On days like today when only enough heat radiated for a few clouds of rain to move in, I feel as though I'm expected to long for what the sun brings me. Similarly to how most days have been recently, I've become comfortable with the gray in the sky and droplets of rain hitting the windows I'm found continuously peering through. Against the single screen covering one of three windows in my bedroom, the windshield of my car that has terrible wiper blades to begin with, and beating against the window in our kitchen where often times in the summer our banana plant is tall enough to cover our view outside anyways, making the day seem seem like it is gloomy outside despite how bright it is. Today's rain came twelve hours after its prior spell that covered anyone and everyone standing without shelter in Charlotte and the surrounding areas yesterday. I stood with my head tilted and my body covered with a plastic disposable poncho that stuck to my skin like another layer I was begging to peel off. The day had begun as such; clouds were threatening to bust, but they were never dark enough to be menacing. I had never experienced a Warped Tour that I found myself caught in the rain like this. In 2016 there was humidity, then rain, then gathering of people in the amphitheater during a lightning delay, only for the event to persist with a rainbow that shot across the sky over the amphitheater cover as I splayed out on the grass and listened to The Maine play Girls Do What They Want on the Left Foot stage. Contrary to past experience, I found my eyes at the horizon yesterday and never once found a rainbow. My shoes never dried. The humidity never ceased. Only once did I find myself "wishing this would end," and that presented itself in the form of light-headedness that continued while standing in line to get a picture with With Confidence, only a few hours after I had an out of body experience singing along to Godzilla with my face to the sky as rain drops pelted me in the face. During that set, I found myself feeling like nothing had ever been wrong, nor could anything go wrong ever again. To be left speechless by something so second-nature means to me that there's a part of this particular instance that can not at all be compared to others of its kind. I was put out of place in Virginia Beach where I had experienced this set up once before. It was still Warped Tour, just in unfamiliar territory, that left me feeling like I had no place to go, no place to belong, and we paced in the sun for hours on end waiting for something to happen, instead of making something happen. It had already been ingrained in my head that I had to make Charlotte the be-all end-all, if it didn't happen naturally. Needless to say, my last impression of the final cross country tour that is Warped Tour is something that, although I'm slowly finding my words here, has left me speechless.
Although I don't think Warped Tour as a brand is ending, it is certainly the end of an era for tradition's sake. Having attended 7 Warped Dates over the past 6 years, every year provided a different sort of experience that made a lasting impression. Like most others, I'm finding myself curious about the direction of the brand and far less concerned about the "end" of it all. Warped Tour has been on the move since 1995 and has housed some of the biggest names in the Alternative Rock world. With the breed of a different kind of genre under the umbrella of Pop Punk, a spotlight has been brought to names that may have stood in the shadows otherwise and I truly believe Warped will be classified as a missed opportunity for bands currently on the rise. It carries a reputation as the largest and longest running music festival in North America and was represented by at least 60 bands this year ALONE (not including bands local to the area), so to say there will be nothing else like it is an understatement.
By far the most peculiar aspect of Warped Tour is how you're taught and encouraged to feel like an individual in a crowd of people. That goes without saying for the acts on Warped Tour who orchestrate their own tours on a regular basis, but to have bands represented on such a broad spectrum that seems almost too large to be able to single someone out, I battled all day with feeling like I was by myself as part of the bigger picture. Perhaps the bigger picture is a final impression. Perhaps the bigger picture is the encouragement of a career. Perhaps the bigger picture is helping someone else find their worth in all of this Tour Water, sweat, burned skin, and 200 percentile of your walking goal for the day.
Joan Didion once wrote "our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted." I could never find why it was State Champs that continuously reminded me why I love live music. Or why it was With Confidence that had restored my faith in listening to music that strikes a nerve. Or how listening to The Maine, although I've never been a fan of The Maine, while staring at a rainbow post-thunderstorm, made me feel like I could finally take a deep breath. It is something I hold within me, something I have yet to admit to myself, but something I understand is as simple as: you're dancing with wet shoes to understand why you're dancing in the first place. #ForeverWarped