Four Tomorrowlands in, and this is the first I’ll be writing about a trip I planned without having gone. What gives?
It’s not as if I didn’t want to: Right as 40+ of my monsooners were heading off to Belgium, I was in a hospital room in Queens, meeting my daughters earlier than planned. They picked their own arrival date and mode of transportation, and it happened to be right when Tomorrowland was happening
So this year’s blogpost comes to you secondhand: pieced together from every photo shared on a group chat. I organized most of this trip from our hospital room, with the weirdest part is that all of it felt familiar as if they were old habits, apparently, even during a week that didn’t feel old or habitual at all for me.
It started with many boxes at my doorstep.
All home to randomized bracelets, welcome packets, easter eggs, treasure boxes, etc. etc. that I opened so I could match 40 names to 40 boxes, one post-it at a time.
In late June I hosted an orientation at my place for everyone to meet one another and pick up their bracelets, while mailing out the rest (with very good shipping insurance). By the time they boarded their flights, the group were already transforming from strangers into travel companions.
Yesi was Nisha’s plus-one last year and had so much fun she decided the trip needed her own plus-one, so this year she brought her friend Adda along for the ride.
Same with Cassidy, who went with me last year as Mimi’s plus-one, and showed up this year with his friend Matt.
By the time they made it to their hotel in Brussels, they became a pod with the rest of the group already stumbling upon each other through a combination of past trips and mutual friends. It’s a magnetism that will inevitably manifest when many well traveled people are put together in one group chat months in advance.
I’ve walked through Tomorrowland’s front gate 3 years in a row now, and I can vicariously still feel it what it’s like an ocean away: a long walk around many corners, a bag check, metal detectors, scanning your wristband, all with an anticipation of seeing where all the music’s coming from.
A few gates down, a different constellation of my squad was also scanning through. Cynthia’s one of the very first monsooners I ever brought anywhere, back in 2011. And this year she showed up with her husband Valentino and a small band of friends I haven’t yet met, until Tomorrowland made them mine too.
This was many separate friend groups, none of whom know each other at all, all converging on the same gate on the same day because at some point years apart they had said yes to this random guy’s idea of sharing a good time.
And then we got Keseena and Dominic, dressed to the nines for a music festival like it was still their wedding (which it kinda was because they made Tomorrowland their honeymoon).
5 months ago a few monsooners and I were standing in an ice chapel in Lapland watching them get married. Now here they are again, this time in a lot more glitter in a place with a lot less snow.
Then we’re back at the main stage where Jona, Jan, Eric, Penina, Sujay, and a dozen more faces I recognize from a half dozen different trips over a half dozen different years, all getting together for a group photo.
I used to want to believe I could be a connective tissue holding all of this together, but I might be just the convenient excuse everybody needed to meet one another.
We got the Main Stage standing tall after last year’s burned down . . .
. . . and the renovated Great Library stage for the ones who wanted a little more intimacy.
While all of that was happening on the ground, I also took care of the add-ons Tomorrowland has to enhance the experience. And I got over 31 people into the Tomorrowland Restaurant, which is the almost impossible to book, Michelin-helmed dinner overlooking Main Stage. Arranging this is a separate logistics puzzle every year, and almost harder than getting the festival tickets themselves for so m any people.
Ensuring everyone who wanted something got whatever they wanted, I made sure Val and Cynthia’s got their group of 10, my potpourri of 9 friends consisting of 3 different groups got theirs, and . . .
. . . Yesi and Adda got a table there too at the last minute (I’ll let it pass about paying more attention to the group chat haha!), which means that view overlooking the main stage made it into 3 completely different friend groups’ photo albums this year.
I’ll take this as a sign my Tomorrowland instincts are still sharp.
I also got a table for Amanda, Eric, Keseena, and Dominic enjoying the meat sweats at Tomorrowland’s BBQ restaurant, Brasa.
I’ve organized a lot of trips from a lot of weird places, but never from a hospital room. And it was around day two after scrolling through photos sent by 40 people for a festival I just had to miss this year, I had a feeling come over me how community happens “when you build it and they will come;” I always know the right group of people will trust each other enough to show up, whether or not the guy who started it all can make it there with them.
I missed my first Tomorrowland this year. I also met my identical twin daughters. I’d say that’s a fair trade.
Twins, you’ve got a lot of Post-its to live up to. See you all at the next one.
- At time of posting in Boom, Belgium, it was 23 °C - Humidity: 48% | Wind Speed: 16km/hr | Cloud Cover: hot and humid
