heatstroke is like drugs

folk fest this weekend. such a kickback to childhood. 22 years since my first, and i still revisit all of them. some are better than others. imagination market, three dead trolls in a baggie, back when the tarps at the bottom of the hill were still isolated from the tents of rowdies at the top... bill bourne with dark hair, rolling down gallagher hill, sliding in the mud. negotiating seeing my mom while in a teenage social milieu, volunteering in the beer tent, sneaking in (only one year, swear to the folk gods). different moments float up to conscious memory, recall feeling good or crappy, and the experience was a bit of a 'coaster. this weekend i also definitely felt the sheer number of people present. zow. mostly in the present, a few in the past, and maybe one or two in the future. 

it's funny, but i have no sequential memory (only a few isolated events pop up, and that's how it's been ever since i remember checking) previous to being seven. is it a coincidence that was the year everything changed? parents divorce, and a lifestyle shift inevitably comes along. who could bother to remember when i was learning everything anew?

and i liked that change. most of the interesting things from that vicious cycle of naivety crashing around a room full of mirrors came about because the circumstances were deviant: poverty, latchkey kid, isolated parents, frequent moves... ya know: new neighbours, interesting neighbours, free (unsupervised) time, more responsibility. 

i listen to bela fleck and jim white, i think about dancing to the carolina chocolate drops and broken social scene and the release that comes with all music (even while i savour an emotion, somehow it's already going gone), especially outdoor music. i try and come back to the intense sensations and minor epiphanies, but i am already in a wholly different place. all i can recall is the decision to try slowness again, but this time, without caution. it hadn't occurred to me to separate the two, and thus, self-directed life til now has tended to be either crazy or boring. 

imagine: a day-to-day life that's slowly and sincerely risky. kind of a thrilling feeling. 

cue the crescendo. at 80 bpm.