UNGOVERNED BALL

The great part about the New York music scene is that literally everybody comes here to play.The less great part is that you must stay absolutely on top of your game knowing when your favorite groups are playing and at what moment their tickets go on sale. For huge events like Governor's Ball, it looks like this: Kanye, Beck, Robyn, The Strokes, The Killers, Father John Misty, Bully, M83, Bloc Party and, most importantly for me, my boyfriend. For such lineups, it is presumed sold out unless you pay double for a scalped ticket or have a backdoor hookup. Again, enter boyfriend. This was the first year that many friends would be playing the stages, getting VIP wristbands along with plus-ones. Sunday was to be my first time to New York's three-day, start-of-the-summer outdoor music festival on Randall's Island. Instead, it was the only cancelled day of the festival, with predicted day-long rain, lightning and thunderstorms, and what transpired to be a day of friends committed to making the best of changing plans.

There is a lot of me that finds change easy as pie- change jobs, change cities, change up the furniture, lose a bunch of material things, you got it. And then there is a part of me that feels like a cheese grater on elbow flesh about changing plans. I am not sure why, but there are times when an unexpected turn gives me strong kitty-in-water feelings. Plans have been coming together spontaneously and unpredictably lately, and I have been flexing my feeble 'just say yes' muscles. Say yes, stay out later, no expectations, trust. When I found out there was no festival yesterday, however, my mood plummeted. There would be secret shows and other happenings, to be sure, but my mind and heart were set on sunshine, music and crowds of sweaty fest-goers. As we waited for the rain to come, we rounded up a group of friends for tacos and drinks at Chilo's. Growing stronger by the hour, the most bubbly and driven of the group wrangled a pack of us into her car and took the crew up to Rough Trade to try to in ourselves to a Courtney Barnett free show. When we arrived, we caught sight of the first double rainbow I have ever seen in the city, echoed minutes later by the most beautiful sunset across the river. Golden sun melting over Manhattan, a bunch of cool friends lined up watching nature do her thing, I had to let go. There will be other festivals.