The beauty of a music festival arises out of its simplicity.
The beauty comes from the setting. The woodlands of Dover, Delaware, are beautiful. Trees create a natural barrier; pine borders the expanse of the campgrounds.Tents, bright lights, and picnic blankets bring life to these empty fields.
The beauty comes from the people. There are no concerns. Carefree living is alive. All are for the shared experience. Firefly is furlongs away from individualism. Here, the community is king. If you want to high-five that girl walking around in a robe, combining scripture verses with "Star Wars" jargon while holding Yoda’s head on a stick … do it!
Firefly is not about what you can’t do, but what you can. It is a testament to uninhibited freedom, true awareness, and exhalation outside of a society that dwells on what you cannot do.
That said, one could say that there is a blatant disregard for morals, values, and laws during the festival. Temperance is key. Awareness, self-control, and discipline are key. You can go to these festivals to lose yourself, and certainly many do; however, you can also go to these festivals to question yourself in order to find yourself.
Finally, the beauty comes from the music, the artists, and the experience.
No one better summed this up for me than the Chainsmokers at Firefly 2015. Most people would recognize these two DJs for their hit single “I Want to Be Like Kanye.”
One of the DJs cautioned the crowd and prefaced this song with an aside. He told us that it was not about Kanye West, even though people think of Mr. West when they hear the song.
Rather, the Chainsmokers said that this song was about “being who you are, and not giving any f*cks at all.” They asked the crowd to raise their hands if they felt like they were who they were supposed to be – if they were their own person. All hands shot up.
A crowd of people, all coming together, being who they know themselves to be: the multiplicity of unity. At Firefly, the individual is not king. We are king. We are community. We are one. And we are one, because we are each our own, still. This sensation is priceless, it is beautiful, and it is incredibly devastating … devastating because it is fleeting.
It is temporary because we make it temporary. We shield ourselves. We hide who we are. We burrow away into our fancy houses, showers, clean bathrooms, and daily routines.
We are parts of nature. We are much more similar than we chalk ourselves up to be. Music is a unifying force, an equalizer, an opium, and it can be an incredible faith experience when we find ourselves at peace in mind, in body, and in soul. Away from all of our distractions, with all of our personal barriers decimated: This is when we feel most alive.
This is the magic of Firefly.
