Childish Gambino’s Pharos Experience and the Connection of All 3 Albums.
Donald Glover continues to break paradigms in fan experiences
Written by Erik De La Cruz
My phone buzzed. As I pick up my phone, I see a Twitter notification. I noticed the username Childish Gambino with a link to an app. An app called, PHAROS which displayed a blur of stars as we traveled at the speed of light through space and a strange number counts down. The internet frenzies looking for answers of what this could be? When the first words of the app’s guidebook are “the modern world has the answers readily available for us at a moment’s notice.” Yes, we do have answers available at our fingertips, but no one can Google search the mind of Donald Glover. However, this uncertainty of not knowing is the “beauty of our mystery to be celebrated,” says the guidebook.
“PHAROS is a gathering of the 5 intuitives of the human experience: tribe, ritual, experience abstraction, architecture, language.”
We were the ship that finally landed on a blue planet at a place called Joshua Tree, California, on the weekend of September 2-4th, 2016. We all blindly purchased $99 tickets for a ‘full album experience’ knowing no details of what would even take place. Corporations spend thousands if not millions of dollars to create apps/platforms to convince consumers to use or download them, we often don’t comply. We did it for Gambino without a second thought.
In 2014, Childish Gambino on Complex said, “Coding is a beautiful thing” … “If there is a God, he definitely codes. There are fail-safes in the world. That’s code. I don’t want young black kids to aspire to be rappers or ballers. Even lawyers and doctors—those are service positions. I want them to be coders. They can make their own worlds then. They don’t need anybody else.”
Childish Gambino created an outside world which consisted of elements within his mind. An outsider who his entire life has longed for a tribe, manifested one in the middle of the desert. He chose to create a system in which we could purchase tickets directly from app rather than using a third-party, with a set price because we are all the same. No one person there was above anyone within this tribe, we all gathered with like-minded individuals where “Small talk was discouraged. Real talk when possible.” That was my favorite part, this illusionary barrier of communication was broken to get straight into someone else’s passions, fears, insecurities, values, dreams.
Let’s start with the definition of the word:
PHAROS [fair-os] – noun – any lighthouse or beacon to direct sailors.
I arrived to camp with 9 other friends in two cars. All unaware of what we had signed up for on a Sunday night in the desert. A huge white dome in the distance as we parked our car between shrubs, that must be where he will perform I thought to myself…
Tents were scattered throughout the dirt varying colors everywhere. We walked over to the central area where we were surrounded by The Hub, cocktail bar, general stores, and food trucks. The Hub had a ping pong table and two large cubes full of outlets to charge your phone. It felt very homey, like this was a tailgating party or the backyard of a friend’s house. We traveled up a hill guided by blue lights where they were screening FX’s Atlanta.
We lined up anxiously. We reached security and they put our phones into Yondr pouches that were magnetically locked. I was excited already. There had to be a reason Gambino wanted no phones.
I walked into the dome surrounded by projections of stars throughout the entire ceiling. The stars moved down and for a while everyone around me felt as though the stage was lifting from the ground. It was quite the illusion; nobody knew what was going on. Angst and confusion surrounded me. Some people snuck their phones in which definitely threw off the vibe. But before I could delve deep into that… Ludwig Goransson, a choir, a pianist, and others appeared on stage. Childish Gambino appeared and everyone lost their minds. What happened next was a blur but the visuals were so transformative and intriguing. You couldn’t help but phase out in appreciation of the effort put into creating this experience. You had alien skeletons dancing, what looked like Grim Reapers dancing, even Transformer-style skeletons. The projections morphed various times from space, rock formations, a flood created by rain, to a neon forest where skeletons were vibing to the music just like us. An absolute trip and I wasn’t even under the influence.
Childish Gambino wearing neon paint, a yellow and purple skirt, yellow shoes, and long braids gave off a very tribal feel. His vocals were better than ever before. His passion was displayed in the character he chose to portray completely entrancing the audience. The best categorization of sound displayed from Gambino could be stated as, “galactic tribal funk.” And it was absolutely beautiful. The finale is what left so many in absolute awe… without even asking us we all seemed to look up as all the instruments were playing and we became the passengers of a ship with the top of the dome as our window. We were again traveling through space rapidly while barely “dodging” asteroids, constellations shaped as animals, and planets. It felt so real. The audience would budge as if you were sitting behind home plate at a baseball game and a foul ball comes at you (even though you know that there is a net). It was such an immersive experience that it became a virtual experience in real life. Then, we see a large glowing blue planet/sun headed straight towards us until we collided with it creating a flash of white. Absolute silence. A robotic woman voice then proceeds to tell us that PHAROS was over. Tears in my eyes and in complete shock, I look around settling back into reality. Awe-inspiring and an overload of senses. Quickly, wondering what it all meant…
Camp was his first album which directly tied into the screenplay of Because the Internet with “The Boy” who never got off the bus. And when he did, he joined his father Rick Ross who picked him up. The most famous albums work as trilogies, Kanye West’s College Dropout/Late Registration/Graduation, Eminem’s The Eminem Show/Encore/Curtain Call, Tyler, The Creator’s Bastard/Goblin/Wolf, The Weeknd’s House of Balloons/Thursday/Echoes of Silence, even Adele’s 19/21/25. So how does Pharos have a connection to Because the Internet?
In 2014, Childish Gambino released a short film called “Chicken and Futility” starring The Boy and his friends.
The Boy (played by Donald Glover) expresses deep notions throughout the short film but one that stands out the most is when he speaks on an event that saddens him.
“I saw this moth in my room and it was going towards the light bulb and it was, you know, buzzing around it. And I wanted to know why they did that. So I looked it up. It’s because the moths are looking for the moon. They’re looking for moonlight because they’re trying to fly North. So this moth everything in it is telling it to do exactly what it’s doing. Like, it’s doing the right thing. But it’s just the wrong light. Like, it’s just the wrong light. … It just kind of bummed me out, it seemed so futile.”
Hasn’t clicked yet? Let me explain.
We are the moths. We traveled to a beacon of light. And to camp. As humans we don’t necessarily need to travel North but we all long towards something. Something bigger than ourselves, a connection towards others and feeling accepted within our community. One would think we are more intelligent than a moth to mindlessly follow a beacon of light, but are we? We do have the luxury to critically think as humans, but do we? As soon as that final flash of light happened it kind of snapped me back as if I was a moth who just hit the lightbulb only to get burned. We then were able to look at the grander picture and realize our moon is finding a certain purpose within us.
We were brought into the world of Childish Gambino (with what could be the final bow for that particular character) completely mesmerized by the allure of the PHAROS or beacon. We are all different but for one day we were brought together in blue (our frequency color) as “The Fifth Tribe.”
Donald Glover has inspired us to be fearless when it comes to creating our own worlds. For us to finally find our moon to fly to. He had given us the code all along.
Tweet me your thoughts at @erikdelacruz
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