This music festival is still rising and getting better and better every year
We went into Elements Festival with a notebook, a press pass, and a plan to cover the sets. We came out with a compass traded from a wizard on Friday, a shoe situation I do not want to discuss, and no usable notes from Saturday at all.
Eight years ago I wrote that Elements was the best festival I had ever attended. I was at the first one in Brooklyn. I was at the last one at Lakewood. I am now four locations deep into a thing that started as a warehouse party and currently runs a ferris wheel.
I still hold the sentiment. That is the review. The rest of this is what happened.
The trade
I traveled to Elements with a group and one of my friends had a broken watch they had worn for 6 years because it was stopped at lucky 11:11. At Fun Factory there is a trading post and we decided this was the item to trade...a lucky watch. It was soon discovered that actually the watch was one minute short of 11:11.....stopping at 11:10. One minute short of the wish, one minute short of LUCKY. The wizard wanted to make a trade for this watch.
He shuffled around in the back looking for a comparable trade and came back with a working compass.
We traded. A watch stopped one minute short of lucky, for an instrument that still worked and helped us find north all weekend. A magical moment that can only be made at a place like Elements.
Things that happened to me
I found Rafiki at the Fun Factory by accident. I was not looking for it, I was going somewhere else, and I stayed for the rest of the set because he was killing it. And moments like this are the entire mechanism of this festival. You go somewhere on purpose and the good part happens on the way.
Nikita the Wicked at the water stage was the best set of my weekend and I am still excited to have found my new favorite dj.
I bought a candy covered soda at the sweet shop by the ferris wheel. I do not know what was in it. It was blue at the top and blue at the bottom and I drank all of it while CloZee came across the field, and I would like it on the record that this was one of the best twenty minutes of my year. In fact everything happening in the candy shop was a vibe. A real addition to the fest, and I hope the organizers know it was awesome!
The Mad Hatter brunch was not only fun but nourishing. The new stage builds were better than expected. The earth stage ended up being where I spent most of the weekend and I really appreciated the update with the deer in the center. Fire, was huge and was giving main character vibes all weekend.
Connecting with people
I handed out trinkets to people all weekend. You picked out of my bag either a ship steering wheel or an anchor. A wheel meant you should leave your situation and get moving, an anchor meant stay. Every single person lit up. Nobody asked what the catch was. My favorite was a couple that both pulled anchors, they were engaged to be married and found the micro-moment very cute.
And the good news is that Rawb Lane was findable 90% of the time I stopped at Fun Factory, doing what he does best, adding cheer and good vibes to the whole forest.
The high water mark
There is a famous line about standing on a hill and looking west and seeing the exact place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
I have been coming to this festival since the first in Brooklyn almost a decade ago. I have watched it move, lose a home, find another one, and grow into something that now stands up against festivals with twice the legacy and four times the budget.
I have not seen it crest yet. Elements is still climbing!
The rain
It rained on the way in. It always rains on the way in.
We spent multiple hours getting from the car to the gate and arrived looking like we had been pulled out of a lake. Nobody's spirits went anywhere. Dealing with the elements has been the joke here for years, and the joke is that they always show up, and the joke is that we always come back.
That is the deal you make with a festival named after.... the elements!
Thank you for reading and see you all next year <3
