Moogfest, 21C, Aretha and Me

So if I'm wondering if I'm still hip that's probably a huge hint that hipness (hipeveity like longevity) passed me by a long, long time ago (I can hear my millennial children saying, "Duh!"). But when Susan and I decided to go see Aretha at DPAC, I assumed that was huge confirmation of my hipevity but the minute I got out of my car at 21C (come on....surely you know wh...at 21C is, right?!) I knew I wasn't in Kansas (aka North Carolina) anymore.

21C is a hotel and museum in one that's located in downtown Durham. A block in one direction is our restaurant for dinner, Rue Cler, and only 2 blocks in the other direction is the magnificent DPAC Performing Arts Center. The hotel is a beautiful old bank building that's been renovated into Hotel 21C. There's hardly a sign at the entrance (thankfully I'd put it into my nav system or I wouldn't have known I'd gotten there when I was there). Parking is limited to 3-4 cars but a nice young man (not the hippest term, is it?) met me and explained it was Moogfest2016 (huh?), that he would park my car and I could check in on the 2nd floor which was the hotel lobby.

As I walked into the first floor lobby there were folks walking around that didn't look like the people I see in Wilson at El Tap and JAC's. One young lady (I think) had on (I think) a skin tight, multi-colored body suit (I think....option B-it was simply painted onto her skin....there was no way to tell which with a quick pass). Half of her head was shaved and the other half had platinum blonde long hair. Her eyes were either extremely blue or enhanced with ice blue contacts and a large hood, standing straight up, was circling her face, emphasising her look. Sythesizer music blared from a room when she opened the door and walked in. I was waiting for the elevator in khakis, a blue sweater and plaid buttoned down shirt. and she was looking at me with the same quizzical look I had. Was I "throwing shade?" God I hope not but I felt very old and very boring....Whitey McBoring Whitester in the flesh....Wiltson come to town.

In only a few seconds the elevator opened and took me to the 2nd floor lobby of 21C. Incredible art is everywhere with an emphasis on photograpy. Each piece is large and stunningly vivid with a subject that catches your attention immediately. A 6 foot tall by 4 foot wide photograph of a beautiful red headed young teenage girl, with porcelean white skin and Irish freckles, wearing a bright red adult dress all against a bright red background and holding a white bunny upside down. Is the bunny alive? Dead? What's going on in the picture? No matter what the artist was trying to tell me as the viewer, I couldn't take my eyes off of her. In the background the sounds of whale noises combined with a synthesizer made an eerily beautiful but odd background music. The front desk was to the left with a very nice lady asking if she could help me. Under the plexiglass of the front desk were cicles of hundreds (thousands?) of little plastic ice cream cones, dipped in chocolate and arranged so perfectly as to make me not sure if it was really plastic toys, or a hologram? Or was it something else? I could hardly pay attention to the paper I signed advising the nightly rate trying to figure out the art underneath my fingertips.

I had to know what Moogfest was, asked and was told it's a sythesizer music gathering in downtown Durham that expected to attract 10,000 people. That explained the music I heard everywhere and it kinda explained the eccentric people I saw (of course they considered me odd too...or worse...old and boring).

Up a few more floors was our room which was very modern with funky chandeliers and lights, a round mini-bar (I couldn't tell how to even open it up) and a black and white bathroom that was stark and strangely beautiful. The 8 side by side windows of the room overlooked the corner of Corcoran St. and Main and I saw teams of funky, Moogsters walking by. The half shaved/half haired head I'd seen earlier was a common sight on the street below. Baggy pants, beards, t-shirts, dreads, jeans and beautiful and handsome young faces were everywhere. I was nowhere. An old nobody....but I was going to Aretha! So that younged me up a little, right?

This entire experience of the hotel-from getting out of the car to walking into the room had taken no more than 15 minutes but I felt very off-balance....like I'd walked out of the front door of my house in Wilson and right onto the moonscape. When meeting friends for an early dinner (2 who were from Charlotte, very urbane, very well traveled and very hip) and asked them if the hotel had caused them the same off balanced feeling, they said, "Susan and you are the first normal people we've seen since we arrived!" They like boring and old....or maybe we're not as boring as old as I've been worried about.

The Aretha Franklin concert was wonderful and she was and is an incredible performer even if I worried the entire evening she was going to trip over the cord from her microphone, or her long gold, spangly/sparkly dress and break a hip. But the Queen of Soul was still the Queen and all of her devoted subjects sang along to every word and danced in the isles. I worried about their hips too.

In the 60's I wore bell-bottomed pants, in the early 70's I wore a pair of platform shoes (my brogan loving father never understood), but the khaki and polo style of my college years has served me well for the balance of life. I wonder if the young lady who I saw when I first walked into the hotel will still have the same hairstyle and outfits when she's 58 (and 11/12 if I'm being exact)? Or will her next fashion morph be with a more conservative tilt? I'm not the hippest guy in the world (and never was, even with bell bottoms and platform shoes on) but I now know about Moogfest and it's people and I have great respect (too easy but I can't help myself) for all kinds of folks and it's the diversity in the world that I enjoy the most. Even for an old guy.

The motto for Moogfest2016 is "Sythesize Love and Oppose HB2" and even though I'm someone's grandfather (two someone's grandfather), the Moogsters and I have more in common than might be apparent at first glance. And that, my friends, makes me (at least a little bit) hip.