One Take on Lollapalooza + Photos

To say Lollapalooza was special is an understatement. Music, on the whole, brings strangers together, and live music lets them live life’s most precious moments on the same fields and venues. Those locations have been stomped on for years by music-lovers, scuffed by black boots in the 90s and 7-inch electric blue heels in the 80s. They’ve been pranced on by barefoot ballerinas with their partners wearing fringed vests. Confetti has fallen, love has been sparked, and eyes have met on and off the stages.

In the “everyday”, I walk to work, watching people on their phones line the sidewalks of the concrete jungle. What do we work towards? Goals are set and are forever far ahead of us– but what about the moments leading up to our achievements? Shall we spend our days looking upon screens or into books and movies that forbid our participation? There is a flame in all of us for human connection and it must be fueled every so often. As our time online snowballs, human connection dwindles and reality fades. For the younger generations, the desire to connect may be unknown and may even be starved.

However, I began to notice the young people of Lollapalooza, appearing with grand smiles. The kids, who had waited all year, were dancing, running through the streets, chatting with strangers, and looked alive and colorful. A ghostly generation with rose colored cheeks once again, sang along and greeted each other with open arms. In a time where one can easily hide away, I see music as a necessity, a force needed to bring people out of their shells and into communities. Live music is alive and thriving, and it imbues a natural, magnetic draw, better than any other hobby or fleeting escape from our humdrum, increasingly electronic, lives. Live music also lets the loners and outsiders communicate, without speaking but connecting through the music itself.

WRSU captured moments of the festival on film, thanks to Dante and Declan Intindola, who brought their cameras along. None of these photos were posed for, or thought about twice, but instead represent the raw emotion and sparks in the air at Lollapalooza: