The People You Meet At A Music Festival
July 25, 2025
- A woman who, after two years away, is finally going back to grad school. Standing with her feet in the sand, only steps from the lake, she tells you that she wants to become a family counsellor in Toronto someday. Rubbing her finger absent-mindedly, she explains that she got engaged a month ago, and is still too worried about losing her ring to bring it out of the house.
- A man holding on for dear life on a crowded city bus, explaining to the little girl in the seats above him how he teaches other kids how to tie string the traditional way, as the bus lurches back and forth, trying to climb up thin dirt roads.
- A man with lots of necklaces and a thick beard who excitedly tells you about his near-decade being a DJ for his local campus radio. Long after his graduation, he kept returning to his undergrad campus, which he calls his "second home". He pauses as he adjusts his hat, swatting away the mosquitoes, and explains that he hasn't done a show since he moved into his own place for the first time a few months back.
- A little girl running across your path in a blue and white Dipper hat. It looks clean enough to be brand-new. She's about the age that you were when you first got really into Gravity Falls, and you wonder if she got into it from an older relative, or if the show is still finding its way to curious kids on its own.
- An incoming high school senior, surrounded by music, who is buzzing with excitement about the kids he tutors in piano. He says he's going to miss them terribly when he goes to university, which is still a distant aspiration for him. You resist the urge to make a Waterloo-flavoured comment when he says his dream is to get into the University of Toronto.
- An artist under the lights, tuning his guitar as he tells the crowd about how he timed the production of his new album to record all the high parts before he started taking testosterone, and all the low parts after, taking the leap of faith that his voice would change in the way which would make the song finally sound complete.
- A toddler sitting with his face pressed up to a speaker at a rock show. You can't hear what he's saying to his mother because of your snug orange earplugs, but it looks like he's having fun.
- A man with thin arms and a thinner white beard, hovering over his custom instrument, smiling as a gaggle of onlookers sit in front of him, enthralled. It's the largest crowd ever seen for improvised music, he jokes.
- Young couples, lying in the same grass as old couples, sharing the same slice of the constellations for a night.
- A few thousand people who are coming from somewhere wholly unique, and soon to be heading on their way somewhere totally new, each of whom share one thing in common. They're all on this little man-made island in Southern Ontario for the same reason you are. They're all just trying to take a minute to breathe—to share the kind of kinship you get when you throw away all outside sensations and responsibilities to lose yourself, just for a little while, in some damn good music.
- A little boy on the beach who throws a rock just barely above your head as you're trying in vain to capture a memory.