10AM CET – Sunday 06.02.24 – Frankfurt Airport

The years, it turns out, are not making me any less weird, as I sit with my eyes closed at the Frankfurt Airport and build an altar to the queen of the gorgons while typing. It was that kind of weekend, as the best of them are. The sedentary grooving to Ruff Majik’s last record included, this has been the least stressful part of this trip. I got picked up at the hotel at 7AM, slept in the sprinter van on the way from Siegen, got through security and all the rest of it in ace time, and arrived at gate B44 after a not unpleasant stroll to the ass end of the airport. Some sharp not-quite-bacon porcine smell coming from the coffee/breakfast counter over yonder, and it’s a little warm, but if these are my biggest complaints — and they’re not, but we’re keeping it light — I’m doing okay. That’s the bottom line.

I was back and forth on wrapping up the Freak Valley coverage like this or just leaving it with “thanks thanks thanks thanks” in the last post since basically that’s all I want to say in the end anyhow, but on some level I feel like a few words of explanation are owed.

I know I mentioned my mother’s knee replacement on Wednesday, and I told at least 80 percent of the people I spoke to at the AWO grounds in Netphen about going from the hospital to JFK Airport in New York after they rolled my mom in a wheelchair to the back-part of the hospital where they do the real knock-you-out-and-butcher-you parts of medicine — I’ve been back there; the tears welling in my eyes tell me I’m still not over it — and I am fiercely proud of her for doing something that I think in a couple weeks even she’ll say she should’ve done years ago, but the background emotional radiation of that was very much a factor in my Freak Valley 2024 experience. It’s part of what I’ll remember about the last few days, to say the very least.

But the way it happened was also somewhat disorienting, since the operation was scheduled for last week, but got bumped because she got sick, and because of the Memorial Day holiday in the US — which is bullshit, yes; if my country cared about its military, it would be an institution of science for the public good instead of an overfunded oppressive imperialist tool blah blah blah; rethink all policing — we didn’t know until Tuesday morning what time she’d be going in Wednesday. And if it was going to be the afternoon, that would mean I wouldn’t be able to do the trip. So here I am over the weekend before, back and forth with Jens Heide, who runs FVF, saying I don’t know if I’m gonna make it, saying give away my room, no wait don’t, stressed and harried and overwhelmed. Factor in the six-hour time different and the fest didn’t even know for sure I was coming until less than 24 hours before I was due to board the plane.

Even as Full Earth went on Thursday afternoon to kick off Freak Valley 2024 in righteously progressive style, part of me was still back there, or still on the plane not sleeping, or trying to figure out why the train smelled like pee (spoiler: it was pee), whatever it was. But while I didn’t end up getting it tattooed on my person, my mantra that it’ll all be okay when the music starts held true. I don’t know what it is. Something about being in front of a stage, the blast of volume, that kind of electric surge; I need it. I tend to get my doses in bulk these days, and there are ups and downs to that like everything, but I am so incredibly thankful to have this music in my life, to have found it or been found by it, and that it is such a part of who I am. It’s not escapism when it’s your fucking life. I am fortunate to be able to do what I want to do, how and when and why and, especially in cases like this, where I want to do it.

I don’t have the kind of brain that always automatically moves the muscles of my face to smile when I’m happy to see somebody, a friend or acquaintance or even my own family. But that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see you. Or if I’m distracted, or in a hurry somewhere, it’s just how I am. All that stuff that when you’re young you think you’ll figure out when you’re older? Well, I’m 42 now, and remain flailing in so many regards. As a person, in my body, definitely as a parent, as a husband, as a writer. I’ve put everything I have for 15 years of my life into this project and I still get condescended to as the ‘stoner rock blogger’ as if genre wasn’t the root of innovation in art, but typos aside — and I’ll probably be finding them for years in the posts from this weekend; hazards of taking notes on my phone, sorry about that — I’m proud of the work I do here. On a certain level, I have to be.

Thank you for reading, is the point, and if we talked at the fest and I seemed out of it, I probably was. I can’t be anyone other than who I am at this point, and frankly, being myself requires performance enough. I’m sorry if that was the case, and yeah, I do feel like I disappoint people who meet me in person after knowing me from the site, social media, whatever, but I’m doing my best. At the heart of it all, I appreciate you being a part of this thing if you are.

I’m gonna take tomorrow (which might be today by the time this is posted) and get caught up on writing and some stuff that I’ve been holding back while here, maybe work on a Conan bio I need to bang out or those Lowrider/Elephant Tree liner notes that are so long overdue.

Anyway, thanks again.

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Tags: Freak Valley 2024, Freak Valley Festival, Germany, Netphen

This entry was posted on Monday, June 3rd, 2024 at 9:48 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.