Metro Pulse/Music/Eye on the Scene

Down and Dirty after Bonnaroo

Ellen Mallernee reports on breaking camp at Bonnaroo. I'm barefoot now. My flip-flops got irretrievably wedged in the mud earlier today when I was dancing at the North Mississippi All-Stars� show, and I had to abandon them there along with dozens of other sunken pairs.

My arms and legs are smeared with dark Bonnaroo mud. I have a wicked sunburn, and I'm dying for a shower (as it's been four days now) and for the use of bathroom that kindly flushes away the waste of all those who came before me. My muscles have a pleasant ache from sitting in traffic for 12 hours, trudging the dusty Bonnaroo roads, and dancing as uninhibitedly as I ever have.

I am now wretchedly broke. After food, water, beer and supplies, I spent the last of my money on a clean dress, a veggie tofu wrap and four bags of ice. I realize that at Bonnaroo I'm not supposed to care that I'm dirty and stinky and dancing with sheer glee—everyone else is too. So I try to disregard my trivial worries. More importantly, I tell myself, I've spent the last four days pushing through a community of 80,000 smiling hippie-pretenders to get a more intimate view of the performers who have marked my evolution as a person.

I've already dismantled most of our camping supplies and am sitting in our last remaining tent—a mesh number with a table and five chairs, our living room for the last few days. I nurse a vicious splinter in my foot, drink a beer, and talk with a strange guy who has ambled into our tent on account of the Radiohead song blaring from our boom box.

He tells me he has been sitting in the grass across the way for five hours waiting for his brother. He is awash with pride when he tells me that he's "a local" who snuck into the festival. And still, it surprises me that Manchester natives are so enthusiastic about admitting whole armies of rebel-rousing folks into its modest limits. He gives me cigarettes in exchange for a beer and my company.

We watch my inebriated neighbor in the grassy area next to us. He is constructing his shelter from three nearby trash cans, the discarded back seat of a car, and a piece of plywood. He yells incoherent things, flails about and throws the trash barrels down like Hollywood version of a caveman would. He is obviously sick from the beating sun, innumerable drugs, and a sleepless night. Finally, content with its makeshift arrangement, he crawls inside his cave of trash and passes out, his blond head poking out from the rubble, his cheeks ruddy, his lips agape. Though this initially strikes me as pee-in-my-pants funny, I'm sure that in the end it'll only leave a sad impression on me like so many things that I've seen at Bonnaroo.

Perhaps most disturbing was the sunburned three-month-old baby suckling her mother under Saturday's unyielding sun while she yelled out, "Tequila! Only a buck a shot!" Or perhaps the couple sitting Indian-style outside their R.V. sniffing lines of cocaine. Either way, I've seen sights that have made my heart drop.

But I came for the music and the camaraderie, and no doubt I've found it here. Most everyone seems light-hearted; their step is light and hellos are frequent. Generosity runs as rampant as the drugs do here; people pass bottles of water and spray-mist strangers' blistered shoulders with water bottles.

I pride myself on thinking that I've spent the past three days at the Woodstock of my generation and that I've survived a test of all my senses and limits. But I've breathed as much marijuana as I have air; I've fought off a tenacious bout of allergies, and I've slept as little as my body will allow. Frankly, I'm tired. Though The Dead are set to play tonight, I decide I want to go home. Now. Home to my bed and a shower and my two cats who wind circles around my ankles.

Go.

Thursday: Eat dinner with someone special at Korea House. Then take in a movie. Or go to the West Town Mall. Just spend some quality time in West Knoxville. She loves you very much. She wants you to come home to her. Why do you resist her so?

Friday: This Pilot Light line-up—Trailer Bride, Lucero, Low Skies and Central Falls—is really quite amazing for $7.

Saturday: Well, you could blow a lot of money at some bar or you can listen to some great music for free in wonderful downtown Knoxville at Saturday Night on the Town.

Sunday: Sundays were made for hiking in the rain. Go enjoy the Eastern Hemlocks before they're all dead.

Monday: If I could live my life all over/ It wouldn't matter anyway/ Cause I never could stay sober/ On the Corpus Christi Bay.

Tuesday: Enjoy a martini and some Nashville swing with Justin Thompson at 4620.

Wednesday: Prepare for Thursday night's Sundown in the Citys, the first of the year.

—Madame "coulda shoulda woulda but I didn't" Georgie