The Show Never Stopped.
Dylan and I went to a Skrillex concert. No one I know (other than Dylan) knows who Skrillex is – even the coolest of my friends. Skrillex is actually a top-notch EDM DJ. EDM (also unknown to everyone I know) is Electronic Dance Music and a DJ is not just a disc jockey, but a creator of music mixes.
It’s an incredible little subculture of music that’s either just up-and-coming in this decade, or it’s been around since the eighties and Dylan has just discovered it. I can’t tell, quite honestly. The concert looked like Woodstock but with lots of bright pink clothes and short (and sometimes blue) hair.
So Dylan is really into this music, and Skrillex is – as announced last night – “the most awesome guy in the world” for EDM.
But the most awesome guy in the world to me during the concert was … Dylan. Like many of the 2014 hippies, he was cool and relaxed and enjoying the scene when we arrived. There were no seats – just a huge, grassy field – and we threw ourselves onto the ground along with the rest of the folks who weren’t immediately dancing.
Dylan taught me about what the DJ on stage was doing – since it was hard to tell from way in the back. I had no idea. (You’ll have to google that one yourself – it’s too hard to explain!)
It was early in the day. “Notice how not very many people are dancing,” Dylan told me. “When the music gets better, more people will dance.”
I couldn’t tell if the music was good. To me, the music all sounded the same – until the end of the evening, when the top two performers took the stage. Then I understood. Indeed, the better songs made even me dance. And I was 30 years older than most of the audience.
Little by little, we worked our way up toward the stage. Dylan eventually stood in the front row, leaning on the tiny fence they use to control the crowd, me befriending the woman who guarded “backstage” in this open arena.
It started to get dark, and it even rained a tiny bit. But the show never stopped – not for one, single moment. The bass pounded and the crowd never stopped moving. It was like having a strobe light on our little microcosm of the planet.
When Skrillex came on stage, I had a quick surge of instinct to protect Dylan from the sheer joy that overtook him. He was so excited – and still, oddly, so cool – that he just smiled and smiled and smiled. By the end of the show, he was dancing with the best of them – and even I (with an injured leg) sat wiggling my other appendages in time to the music.
The six-hour concert and the three hours in the car were complete with no arguments, no grumpiness and no concerns of any kind. We were just two people, hanging out on a sunny day, and enjoying the music until well into the night.
And it’s a day, and a moment, I will never forget. Thanks, God.