OSHEAGA, welcome home

When I write about osheaga it’s some thing that comes very deep from my heart and I’m lucky to have been able to experience this festival more than once and I’m also very lucky to have experienced it with a significant other someone from my past who I really loved. When I go to Canada all I see in my life and in the world is absolute beauty they have a living culture that is just so different from what I experience in cities in the United States. The eating, the shopping, and all of those things in between are just so different and I just wanna talk about those experiences a little bit.

First off I just want to start with how disappointed I am that I’m not there right now realistically I wouldn’t have been there right now anyway but I would have just been getting back. At the end of my experience last year I got home and immediately booked a hotel for Occie that the next year and this happened to be the 15th anniversary of OSHA get this one that we unfortunately have missed and I knew that I was about to experience something I have never experienced before. For me live music has always been something that is super important to me and holds really really high in a place in my life of things that I can do to make life worthwhile hearing music live seen musicians live being around other people who love music just as much as me is such a great feeling that I think you you don’t understand really unless you have been in that culture I think a lot of people who love EDM music really really get to experience this culture because of them out of the music festivals that’s around EDM music and I feel so lucky to also be a part of that and to be so welcomed in by all of those people who enjoy music just as much as me.

But the story when I left Osaka last year I got home and immediately booked my hotel for the next year I knew it was going to be something special and a lot of my photos that I took during the festival and post it on Facebook were re-posted by the festivals page and I ended up being one of the top 10 people who posted about OSHA got ever and they obviously noticed this and began posting a lot of my experience through their page. Obviously I get the ticket and I wait for the lineup and it looks absolutely amazing as always that’s not something that I’m surprised about but then this pandemic happens and it hits like a ton of fucking bricks. The week before my job shut down I was actually in San Diego with my friend Steven obviously we had no clue how serious this pandemic was or else I probably wouldn’t have been there but I am lucky that I didn’t get to go because it really has helped hold me over this entire time since I didn’t get to go to Canada walk. While I was there we realize how serious this thing was getting and I noticed an email from the hotel that I booked my thing at that said that they basically they didn’t want me to come and that I needed to cancel my reservation not because of me obviously but because they didn’t want us citizens up and out of the city and unfortunately it seems like that is still standing today. For a little bit I thought OK maybe there’s a chance that they will get rid of this Corentine shit and I’ll be able to go and experience music like you know you’ve never experienced it before. It’s something I have been looking forward to for so so so long and the closer and closer it got the more and more disappointed I began to feel because I knew that I wasn’t going to get to have this toll onto for the rest of the year.

And I know when I talk about hold me over for whatever I like with San Diego and with the best of all like I do have bipolar disorder and I do have a hard time waking up every single day and living a normal life so when I do have these really amazing experiences that make me understand the quality of life and what I can do with it it helps bring me to a position in my life where I can be static and I can stay here and I can be appreciative of what’s around me and stead of wallowing in depression and when I don’t have those things it’s really hard for me to keep myself out of that negative side of my brain play music especially live music is probably the top thing in the World that can set me apart for myself and make me really believe that anything is possible

The first year that I went to osheaga weed still wasn’t legal federally and that was also a problem for me and my ex because we smoked so often so when we got to the festival of coarse one of the first things we did was look for someone selling enjoys which we did find and it definitely made the trip a lot better but was something that maybe I shouldn’t have thought about so much while I was there but I guess I didn’t realize that at the time because I had never been there before I didn’t know how amazing of an experience I was about to get myself into. Once the first day was over and we got back to the hotel and I got in bed I was so sick I truly thought I was about to projectile vomit all over the hotel room I was so dizzy I barely even remember most of that night because I took so much antinausea medication I just passed right now. Obviously the next day I realized I had to be a little bit more prepared hydrate myself and actually eat something. So the next day or first move was to get some spare ribs because that shit hits a little bit different and they had an amazing barbecue truck they’re both years that we went and I am really glad that we went back both years. We eventually like got in a fight I was always under in Calio choose which really sucked because I love her and I really want to see her set but it was inevitable we were struggling at this moment in time and while we were fighting I remember saying to him like I am not going to miss this concert in this experience like I am not going to have a shitty time because you want to stay in this mindset and you want to fight me right now and you want to yell at me in public in front of all of these other people truly experiencing this festival right now and he got really upset at me. He basically said if I walked away from him and he couldn’t find me any more that he was going to go back to the hotel and take his car and drive home and leave me in Canada which has happened before so it was very stressful for me at this time to hear him say such things eventually he got back into the moment and we ended the experience on a really really high note. I saw ODESZA for the first time and that really blew my mind I stayed up from 11 AM to 3 in the morning three days in a row and was surrounded by people who just love music and life so much that my perspective on everything just drastically changed after this point.

