Call of the Tired

While the Insomniac employees working at EDC do not arrive at the Speedway dressed with as much sartorial flair as most of the opulently dressed Headliners, there is one accessory we all wear throughout the festival, and that is a walkie-talkie.

We strap them to our tanks tops, belt loops, and fanny packs, and with them we relay the vital information that keeps the festival flowing all weekend long. Some messages are mundane (“More ice at stage two”), some are serious (“A Headliner needs help”), and some you’ll hear only at Insomniac (“We need that bag of fake eyelashes for the Butterflies, ASAP.”) There is only one message, however, that sounds like salvation, and it is the call that goes out to all employees just before sunrise on the festival’s final morning, telling us to stop what we’re doing and assemble at the VIP cabanas.

Working at Electric Daisy Carnival has insane perks (all-access everything, great parking, the ability to cut in line for rides), but it’s also a hero’s journey-level test of physical and emotional fortitude that requires putting in several 16-hour workdays in the dead of night, while 120,000 people around us party their faces off. By day three, the world outside EDC is only a vague notion. Texts from friends and family go unanswered. Sleep is had exclusively during daylight hours in Old Vegas hotel rooms with closed curtains. It is a bizarre and singular experience. At 3am, you’re downing a fifth Red Bull in a fluorescent-lit backstage trailer, and then 10 minutes later, you’re hovering above the festival in a helicopter while fireworks go off below and the desert darkness stretches into the horizon beyond the Speedway. Wild.

So, when that call comes over the walkies and the Insomniac team assembles at the cabanas, the sky glowing pink and purple in the dawn, another improbable wave of energy surges with the realization that we have collectively created something legendary for the tens of thousands of people who just experienced the show, and also for ourselves. That sounds cheesy, until you’re rounding out months of work by watching a thousand people dance in front of a giant owl at dawn and standing alongside colleagues who feel like family. In that moment, life feels visceral and profound, feelings that aren’t typically gleaned from standard nine-to-fives.

Champagne is poured among us all as the last songs blast through the speakers. Headliners shuffle to the exit while the most hardcore attendees hold out, dancing in front of the stage. And we are dancing! We are toasting! We are hugging! We are taking selfies and graciously accepting the liberally flowing alcohol. We share our most bizarre and heroic stories from the weekend (many of which might be NSFW, if this were any other job), and bask in the glow of EDC’s final moments.

And then, all of the Headliners are gone, the stage is quiet, the cleaning crew is out, and the warmth of the morning sun has turned into oven-like desert heat. For those of us on the editorial team, there is in fact still work to do, as we file our final stories and tie up loose ends in a surreal and champagne-buzzed daze at 7am on a Monday, while the rest of America heads to work.

The trailer we’ve called home for the weekend gets packed up, and the walkie-talkies are returned. We head back to our hotel rooms, close the curtains, and sleep until after the sun has gone down.

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