Austin City Limits

or  The Sweaty Bourgeoisie Proletariat

As I sit on my baloney in a tank top and shorts in 80 degree weather listening to Van Morrison, I realized have discovered the meaning of autonomy. I will show this meaning through  chaotic narrative progression. 

 Autonomy: Casually strolling into an 75,000 mass of sweaty people, 7 stages, hard beating southern sun with nothing more than myself, an empty waterbottle,  $5 in my pocket and a seductive lust to surrender myself to a weekend full of live music and sweat. The world, for three days, was my motherfucking Oyster. 

The festival started out with The Mountain Goats, a band that has taken on a new meaning since I've arrived in Texas. "All Hail West Texas" was the defining album of my 4 day drive (see:love for the goatsl) I then progressed to see many, many fucking amazing bands.  I came home every night exhausted and covered in other peoples sweat.  (Black Keys, The XX, Matt & Kim, M.I.A., Edward Sharpe and The Magneficent Zeros, The Strokes, Spoon, Vampire Weekend, Phish, Broken Bells, Gogol Bordello, The National, The Eagles, The Flaming Lips….) but these experiences are not worth blogging about. There are professionals over at stereogum that are much, much hipper than I and I shall leave that job to them. 

I was swallowed whole by the mass of people, spit back out and I remained unscathed, minus the Strep Throat that was given to me by a joint I shared with  a Phish fan (I believe).  There's nothing like being baked, while being surrounded by 75,000 strangers wondering how you're going to ride your bike home or trying, successfully with a friend, to start a dance party to M.I.A. as she sings about revolution and intense political instability and everyone around you is either drunk, stoned or fucked up on some drug, or seeing Dan Aucherbach or watching The Lips crawl their way out of a strange figurative vagina...

The Sweaty Bourgeoisie Proletariat: Autonomy: being baked, surrounded by strangers and feeling oddly independent: Realizing the true meaning of solitude: Freedom.