The dot blinked in and out of view behind a haze of black and white smoke. The dot brought pure bliss. Few dots have ever made me so happy ― perhaps the collective dots in a pointillism painting or certainly the symmetrical freckles on either side of my girlfriend’s cheeks ― and this one in particular seemed to be emanating a spiritual force.
My colleague, Bill, and I were so far away from the main stage at the inaugural Meadows Festival in Queens, New York, that in the rare moments we could see Kanye West at all, he was just a bouncing blip in the horizon.
But witnessing this bouncing blip still felt as if we were watching a joyous beam of energy and light. Or an ultralight beam, if you will.
Kanye is love, Kanye is life.
After many failed attempts, both of us had waited for what felt like a lifetime to see Kanye. Canceled shows and a ticket unexpectedly taken by a family member (Bill’s sister) had thwarted us in the past. In college, I ran event planning organizations and would always say my dream event would be to get Kanye to perform. I once booked Kendrick Lamar, but that just wasn’t quite the same.
Obviously, Kanye has not been famous our entire lives. My first-ever concert was Hootie & the Blowfish and, at the time, I thought it was the best thing ever. As a child living in Northern Virginia, I certainly had no idea who Kanye West was.
But Kanye has been famous for our entire “adult” lives. Personally, I remember watching his videos on MTV’s “TRL” in grade school. I remember waiting in my car for class to start in high school, blasting “808s & Heartbreak” with my best friend. As a college radio host and station manager, I couldn’t count how many times I played songs from “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.”
So with the chance to see Kanye at the Meadows Festival, Bill and I knew we had no choice but to make the bus-, train-, taxi- and walk-filled trek to Citi Field.
Armed with media wristbands for entry and VIP access provided by an invite from Tequila Don Julio, we entered the festival shortly before Kanye’s protégé, Chance the Rapper, was set to perform.
We first headed to the guarded VIP space to start this spiritual journey off right ... with tequila. After drinking cocktails and doing a shot of Don Julio 1942 in the back of an Airstream trailer converted into a bar, we were mentally well-prepared to continue onward in search of happiness and higher meaning.
Tequila soaked, we wandered amid the excited hordes.
Wanting to see Chance, we headed toward the main stage. The crowd already seemed restless. A teen shrugged in a defiant attitude while hurling an empty beer can. But instead of throwing it far like people normally do, she only launched it about 10 feet forward, so everyone knew who did it and glared. The person directly behind us burned me with a lit cigarette. Still, in this moment, I barely cared. Chance and Kanye were so close and we were all in this together.
Chance’s set was great, if slightly overshadowed by his theatrical choices as he had costumed-animal characters onstage talking back and forth with him throughout the hour or so. This use of Jim Henson-esque figures is something Chance has been doing throughout his tour for his latest album, “Coloring Book.”
As more or less fans of the comedic skits in Kanye’s earlier albums, Chance’s theatrics certainly felt like a fun continuation of that lineage. But what was definitely fun the first handful of times became a bit of a slog the 20th time around as the lion, Carlos, kept interrupting Chance’s biggest hits to give him a variation on a message about slowing down. Although it was inventive and creative to turn a festival show into a musical production, this also kept the energy low by design.
Wandering away from the final songs of Chance’s set, we explored the rest of the festival grounds. Taking place in the parking lot of the New York Mets’ Citi Field, the space had a different feel than typical music festivals’ grassy fields. Anyone on the ground was not lounging out in the standard festival fashion, but screaming obscenities to themselves while overwhelmed by something they’d digested earlier.
We passed teens chanting for the tropical house artist Kygo while another teen asked person after person where to find his show. Somehow, nobody seemed to know. We also saw musician Twin Shadow performing Prince’s “Purple Rain” to an awkwardly small crowd compared to the other stages.
This didn’t seem like the place for artistic tributes, it had become a place for vice. After passing an advertising area for Viceland and a stand serving human-sized cans of Budweiser, we ordered barbecue food and drank large Bud Lights.
And finally we saw Kanye West. At least until he abruptly left.
As the October cold started setting in around 8:50 p.m., a platform of lights began to descend from above the main stage. Kanye’s song “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1” began to play. Fireworks started shooting and exploding into the sky and the Kanye dot appeared onstage. It was magical, or as Bill put it:
There are three moments that define every person’s life. One is marrying the significant other that you love, and another is holding your newborn baby in your arms for the first time. I have no experience with either. I’m just guessing because those sound good. But the third is seeing Kanye West live onstage.
Up to this point, my life has been full of bad decisions and during the night Kanye was onstage, my ankle was killing me because I wore bad shoes thinking it was going to rain. It didn’t.
Yeah, my ankle was killing me. Who cares? All these bad decisions had somehow led me to this moment. I had finally seen the light. I had finally seen all of the lights, all of the lights. But then, perhaps as all great things do, the show abruptly ended and the dot disappeared.
About 50 minutes into the show and midway through the song “Heartless,” Kanye cut the music and said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. There’s a family emergency, I have to stop the show.”
The festival organizers came onstage to tell the crowd there would be a 10-minute intermission. Shortly after, they returned to announce that Kanye had left and the festival was over.
With thousands of people checking their phones at once, finding answers was impossible. The festival seemingly only had one small exit and as everyone tried to escape, the crowd eventually shoved the area’s outer fencing down for a quicker departure. With the trains clogged, festivalgoers wandered Queens trying to get far enough away to hail Ubers or cabs without ridiculous surge-pricing.
It wasn’t until Bill and I had gotten to our separate apartments over an hour after Kanye disappeared that we learned that the family emergency involved his wife, Kim Kardashian. Armed men posing as police officers had reportedly robbed Kim at a hotel in Paris, France. The thieves had stolen millions of dollars worth of jewelry and fled the scene on motorbikes. They’re still at large.
“She begged for them to let her live and [said] she has babies at home,” a source told E! News. “Then they wrapped her mouth in tape and put her in the bathtub. She thought they were for sure going to kill her.”
A reminder that the light in the world can blink away at any moment was a sobering experience that eclipsed the confines of a music festival flowing with rivers of Bud Light.
As Kanye sang earlier in the night, we’re perpetually “surrounded by the fuckin’ wolves.” Kanye had to disappear from the stage to make sure Kim was safe.
The thing about a blinking light is that it’s only beautiful because those moments of darkness exist, as well. And while waiting in the dark, all you can do is hope the light isn’t gone for good.
Before You Go
