I have wondered too many times in my 25 years of life if the new thing that has entered our society is our asteroid. So far, it has not been a global pandemic or social media or the climate crisis that I have spent my entire life in the shadow of.

Then, enters a Hal 9000-esque problem. After being told that the thing that currently writes generic emails for us could one day create a mushroom cloud, it has been hard for me to focus on anything else. I have spent too much of my energy trying to assuage my fear of an all-out chaos brought on by a whoopsie from a sentient chatbot, like a plot that is straight out of a Matthew Broderick movie from the 80s.

With this in mind, I went with my friends to a music festival.

I had gone the year before to the inaugural Experts Only Music Festival and knew that I would be going back. That Saturday, my friends and I put on our best festival gear, drenching ourselves in glitter, and headed over to Randall’s Island, banishing thoughts of how our lives might be upended, yet again, by a bunch of Silicon Valley snake oil salesmen with low T and ugly hoodies.

As the festival approached, I came down with a head cold, because nothing brings on a sudden illness like expensive, nonrefundable weekend plans that were made months in advance. Anything short of a fever, I was still going.

I loaded myself up on cold medicine and then headed to the music festival where my friends and I danced in a mosh pit of at least a thousand people, watched fireworks and flames go off the top of the screens, and nudged our way into the center of the crowd. There were a few different DJs with John Summit at the heart of it and he delivered.

Everywhere we looked people were dressed in the ultimate music festival attire, which nowadays means bodysuits and pashminas, not flower crowns and sandals.

There were some annoying people:

Many women got on their boyfriend’s shoulders, blocking our collective view of the stage.

We get it. You have a boyfriend. Somebody loves you. Now get down.

When a drunk woman got on the shoulders of her six-foot-whatever boyfriend and started bouncing up and down, we all became afraid that our necks would be broken when she inevitably fell down. Then, a staffer, like Moses parting the Red Sea, made his way through the crowd and told her to get down or get kicked out.

Like the year before, there were watered-down vodka lemonades and tasty street tacos.

By the end of the night, I looked like the last ten minutes of prom. I had thick globs of makeup in the corners of our eyes and hair that was somehow both limp and standing on end. My back was tweaked, which was a mild improvement from the year before when I leapt up and down so much that I limped for at least a week and had a vein bulging in my calf.

We followed the crowd off the island and then made it home safely, ready to get off our feet and wipe off our glitter.

Experts Only was even better than the year before. The crowd had more than doubled in size. The energy in the audience was palpable and I could feel the music vibrating through me, making it impossible not to feel like I was a part of something.

Above all else, it is one of the many essential experiences that we probably won’t have in a world ruled by AI. The festival was all about coming together as a group, dancing to good music, produced by a talented DJ, who has created an authentic, not artificial, experience for us. There will always be a way to hear about events like these, but not to live them. Hearing about these things will never be the same as feeling sweaty bodies brush against yours at a concert, jumping up and down to the beat, and yes, being lifted up on your boyfriend’s shoulders in order to see above the crowd.

So, while we all await our technological fate, make plans to experience all of the authentic, human moments that you can.

Until next time, Experts Only.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about my birthday celebration a few months earlier.