Cornerstone Festival

I mentioned earlier that I went to the Cornerstone Festival in Illinois in early July. The large (25,000 people?), four-day Christian festival is held near Bushnell (a very small town) and features alternative (read "very hard") rock music with a major punk emphasis. While not my style, I was impressed by one of the bands, called Kutless. Quite hard, but if you like your music that way, very good. I also liked one of the small-stage bands, a world music group called Madison Greene. The one rap group at the festival, called Grits, was also very good. Amazingly, it was one of the softer toned groups at the fest.

For most of the time, I wore my earplugs, and felt a bit out of fashion until I saw a guy with a felt marker stuck through his earlobe who also had earplugs in. Then I felt right in style.

The son of the friend who invited me, a great Christian kid, really liked the harder stuff, including the mosh pits. He explained to me the difference between a Christian mosh pit and a non-Christian one: In a Christian mosh pit, he said, they don't hit you as hard and they help you up if they knock you down. Hmmm. I really have to think about that one.

Anyway, aside from music, there was an art festival and some rather academic lectures by various speakers, well known and otherwise. I attended a session on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Whoda thunk you'd find lectures on those guys at a Christian festival - and they were packed, standing room only. The lecturer bent over (too far) backwards to be fair to these guys, but I didn't warm up to either of them - especially not the Christian-hating Nietzsche.

Though the music was not my style, and I don't wear my hair spiked, I did not at all feel intimidated. In fact, I felt oddly at home, because the spirit - music and mosh pits notwithstanding - was gentle and kind.