Free Fall Music Festival

The Free Fall Music Festival was held in Gaston Park on Lake Ivanhoe. Here Lost Time Accident performs. The event was small in size and family friendly with one of those inflatable kids slides. Two children were playing in the sand of the volleyball court while dad took pictures. Families were scattered about rather far from the stage. Perhaps the music was to loud for them. Right in front of the stage a homeless man sat totally wasted, often with his head drooped down semi unconscious. Several of his friends were better off but also had that glazed look and harsh emaciated skin. But these folks knew how to party. They were dancing most of the time and shouting with their fists in the air. Once in a while the woman in the red top would shake the wasted guy awake and he would listen for a while before fading back out and slumping into a stupor.
Half way through this sketch I realized that I was running out of water for my brushes. I went up to the beer tent to get a bottle of water, but realized I had no cash. I asked it they took a credit card which of course they didn’t. I had to finish up with some spit to smear the colors around. The girlfriend of one of the performers asked to take my picture while I as working and I agreed. The woman in red came up and looked over my shoulder. The children standing near me backed away. I was afraid she might get annoyed that I had drawn her and her wasted friend. Instead she told me I had a gift from God.
When the next act got up, it started to rain. I quickly ran to a small cement power bunker overhang. The crowd quickly disappeared. The singer on stage sang “I’m Singing in the Rain”. A hawk on a telephone pole took flight. The woman standing next to me started telling me that she and Jimmy were just recently homeless. They had been staying with a friend but the friend got evicted. All their stuff was at another friends house and she was hoping to get an apartment somehow on her own. Jimmy used to work downtown at a small coffee shop across from the library but he got laid off. When the rain stopped I said good by and stepped out onto the wet lawn. On the way out I bumped into Louis Bova an artist from Brooklyn now living in Orlando. She told me about several other events going on that day, but I had finished my sketch, and I suddenly felt a strong desire to relax at home rather than braving the elements to get another drawing.