"Do You Know Where You're At?"

Showing the love...

With the Reggae on the River festival opening up today, my thoughts are like so many lottery ping pong balls, gyrating frantically within their sphere, each lobbying for my undivided attention. Having not only attended the last three ROTR’s, but having also spent days ahead of each, volunteering to help set up the kitchen(s), I am having serious withdrawal pains this summer.

There was never any doubt that I would have to skip this year’s festivities, my decision having been made six months ago, when Gluten-Free Mama was experiencing technical difficulties, due to those pesky side effects from the kidney cancer meds. Though things are progressing smoothly at this point in time, thank you in advance for asking, my rationale for taking a backseat this year was based simply on the fact that little enjoyment could be had, if I knew GF Mama was poorly.

I am content with not being at French’s Camp this summer, so all the more reason why past memories are cascading over me, leaving me in a deliciously warm and fuzzy spot, at least inside my head. I would say there is no particular order to the emotions overwhelming me right now, but that would be inaccurate.

Above all is that I had to conquer my own fears in order to be able to attend in the first place. My anxiety was based on my discomfort at being in the midst of a lot of people, something that prevents me from attending AT&T Park to this day to watch the Giants. However, ROTR is not the same as AT&T Park, because there is never any point in time when I am assigned a seat, as such.

I am free to circulate if and when I choose to circulate, so I can pick those times when it works best for me.

We built this Cannabis bar.

After having spent several days before the festival was open to the public, working in the background, I had explored every nook and cranny within the confines of the festival itself, as opposed to the more outlying area where the bulk of the attendees were camped, more commonly known as the jungle.

That was the single thing that had always been a roadblock in the past: the idea of somehow being plopped down in the center of a sea of tent-to-tent humanity. Like being in the middle of a crowd at AT&T Park, the feeling is not one that I can abide.

Our spot

Volunteers, however, are not housed with the general population: We had our own tent-city, and in order to get in, you had to flash your credentials. Additionally, we had our own space-within-the-space, so that there was never any impression of being squeezed into the jungle mode.

We had electricity to keep our gadgets charged; we had small banks of porta-potties conveniently located and we had access to private showers. Bucket seats and four-on-the-floor, Baby, for all of our kitchen set-up crew. There was a warm camaraderie amongst us and the camp was rarely vacant, bodies sprawled out in camp chairs or in sleeping bags on the ground. 

And we had Stephen Marley playing, "No Cigarette Smoking (In My Room)," around two o'clock in the morning.

The key to my survival: I knew where to get ice...

Even with the fifteen-minute walk-each way-to get back and forth to camp, I was good to go, more so because I enjoyed the walking. I liked knowing exactly where I was at all times, thus being able to accurately answer my father’s incessant question, “Do you know where you’re at, Mark?”

I especially liked the access to backstage, which meant that I could view the music from one of two elevated side-stages, placing the viewer no more than thirty feet away from dead-center stage. If the performer were moving around the stage, she might get within touching range, were I to lean over the railing, we were that close.

I snapped countless photos at close range. Like most concert-goers, I blazed up when I wanted, more than capable of pulling off the nonchalant attitude required to successfully accomplish this simple feat. Besides, the most Security ever did, was ask you to take it someplace else, cannabis being a sacrament of the prevailing Rastafarian religion.

“Happy Reggae!” is the greeting amongst one and all, comparable to “Merry Christmas!” being exchanged among strangers passing one another on the street on December 25th. It is just the oneness of the event being shared in a thousand different ways, among ten thousand revelers.

The line-up this year is one that features artists I am not familiar with, but that never bothers me one bit. I cannot listen to live reggae music and not enjoy it, whether I recognize the artist or not. If I do, then my enjoyment is elevated, but if I do not, that does not detract from the experience. And hearing the music so up close and personal cannot be compared to hearing the music from somewhere out in front in the Bowl, where the bulk of the revelers are partying.

Whether lounging around camp with friends, wandering through the vendors’ booths, or absorbing the live music, memories of past ROTR’s remain with me today. As I listen to Fortunate Youth this morning, belt out “Mr. Farmer” on Pandora, I am back on-site, the bowl of Strawberry Lemonade glowing in my hand lending credence to my memories.

John Prine said it best when he sang, “Memories they can’t be boughten, they can’t be won at carnivals for free,” but I might add that memories also can’t be taken away, at least not as long as I am in possession of my faculties. Now you could probably make the case that that ship sailed long ago, but nonetheless, impaired or not, I am hanging on to my memories for dear life.

HeadSodBuster rocking the drum, late one night...

And right now, my memories have an iron grip on my little pea brain, indicating that I am OK for the time being, just nostalgic beyond belief. I’d go start banging on the drum HeadSodBuster bought for me one year ago, but I have to remember where I am right now.

And that’s the difference between being at Reggae on the River and being at home, at 3:00 in the morning: If I wanted to drum at ROTR, I would undoubtedly be joined by others.

Here at home? Maybe not so much…