 'big chance' to become known or 'famous,' as it were. 

usually sets are only 30-50 minutes long for each band and there are approximately 30-40 venues running sets for 12+ hours a day over the course of four-and-a-half days.  doing the math...we get into the hundreds very quickly, in terms of the number of possible acts to see.  many bands do 4-5 sets over the course of the week scurrying around downtown austin.  as a member of the audience, it is very easy - and almost necessary - to judge whether you like a band within the first 10 minutes so that you can decide to stay and fully listen or move on to the next opportunity that you would otherwise miss.  this kind of competition can only be replicated by trying to get a good spot on the nyc subway during rush hour.  but as frenetic as it can be, it creates a unique festival atmosphere and experience for both performer and audience alike. 

and it becomes very likely that the rhythm of the festival will carry you to places you had never planned to go - much like the current of a strong river (you know, like the ones you get to go whitewater rafting down in the rocky mountains).  you may find yourself (see below) half-naked with your head sewn to the carpet of some strange hotel room or skinny dipping in barton springs with your new 'best friends' (at least for the day).  but this is what makes the festival 'worth it,' in my opinion.  the memories of your own personal journey through the festival gets associated with the music creating a much more powerful connection than your standard live music event.


as far as firefly goes, it was a successful festival.  the format was very different than sxsw - three days, outdoors, only four stages, very well-known headlining acts (the black keys, the killers, jack white in this case) and a supporting cast of about 40 bands.  music started each day around noon and ended by 10:30 in the evening.  we opted to camp instead of stay in a hotel and i highly recommend doing this if you decide to go in 2013 - again, for the full experience.  now our experiences were certainly not as scandalous as the potential that existed (are we getting old?), but they will certainly stick with me. 

we played several epic games of pitch and tried to get others involved with varying degrees of exceptional failure.  this is a game that is typically played to 11 or 15.  we started playing games to 31 or even up to 65.  my most memorable hand is the hand during which phil bid 'four and out' on the first hand in a game to 65.  i took one trick and set him, winning the game.  he didn't even have the jack in his hand (he was hoping that i would have it).  we had a bit of an 'in' with some of the media that were at the festival and they were also interested in our card game.


the phrase for the weekend ended up being 'suck the moonlight,' which has a certain impractical imagery to it.  we even adapted songs from bands to incorporate this soon-to-be-famous phrase.  we may need to contact bono of u2 to let him know that his song, 'with or without you,' will never be the same (that came out in 1987!  now i'm definitely feeling old).


one thing i was pondering while at the festival (and have been pondering for years now) is this dance between analog and digital media.  each offers its own advantages and disadvantages.  i tend to prefer analog experiences to digital ones (lp's instead of mp3's, live conversations instead of texts / facebook, film cameras instead of digital cameras, paperback books instead of kindle, etc.).  allen stone (one of my surprise finds of the festival) even writes a song about this struggle between being 'plugged-in' and connected to everything / everyone / everywhere around the world all the time versus being engaged and present in the here and now local reality (below).   


the interesting point here is that this festival had several cell phone charging stations around the grounds.  every morning before the festivities began, dozens of people would religiously congregate around these stations to get their daily digital fix down at the campgrounds, almost like a church service.  and during the festival, the 'recharge' tents were constantly packed about fifty-percent past my comfort zone (like the kitchen or bathroom hallway of a house party).  while maybe this is obvious to you, i found it interesting how much attention was paid to connecting to the digital 'outside' world in such a wonderful live, local world of a music festival (i'll admit that i made my trips to the chargers...what if i miss an important email or text?!?).

we also ate runny eggs (like you wouldn't believe), stole breaded chicken patties (pre-cooked but cold in the cooler), spent $5 each to take showers in what can only be described as a 'shower situation' (best $5 i spent all festival), drank more than our fair share of dogfish head brews, and invented a new rule where we had to buy a corndog everytime we passed a particular corndog stand as we traversed from the main stage to the jack daniel's truck to the other, lesser stages around the festival grounds.

through my architecture course, i recently went to a lecture at columbia university by the ceo and editor-in-chief of domus magazine.  as someone with an emerging interest in architecture, i'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that i have not come across this publication before this year.  however, i feel properly course-corrected to have it as part of my reality now.  while the lecture is worth its own blogpost in terms of how rich the content was, i will tie it in here as joseph grima was discussing the concept of an 'experiential' economy.  in the context of the lecture he was exploring the idea of print media becoming obsolete, essentially stating that the analog printed media are here to stay for the time being, anyway.

in the context of firefly, the experiences that phil and i had with our environment and neighbors are not replicable in any other context.  and as far as these festivals go, one finds oneself in a situation where one is captive to the festival economy.  i think we spent over $300 combined on alcohol, food, memorabilia and yes, showers which does not even factor in what we paid for tickets, travel, etc.  bottom line is that music festivals are expensive, especially when one does not plan well in advance with respect to food (i.e., stealing pre-cooked chicken patties versus making a nice quinoa salad and eating it over the course of the weekend).  these experiences, though, are worth it.  and they work economically.  i think the message here is almost too obvious to mention - if you're interested in kick-starting the economy, go to a music festival!

so, what were the best music experiences?  that's easy.  the heartless bastards were excellent on the first day.  as was the aforementioned jack white - he played lots off of blunderbuss.  my highpoint of the festival was polica on day two, especially her 'lay your cards out' track (below).  we were (ahem) in the right state of mind for that show, up close to the stage and the bass was so present that it felt like the entire environment was pulsating.  allen stone was goofy but started the first ever dance-off in the history of the firefly festival, which was an excellent experience on sunday.  the head and the heart performed a stellar set on the third day; the harmonies were dead-on.  ra ra riot also performed a very tight set on day two, but alex had been replaced with a lesser version of a cello player (adequate but not authentic), which was disappointing (i now see on their website that she left the band in february of this year).  girl talk's set was fun as well - properly timed in the evening as it was getting dark and just before the black keys went on.


and the worst?  even easier.  i love bob dylan and understand that it only makes sense to think that the apple must not fall far from the tree...but jakob dylan's wallflowers were mediocre at best.  they haven't really done anything worth noting since 'one headlight,' in my humble opinion.  michael franti and spearhead did not belong at this festival.  that was an embarassment.  all the songs sounded so similar that i could not tell that they played more than one song over the course of 45 minutes.  fitz and the tantrums just don't have 'it' in my opinion.  their version of soul comes off as a cheap afghani knock-off (this is my second time seeing them and having the same impression...starting to become a trend).

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