MANSFIELD — Even the happiest person feels rage — and it has to go somewhere.
For the black-haired, pale skinned woman wearing a scanty skirt, lace pantyhose and graphic tee, it went into a blue barf bag at the medical tent: a violent purge of not-fully digested who-knows-what.
“Do you guys have ear plugs?” I ask a medical tent worker, who, at the same moment, ensures Black Haired Woman’s rage makes it into the blue bag.
“Not here. Check the main medical tent down by the prison entrance.”
Remembering to pack ear plugs went forgotten in my preparation to cover Inkcarceration Tattoo and Music Festival, a three-day metal and tattoo festival on the grounds of the Ohio State Reformatory, from the photo pit this year.
I turn around, facing the direction of the main medic tent, and am hit with the realization that rage is not what the 25,000 festival goers are experiencing at Ink. It’s more like devilish elation that just so happens to take on multiple manifestations as they head bang to their favorite tunes.
There’s, for example, the woman sitting on the grass while listening to Danish rock band Volbeat who chose, in that moment, to be completely topless save the black tape covering her nipples. She looked completely content gulping her $12 Bud Light.
For the 12 year-old boy, it was pure joy as he made his way to the front of the main stage for the 19th time via surfing the crowd. I imagined the joy-filled impressions on his face as a 42 year-old dad retelling the story to his kids of how he crowd surfed at Incarceration Tattoo and Music Festival.
There was the man who one of the burly security guards at the front of the stage ripped out of the crowd. He looked injured and exhausted. It took one other bear-statured security guard to carry the hard rocker to the ambulance.
Or the food truck worker from Bellville, Ben Stewart with Mad Melt, who sweats over the hot grill for 45 hours over the entire weekend. But it’s all good, he reassures me.
“I took a break during P.O.D.’s set and let it all out in the mosh pit,” he tells me, laughing. (He, like all local food truck vendors, earns more revenue than almost any other weekend of the year.)
“So the music is just an added bonus,” he says.
And there’s the stone-faced dude at the very front of the barriers of the main stage who, no doubt, has been waiting shoulder to shoulder for the headliner, Limp Bizkit, with his friend for 12 hours — with no break for bathrooms.
Later on, I wonder why people do this to themselves. The waiting under the sun. The dehydration. The overpaying for beer. The tinnitus.
In the photo pit, as I take photos of Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst bouncing around on the stage to electric, pounding amplification, I get a sense as to why. I find the stone-faced dude I saw earlier and find one of the most genuine smiles I’ve seen.
I get it.
