A wise man once said, “I don’t care if The Rolling Stones are playing, the ghost of Elvis and the ghost of John Lennon. Hell, even throw in Yoko Ono. No festival is worth missing the big grad.”
“Don’t commit yourself too much to just one thing just yet.”
* * * *
This year, a certain special music festival in the Scottish Highlands was scheduled for the weekend of June 17 2011. I was scheduled to graduate from the University of Toronto on June 16.
Most transatlantic flights that go from west to east operate on a “red-eye” routine. This means that you leave your North American destination in the evening and arrive at your European destination the next morning. Well, it’s supposed be the next morning but it still feels like the middle of the night. If you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, it feels like a parallel universe where time is meaningless and you eat and eat and never sleep. Then you’re expected to go through customs and, in some cases, onward to your connecting flight. I’m sure people get used to this, but I haven’t yet.
My point is that on a red-eye flight, you leave on one particular day and arrive the next calendar day. This makes it more or less impossible to be at two different events on two different sides of the Atlantic Ocean on the same day. However, it does allow you to be at two events on two different continents on two different consecutive days.
But just barely.
Because even if you walk directly from your graduation ceremony to a parking garage that contains your mother’s car, you will inevitably encounter the worst rush hour traffic the city of Toronto has ever seen (or so it will seem). This same rush hour traffic will make your flight’s cabin crew late getting to the airport, which will in turn cause your flight to depart an hour and a half late. This will, in turn, make you panic about missing your connecting flight because you haven’t allowed very much leeway for your stopover. Your connecting flight will, of course, also be delayed, which will make it difficult to quickly disembark, grab a taxi from the airport back to your flat, shower, and then immediately jump in a tour van that’s headed up north for a weekend of festival-ing and rainy camping, all in under an hour.
I tell you, there were some major forces at work that did not want me to leave Toronto on that particular afternoon in June. Traffic jams aside, these include: family members who support me unwaveringly, friends who understand me at my very core, and my desire to flourish within my comfort zone.
I know why I want to stay in Canada, I don’t know why I want to be in Scotland.
Half a year ago, I wrote In/out(sider) part one. It was about a music festival, which for me, in June 2010, embodied the crux of my experience both in and outside of a certain Scottish music scene.
This year, the same festival weekend symbolized my experience both in and outside of something else.
* * * *
One year later, I am standing in a crowd of people in a field near Aviemore. I’m wearing a pair of my mom’s wellies and they are the newest boots I own. I was standing, and now I am dancing, mobilized by a very specific sort of adrenaline that comes from combining jetlagged delirium with Thistly Cross cider.
At the end of their set, Washington Irving come back on stage to begin their encore: their cover of Dick Gaughan’s Tom Paine’s Bones.
The same revolutionary I studied in an advanced literature seminar months ago while I waited for this moment.
I tell my friends next to me, “This is really going to be something.”
For the first few lines, I fight unexpected tears. What if this is the last time I ever see them play? What if I leave again and don’t come back? Will I miss this?
Less than a minute later, and I am dancing a jig with Rory’s parents. Less than a minute after that, and I am headed for the stage. This was Jenny’s idea and we must have acted quickly. At the last second, Rory’s mum declines or comes to her senses. I’m dancing and singing between Rory and Kieran (who just laughs) except for a brief moment of panic when I think I’m the only stage-crasher.
An hour later, I’m sitting on the ground, in a strangely-secluded lime green spotlight behind the stage. In one of three directions, electronic bagpipes are playing. In another, a DJ plays Jump Around by House of Pain. I wipe my face with my tear-stained skirt.
“Why can’t this be easier?” as we collapse into the grass and surrender to the cosmic flow.
A few hours later, while the sun rises, we’ll sit in someone else’s tent and enjoy ham sandwiches.
Two days later and we’ll have this conversation again.
Photos via Cheryl McIntyre.
Caitlin Vernon Writing 