When we return for the second year we were both so excited because we know how to prepare ourselves for the situation now we do that we drink water we know exactly what we should be wearing what should we should bring in our backpacks and I think that did really help elevate the experience being prepared. The first year when we went Osheaga Was a different location than it usually was held because they were doing construction so what we had experienced wasn’t what everyone else that goes to Osheaga regularly experiences, So the next year when we went we were extremely excited to see its original location and it was huge. The main area with the main stages in the Ferris wheel, and all of the food and the drinks, and the merch, and the big hill, and art and shit was probably just as big as Meriweather post pavilion if you know what Meriweather post pavilion is. We saw people like Gucci Mane, Childish Gambino, Hozier, flume, Young Thug, sales, like honestly all of our favorite bands that were already at the first show that we went to. Every single day that we were there We tried our best to really experience every single moment, we’d actually was legal at this point and you can bring up to 30 g inside so we had nine or 10 joints per day lots of alcohol lots of good food and really were just like laying down chilling listening to music and it was absolutely amazing.

There were multiple times where I found myself sitting and eating and having a conversation with somebody from the total opposite side of the world and we were just surviving as if we had known each other the entire time that the world has been alive and it’s so crazy to me that everybody that goes to festivals has such a high vibration that when you’re walking around in that situation you can just feel all of the good vibes that are coming from the people around you and you don’t feel scared to talk to any single person you just feel surrounded by so much joy and love that every single person there you would consider a friend. When I would go to the bathroom and wait in line I would meet and speak to somebody completely new and they would teach me some thing and show me a whole brand new side of myself that I wasn’t aware of and it was super beautiful.

When I look back at these times I do really appreciate Jacob for being there with me and experiencing these things with me because we do have a very similar way of doing things in the way that we like things to be done. But I also look back at these times and sometimes wish that maybe I have been experiencing these things by myself so that they could be more personal to me and that maybe I would have had slightly different experiences. For example during one of the shows there was water spraying everywhere and it was so hot all I wanted to do was run up to the water and get soaking wet and just be close to the stage and enjoy myself and he didn’t like doing things like that he won just didn’t like to get wet but he also wouldn’t be willing to put in the effort to experience things so if we have to wait in line to get on the Ferris wheel you very much didn’t want to do that if we had to talk to other people about what might be happening get directions for the boy he also definitely really did not want to do that in for me a blocked a lot of experiences unfortunately because we were together so I was always going to do what he wanted to do and a lot of Times we did to what I wanted to do it was about me but it could never be about me in the way that it was about me like if we were doing something I want to do it was his way because I want to make sure that he was comfortable all of the time and I think if I had been there by myself there would’ve been a lot more crowd surfing a lot more meeting people who I don’t know a lot more dancing and just being in the moment that’s some thing I’ve really like gained since the last time I visited osheaga So I was really looking forward to going so that I could apply that in my experience but they have done a really really good job with their marketing team and everybody that puts the festival together in figuring a way to reschedule and to get all of its amazing fans back to the festival next year and I truly truly cannot wait to be a part of that. It’s really an experience like no other, I feel lucky just to have been able to find out about it and to actually have gone twice is something that feels out of a dream and I just want to keep that dream going as long as I possibly can because it’s the best dream I’ve ever had. I’m going to post some pictures after this with some captions or a little story or explanations to help you guys understand the full capacity of how fucking cool this festival is.

When I go back and read over what I had written about osheaga it’s interesting to me that I didn’t go over the fact of how important it was that I was there with a significant other. Jacob was somebody that I could literally do anything around be anybody I never was embarrassed and I could always ask for what I needed and I think when you’re in a festival setting you need to go with people that you feel completely comfortable with it doesn’t have to be somebody that you’re dating but it has to be somebody that you are willing to be able to share literally everything with like this person is going to see you throwing up in the middle of the day. They are probably going to have to buy you some thing or you’re going to have to buy them something there’s going to be some sort of exchange of goods at this point if you need anything you’re that’s going to be the person that you were going to be borrowing your sweater from or asking to get you a water or hold your drink while you’re in the bathroom so you need to make sure that this is somebody you are 100% trust. I was so lucky to be able to go to Canada multiple times with my ex while we were together because those experiences are some thing I’m never ever going to be able to make again or get back on. He really was somebody that I could see myself doing anything with and so it was kind of amazing that we went and only gotten one or two fights together because it’s a really intense situation it’s a lot for people who have never been to a huge festival like a festival that capacity and I don’t think that I would have been able to call Osheaga and Canada a home in my heart without Jacob.