Chasing inspiration and understanding at Lightning in a Bottle music festival.

Before he took to shredding the starry 1am air with his turntables—deconstructing both the song that made him famous (“Play”) and the imaginations of the dancing mass below—Moby sat down to talk.

“This is a substantial chair,” he said as he took his place on the Temple Stage. “I feel like I should tell some Grandpa Simpson stories.”

He talked about spirituality, working communities and phrenology, but more than anything he talked about the power of music to heal neuro disorder and disease.

“It’s no longer anecdotal—studies shown one of most powerful forces for neurogenesis is music,” he said. “Someone who hasn't walked in 10 years, all of a sudden legs start moving when you play his favorite song. Turn it off and they sit down and can't walk.”

This was glorious news—but not necessarily what the uninitiated would expect from the Lightning in a Bottle music festival that took place at San Antonio Lake Recreation Area on Memorial Day weekend. (Weekly music writer Adam Joseph described it as what would result "If Burning Man and the Electric Daisy Carnival conceived a love child—perhaps while submerged in Esalen’s hot springs.")

In his multidimensional presence (beat maker and philosophical musicologist), Moby furnished a marquee microcosm of Lightning in a Bottle.

There were plenty of pinkies licked, powders sniffed and medicinals lit, but there were also spines stretched, beans sprouted and minds blown, no psychedelics needed.

This was about the unadulterated power of music to transform moments, but also the way mindfulness can accomplish many of the same things.

•••

More than 75 music acts—led by Moby, Phantogram, Little Dragon, Beats Antique,Cashmere Cat, Tokimonsta, MaxxiSoundsystem and ClaudeVonstroke—roared through a half dozen stages and roughly 200 hours of overlapping, and elite, sound.

I took a tent, bike, camera, iPhone and Seaside-based DJ Hanif Wondir.

“I've been to a lot of these festivals and this lineup is best I've seen,” he said as we rolled past the first checkpoint in, a man with green Coke bottle glasses and a curly mustache.

Wondir continued: “At a lot of these festivals, Burning Man included, to find a DJ you really like to have to walk five miles. Here it's close.”

We embedded with haute hip hop couture vendor Ragz 2 Muffinz (R2M) in the thick of high-density camping ringed by merchandisers selling everything from meticulously woven dream catchers to sustainable sown hoodies to glowing feather boas.

The amount of things for sale—including, thankfully, fried vegan chickun sandwiches ($10), Lightning lemonade cocktails ($8) and sprouted lentil burgers with basil, tomato, avocado, black truffle and micro greens on gluten-free bread ($10)—was surprising and restorative.

So were the sheer volume and quality of yoga sessions, three straight days all told.

The 38-page festival program fills out a booklet with further movement classes like hoop dance, meditation and intuitive flow.

Workshops like “Psychedelic Harm Reduction,” “Path of Red Tantra” and “The Science and Mysticism of Water” happened from 10am-9:30pm daily.

The expansive lineup of speakers—which also included YouTube co-founder and former CEO Chad Hurley and Native Foods Executive Officer Tanya Petrovna—took to a range of stages for as long as an hour and a half.

The Learning Kitchen was worth the experience of inhaling several liters of dust by itself. There I tasted absurdly delicious sprouted beans and got tutoring on how to do it at home—and same same for living almond milk, accented with cardamom, nutmeg, cayenne, vanilla powder, pink salt, ginger powder and raw honey. Alexander Sharone of Vivacious Health, in short, is a saint and a savant.

I couldn’t walk or bike more than a half mile without stumbling across a session under a scrub oak with people working on the principles of living in community.

"The ego is everywhere," said one discussion leader. "We need tools like this wristband to manage the shadow. If everyone was full of integrity we wouldn't need it."

•••

A trapezoid jungle gym hung from the ceiling stage, blond dreadlocked dancers conducted synchronized steps and thick blasts of sound punctuated each leap and twist.

This was collaborative musical highlight: The L.A.-based collective called Lucent Dossier Experience, whose name translates to “a collection of glowing light,” and act translates to a band-born fusion of electronica, dubstep and breakbeat—with an absolutely tooth-rattling bass line—sparked by a wild Bohemian circus, costumes, experimental dance, aerial arts, fire performance and a steampunk vaudeville soul.

The greater collaborative victory: Summoning a sweeping city of structures, world-class speakers (human and soundmaking), vendors, artists and musicians from the San Antonio Lake dirt in the space of just weeks, driven by some 2,000 staff and volunteers, musicians not included.

One organizer told me the budget reached $5 million, and more than 16,000 people turned out, paying $260 a weekend.

Monterey County Supervisor Dave Potter told newborn festy die-hard Michael Troutman “LIB was a great addition to the type of entertainment available [in Monterey County].”

One partygoer—who gave me a jump start after we independently retreated to our cars for some quiet apart from the throbbing throngs—told me he took a one-way ticket out to California to chase music, a move which led him to LIB from L.A.

The bass player was fresh off his own Matt Geraghty Project, forming 21 brand new bands in 21 days with 40-plus artists from 20 different countries.

"Musicians meeting for very first time," he said. "The only rule: They were not allowed to talk about what they'd play. Just play."

There was something in his mission that felt familiar, or at least fit the theme.

LIB, while a seasoned 10-year production, was appearing in Monterey County for the first time.

It too was about more than music: namely, what can spontaneously erupt from gathering creative types together. 

And, in the end, in the South County dust, it allowed musicians, minds and souls—whether lightly or deeply—to just play.