The hardy ones.

[wu]

If only I could revert to just having a reptilian brain, everything would be so much simpler. It's not like we can claim authorship over neocortical eloquence; most of our greatest and most executive functions happen without our initiative. Maybe that's why people wear out their lives in pursuit of so-called higher education, so that they can feel some kind of control over a part of their mental environment. But the reptilian brain. Its only concerns are food, sex, and defense. Really, all the world's struggles can be distilled down to these. That'd be nice. No cortex; no existential angst. No more sleepless nights slinging my wants and needs between rock and stone, no more what ifs, as ifs, or if onlys.If only. There's so much regret in those two little words. And so much else besides.If only it hadn't rained so consistently, so apocalyptically, in Bristow, Virginia, my friends and I wouldn't be as close as we are now, after having morphed into a massive blue ameboid for the duration of the show, the 4 of us huddled under a blue tarp that very well should have been targeted for destruction, if the rain gods had any sense of humour. Which they don't of course.Rain is a serious business. It dilutes everyone's personal grandiosity down to simple truths. We clutched each other under our tarp to keep the rain off our heads. We got so comfortable under our blue tarp, that as the concert wore on and the water filled our shoes, we felt the rest of them far away from us, like we were waiting for the bus in the rain all by ourselves, watching the street pleadingly for it to arrive, and had fought the indignity of waiting under the shelter, and lost. Sometime during Paranoid Android the irony was too much to bear, and there must have been some sort of speciation event that made us brave enough to step out from our blue womb, out into the rain, to see what the rest of humanity had lost while we still hung on to our gangly, vestigial appendages -Radiohead fans are so dedicated. Either that or their essential machinery has already sustained multiple compounding injuries such that this sad lot, stood fast on the lawn, couldn't find it in their hearts to be anywhere else at the moment. It took me a few days to feel warm again, but listen. Listen:All I NeedJigsaw Falling Into PlaceLucky15 StepNudePyramid SongWeird Fishes/ArpeggiMyxomatosisIdiotequeFaust ArpVideotapeParanoid AndroidJustReckonerEverything In Its Right PlaceBangers + MashBodysnatchersEncore 1:Like Spinning PlatesOptimisticKarma PoliceGo SlowlyPlanet TelexEncore 2:Fake Plastic TreesThe National AnthemHouse of Cards