Eforest

Finding Love in the Electric Forest I walked out of the forest and lay down on the grass next to the eccentrically painted elephant sculpture. This was and had been the meeting spot for the last four days, if any one of our group members were to get lost. But as I had come to realize, being lost in this forest wasn’t really like being lost at all.

In fact, I hadn’t seen my friends in a few hours, as we had split up to explore the many art installations, concert stages, vendors, and performers of the rural Michigan forest that is the music festival’s venue. But I knew that my friends would be there soon. One of my favorite artists, Tycho, had just come on Sherwood Court stage, and it was the last concert of the festival.

The culmination of what had become the best four days of my life.

As I lay by the elephant with a head full of euphoria and newly found serenity, Tycho echoed through the air with such entrancing, beautiful melodies, that I could feel it resonate throughout my entire body. I laid my head back and stared up at the all-knowing night sky. The stars flickered with an eternal transcendence and wisdom as if to reassure me that I was not lost, but that I was home.

My friends soon arrived from all around the forest and I smiled and greeted them as they sat down next to me. We quickly shared stories from the last few hours; new friends met, new music heard, and I could see a twinkle in their eyes that I can remember to this day. We all looked out to the stage as Tycho jammed into the night, shooting thousands of technicolor beams into the sky. And for the next hour we barely spoke.

We didn’t need to say anything. We knew that this experience was something that didn’t need to be verbalized or explained. It was something so intangibly beautiful, that attaching words to it would only tarnish its perfection: something bigger than the forest, the music, or myself.

As I looked around, I finally realized that nearly 40,000 people were sitting, standing, walking, and dancing all around me, and all of them smiling with that same cathartic twinkle in their eye. I let my peripheral vision fade out while I focused back to the intense light show Tycho was producing, and when I did so, all of the people seemed to meld and become one giant organism glowing with energy. It was sublime.

This moment and this experience marked the first time in my life where people came together on a massive scale, with a common purpose and goal, and I was a part of it. We were there for the music, for the experience, for the rare occasion in 2014 to make a positive statement free of selfish or corrupt intensions and ties.

And it was a beautiful thing.