My advice for enjoying Coachella? Embrace sleep deprivation and heat stroke: there’s so much to do and see at this music and arts festival in Indio, CA, you won’t want to bother resting, and it’s so hot you won’t be able to sleep much past 9am anyway. (Plus when you combine the two, they add up to a wonderfully loopy and perfectly free high, if you’re into that sort of thing.) I suppose you could go the easy route and stay in a hotel, but then you’d be denying yourself some of the precious and hilarious bonding moments that transpire when you go a little bit feral (i.e.: shower like I did, with a hose!), and surround yourself with people who are able to laugh at anything, most importantly themselves.
As far as the music and art are concerned, sure, see you’re favorites, get some advice from your indie-rock-god friends about what the coolest new band is, who you can brag to all your other non-indie-rock-god friends about seeing before it broke. But you might surprise yourself—your most memorable moment might come when you least expect it. For me it came on Saturday night while watching a band I might not have bothered with otherwise because they’d become too poppy or too mainstream or too whatever. But I was wrong, The Killers freakin’ killed it. Maybe it was the fact that every song was relatable, heroic and more rock’ n’ roll than I realized it could be; maybe it was my newfound and infectiously energetic friend who convinced me to see the show, or maybe it was the fact that I could feel the necessity of release—the kind that can only come from singing, screaming and dancing under the stars in a field of full of happy strangers—pulsing in the crowd around me, but man it was good.
And that’s what Coachella is all about—encountering something new, whether it be a new thought inspired by a new friend, a new way of viewing art, a new way of dancing to an old band you thought you had already sized up. It’s fitting that “Coachella” means seashell in Spanish, because just as no one shell in the ocean is exactly the same, neither will be any of the experiences you’ll have at this festival. So my advice to you is: just say yes to as many of them as possible.
Damn, we went the easy route and stayed in a hotel… but we still had some precious moments
Great article!
Coachella does not mean seashell in spanish. Concha is the spanish word for seashell (concha de mar, if you want to get specific).