Hello, my beautiful weirdos

This Saturday was Cruel World, the annual dark 80’s goth music festival in Pasadena. This year we took Bobby, who thankfully still has an interest in his parents’ music. I don’t know how long this will last before he thinks everything from our generation is lame. Or maybe he won’t? I never tired of my mother’s 1950’s bebop jazz - I still think it’s the coolest thing ever - but with that said, I have not passed that music on to my kids. Just goes to show how much is lost generationally.

This was the first of the four years I’ve been in which the weather was cold and rainy - thank god I brought a poncho on a last minute impulse, only thinking of having a dry place to sit; I ended up wearing it for the four hours it rained in earnest. Despite spending a day putting a cool, sexy goth outfit together and watching hair tutorials, because of the cold I ditched it all and just wore pants and a t shirt and a jacket. Boring. But boy did I appreciate that later when the temperature dropped and we still had to be outside for several hours! Also, I must admit it was nice to not have to wear a dorky hat and worry about re-applying sunscreen all day. 

As far as lineups go, this year was my least favorite, and I’m afraid that may continue to be the case as the festival naturally moves on from the original goth heavy hitters into more 80s pop and modern goth bands (I personally kind of enjoyed the down-ballot modern goth bands early in the day more than I expected - they still have the spirit of the original movement, whereas some of the legend bands have moved on and lost their bite, as it were). But as always there were too many bands to see, anyway, so we caught the ones we really wanted to see and had a full day: Actors, She Past Away, OMD, Madness, The Buzzcocks, Blancmange, Alison Moyet, DEVO (Bobby’s favorite), The Go Go’s (kind of a hot mess imho), and finally New Order. We were there about twelve hours and were wrecked. Theo stayed home with a sitter. 

I’ve had a lot of feelings about this festival - every year it awakes in me a certain saudade that I can’t really put my finger on; is it wanting to be young again? Is it the joy of community? Is it some youthful romanticism? It’s all things, really, and this year in particular for a few hours there was no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. It was great escapism at a time when we need it most, and for that, I’m thankful. Since none of my favorites were there this year (Bauhaus and the various offshoots), I didn’t have any magical moments. But it was still a profound experience, one I’m recovering from emotionally a bit today. Feeling dark and sad about the political news today - Rump gets to remove protective status from Venezuelans, the horrid soul-crushing budget bill advances, ugh ugh ugh. It’s a harsh reality to come back to, for sure. 

Theo is off on his 5th grade trip for two nights to Astro Camp, and that feels odd and sparks a certain mom anxiety in me, hoping he’ll be ok. It’ll be just me & Bobby until Wednesday which feels wrong (the H will no doubt be working every night). I’m trying to focus my energy on next weekend’s desert trip - possibly our last - as the next thing to look forward to. In between I’m just taking things one activity at a time, trying to not be overwhelmed and stay grounded. Life in a fascist dictatorship is a marathon, not a sprint.