Summer Festivals: A Playlist for the Night Before

A festival really starts the night before. The artist is the one who steps onstage, but for the rest of us, summer opens at the fingertips packing a bag. Folding in a change of clothes, checking the lineup one more time, marking which stages you can't afford to miss. Honestly, that night is my favorite part. Nothing has started yet, and still you're a little giddy — that in-between feeling. Sometimes I wonder whether what we're really waiting for all that time isn't the stage itself, but this night of waiting for it.

How to Warm Up the Season of Water

This summer is unusually full of water. PSY's Soaked Show is touring the whole country, WATERBOMB Seoul is soaking KINTEX, and S2O is filling Seoul Land. The scale of the stage, the way the water flies, the faces that gather — all different, and yet the three of them are strangely saying the same thing. Let's pass through the blazing daytime and stay cool while we do it. Instead of dodging the heat, they throw their arms around it and get drenched right along with the water. Less about enduring it, more about letting yourself come down with it, soaked through.

One song to warm up that summer early — quietly, here.

So that's how I build the night-before playlist too. A few uptempo songs to live the daytime heat in advance and nudge my heartbeat up a notch, and right at the end, one gentle song to cool the sweat on the way home. A playlist has its day and its night, in a way. If you pack the temperature for going up and the temperature for coming down together, the day turns out a little longer.

The Real Afterglow Is on the Way Home

Strangely, a festival's real afterglow lives not on the stage but on the walk home. You've changed out of the wet clothes, you're carrying the bass still lodged in your ears, and your tired body just walks. Only after the cheering dies down does the color of the day slowly show itself. That's when you need a quiet song — not to end the show, but to fold the day up neatly and tuck it away. If one song plays while the damp dries off you, that summer stays with you for a good long while.

The Night-Before Checklist

• Have you packed a change of clothes and a waterproof bag?
• Have you set your daytime tempo with a few uptempo tracks?
• Did you save one gentle song for the walk home, right at the end?
• Do you have the room to not overdo it, and to let the stages you'll miss go?

Open the window, switch on the fan, and picture tomorrow's stage while you live this season once in advance. The festival is a single day, but the night spent waiting for that day belongs to us, tonight. Because summer is always short — so let it soak you through.