Hopscotch CODA: An Organic Synergy
by Lucas Amick
Intro by Rob Leonard
Rob:
I’ts been a week since the first full day of Hopscotch festivities and four full days since it’s conclusion on Saturday. This was just enough time to recap the weekends events and each performance – and also shake the lack of sleep. Hopscotch was fantastic for having us and the nature of our group thrived in the artistic bubble that was created in downtown Raleigh – it was brief and never risked over extension. Lucas has taken some time to write his conclusions of the event and Bree took a million beautiful photos that can explain what may be hard to convey with words, which will be in another post. Here is part one of the finale of our Hopscotch posts and the return to normalcy.
Lucas:
All work and no play makes Jack Nicholson a murderous psychopath – it’s amazing what tedium can do to you. One of the most tedious aspects of my life has to be the twenty-plus hours I spend in purgatory each week – in my better moods I refer to it as a part-time retail job. Balding men often approach me and ask “Working hard, or hardly working?” Even in their absence of a few hundred miles (which, trust me, was very welcome) their words echoed in my ears, dancing with the melodies of indie rock. It was in this subconscious waltz that epiphany took hold: Happiness is a synergy of the two. Just one of the many important life lessons our adventures in Raleigh taught me.
There was Rob, the 29 year old editor armed with a music blog; Bree, the 23 year old photojournalism major armed with a Canon 5D (and a not inconsiderable level of sass); Luke, the 19 year old over-apologetic armed with a few philosophical quotes, elementary level French and esoteric movie references. Our Columbian entourage assimilated seamlessly into the alienated microcosm known more colloquially as Raleigh, North Carolina – Independent of the southern superficiality which surrounds it, yet lacking the metropolitan tension of the cities which it tries to emulate. Everything about it felt tangible, comprehensible – even as strangers in a strange land. Deja-vous from back home and city locals congealed into a familiarity which permeated kinship. Formality need not apply when a simple “What’s up?” is sufficient for both familiar faces and perfect strangers.
It was in this bizarre environment that I realized the motif of synergy which footnoted each of your experiences, more specifically the organic synergies which exhumed from every faucet of Hopscotch. What I am referring to when I say organic synergies are the practically metaphysical moments in life, moments where everything falls hand in hand into its proper place – the kicker is, you have done nothing to instigate them. It seems as if we were always in the right place at the right time, something I cannot even begin to describe here. To save this article from an obscene word count, I’ll summarize this synergy as one of the most bizarre sensations of my life. The sensation, however, was welcome – I almost forgot what bliss felt like.
Mac McCaughan Hopscotch 2015
I violently reject the notion that anything happens for some preordained reason, but life throws a curveball at your foundation from time to time. Maybe Plato was right, and the world consists of mathematical equations which dictate everything. Maybe Leapling, Mac McCaughan, and Warehouse’s monumental performances could be reduced to algorithms; maybe the camaraderie I felt amongst my two companions was nothing more than arbitrary brain function denoted by excesses of serotonin. Je ne sais plus. Bree suggested that it had something to do with the cosmos. Not that I buy into astrology in the slightest, but the substance of her argument is no less strange than the new world we trekked into. Not to mention, a synergy of the universe will always be more reassuring than an existential crisis. If I can accept that, then maybe the stars aren’t as shallow as the horoscopes making asinine attempts to dictate my personality.
Taking on these adventures with two of the finest specimens of the human race, a singular theme seemed to resonate in our escapades: Liberation. Hopscotch was a safe haven from the banal commonalities which plagued our daily lives. For one glorious weekend we escaped the assembly line of day-to-day experiences to play journalist in an alien city. The results of our venture into the unknown will sear itself into the most nostalgic corners of my brain, forever imprinting an experience as cathartic as it was ethereal.
Hopscotch CODA: An Organic Synergy @hopscotchfest @dearblanca @macmerge #hopscotch2015 Hopscotch CODA: An Organic Synergy by Lucas Amick Intro by Rob Leonard Rob: I'ts been a week since the first full day of Hopscotch festivities and four full days since it's conclusion on Saturday.
