One afternoon this past July, I found myself sitting in the grass of Union Park, devouring a vegan Philly cheesesteak and squinting through sweaty sunglasses at a far-off stage. It was the end of my trip to Chicago and the beginning of my first Pitchfork Music Festival. I was with a group of friends who were far more experienced music festival attendees than I was, but I felt excited for what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We determined which acts we would see together and for which acts we would split up, making devastating choices when two beloved shows coincided on the schedule.
While anxiously awaiting Björk’s stunning performance, we mingled with the strangers around us in the crowd. One of our new associates, Jack, was tall, broad and bearded—somewhat reminiscent of Andy Dwyer from “Parks and Recreation.” He wordlessly alternated between handing out Addams Family trading cards and spraying the surrounding radius with a refreshing water mist. His two companions, a couple, were more talkative. One claimed to have danced with Miley Cyrus at a club, which was dubious but sufficiently amusing; the other was deeply captivated by my friend’s chest hair. All of them friendly, all of them independently memorable, the people we met were salient to my days at the festival.
At Mikal Cronin’s set, uncharacteristic mosh pits developed during each song as an inevitable response to the infectious drums and guitar. Dust mixed with the humidity, leaving every member of the audience glistening with a thin layer of mud and the sweat of others. High schoolers were shoved against me by the force of the crowd; I caught a glimpse of their euphoric grins before they charged back against the wall of dancing limbs. When one guy lost his footing and fell, the surrounding crowd was quick and deliberate in their efforts to restore him to the mosh pit. Water bottles were regularly opened and passed along the audience to ensure communal hydration. There was an ambience of camaraderie, a sense that we were all there for the music, you know, like, one love, man. And it was truly enjoyable, perhaps the best part of my summer—the feeling of shared experience.
A little over a year ago, I found myself sitting in the grass of the East Campus quad, shifting uncomfortably in what I thought was college attire and trying desperately to remember the names and faces of the members of my FAC group. It was o-week and I felt like I was one icebreaker away from breaking myself. Look! Look around at the people standing in cliques! Everyone had already immediately formed their lifelong college friendships, and I was certainly damned to eternal silence in a sea of bodies spelling a new class year that I had yet to internalize since high school graduation.
I did eventually find myself in comfortable and happy social situations, but not until after some digging. The good friends, the ones who “got me,” were largely found after I began to pursue my interests on campus. My friends were writing about the Nasher for Recess. They were hanging out in the WXDU lounge, picking albums to review for the library. They were dancing shamelessly at parties in the Coffeehouse.
That’s not to say that I didn’t meet a whole bunch of meaningful friends by chance, whether in my dorm or at Marketplace brunch or through eavesdropped bus conversations. And I’m not trying to recruit for The Chronicle or the radio station (or at least, not right now, in this place, in this economy). I only wish to bring some sort of reassurance to you new students who have yet to feel the kind of profound comfort required for a conversation that carries itself into 6 a.m. Do what you actually like to do, and it is reasonably likely that the people who also like to do those things will be cool and interesting to you.
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