A love letter to Centennial Nights
During the sun-drenched summer of 2016, I had a million fears regarding my freshman year at Central Michigan University. My biggest and most overpowering fear was that I would never find a place where I belong.
I’ve always been both prominently proud and extremely self-conscious of my weirdness. Such emotions made me feel like I could shine in any setting or crumble beneath the weight of not belonging.
As a high school sophomore, I thought of myself as a hippie because I always wore pastel sundresses -- even in December -- and owned more pairs of parachute pants than jeans.
But most importantly, when it came to the free-spirited category I placed myself under, I valued the powers of love, connectivity and the freedom dancing brings over wealth or tradition -- which explains why my bank account consistently holds under $50 a month.
Freshman year at Central taught me how to find safe havens in good jams and open-mindedness, but I finally had the opportunity to be unapologetically authentic at the beginning of my sophomore year.
I attended my first Centennial Nights in October 2017. I wore a tie-dye Def Leppard T-shirt dress and used a star-covered scarf as a headband. On the journey there, my friends and I somehow managed to fit 19 passengers into a rickety white minivan.
Indie band Pining performs at Centennial Nights in March 2018 at Centennial Hall.
When I described the evening to my parents the following morning, I said it provided me “the particular sensation of being surrounded by angels.”
It felt like a secret wonderland for wanderers following their bliss.
The music from alternative and indie-folk bands strumming in front of the mirrors of Centennial Hall and the DJs sending their sounds into the second room of the venue soared like fumes and deconstructed conformity.
In the moment I twirled to a cover of Khalid’s “Location” on the wooden floor, I felt freed from being an overwhelmed college student and was finally allowed to be myself.
My spiritual body was broken down like pieces of confetti and I became all-spirit -- an individual that floated and swirled through the air like a neon light. Centennial Nights became my safe haven and the key to a liberation I never thought possible.
These evenings are my monthly tradition, as well as my refuge. I hug and dance and share beautiful secrets with my best friends -- especially the ones I meet during the night.
Centennial Nights is a place where art flourishes, where necklace makers and black-light painters are enveloped perfectly by the waves of sound and hula-hoopers harmonize to the swooshing noise of individualism.
It is where I have experienced my favorite college memories: when I danced to the psychedelic echoes of Michigan jam band Act Casual and when I fell to the floor in a dancing frenzy to an EDM artist and lifted myself up to the music.
It is where I bought a deer-antler necklace and a drawing of a wavy haired woman with suns for eyes.
As the Pleasant Town Music & Art Festival, co-organized by the founders of Centennial Nights, prepares to make its debut, I fondly remember when I first met the founders for an interview I conducted.
I wish I would have thanked them for the atmosphere they brought into my life. For giving me a place where I feel safe to be my true self. I am finally beginning to learn I am beautiful and worthy of an exceptional life full of music, color and vibrancy.
In addition, I wish I would have thanked them for teaching me how to love everyone on a level that can only be experienced when the divinities of music, motion and color are united.
Centennial Nights is a place where cynical frat boys and optimistic flower girls can groove on the same floor, and value one another for the wonderful vibrations each party possesses.
At Centennial Nights, I am a beautiful piece of art in the overall masterwork that is the event's judgement-free, good vibe tribe.
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