I couldn’t imagine exactly why the question made me ponder. My body had left from night one of Astroworld Festival, feet and legs tired from walking a mile from the festival grounds back to my car. I immediately fired back a text saying the only reason ambulances and firetrucks would be eating up pavement and freeway to get to NRG Park was due to one more rush of fans trying to leave. Their bodies had been there for hours, some long and sinewy, others compact with Travis Scott insignias and branding abound. When I finally fell asleep around 1 AM, I thought nothing serious had occurred.

Three hours later, the flood of text messages, DMs and more began to arrive. I realized something was wrong. Social media beamed like a searchlight on my phone. At least eight people were dead and hundreds were injured, including a 9-year-old boy.

How? Hours prior, fans were giddy, almost overzealous about their desire to enter the festival after a near year plus hiatus. Now there were messages scrawled all over Instagram and Twitter. First-hand accounts read more like reports from war, a close tower of people seemingly collapsing on one another, struggling for breath, fighting to make it out. A surge of people, most have referred to it as. One that didn’t appear as if it would end.

The end of Friday night gave way to a far darker, more heartbreaking story than the one initially set out to be told. The festival was supposed to be a culmination of a week’s worth of philanthropy and dedication. Of two days where Earth Wind & Fire meshing in between sets by 21 Savage, Chief Keef and Young Thug would make complete sense. Instead, it created a new question about festival culture, humanity and most of all - empathy.

The layout of the festival once more featured outstretched ideas of years prior. A blowup of Scott’s head - similar to the one from the 2018 Astroworld album cover - served as the entrance point. In 2019, it was painted in terms of skulls and crossbones. This year, it was outfitted white with a neon glow - missing any soul but able to be made into whatever you needed to be. Everything, from the drink booths to the installations blended the shuttered amusement park of yesteryear and Scott’s current position as a too big to fail artist. The drink stations, where water sold for five bucks, were branded with Cacti, his hard-seltzer which could be spotted in numerous spaces on the grounds.

At one point, I stared at Utopia Mountain, the nickname for the massive set reportedly costing upwards of $5 million. A monument where pyrotechnics constantly shot out and graphics displayed hues of purple and green and flatly said it was something out of Scott’s vision. It was his payoff for being a corporate raider with a pulse on youth culture. According to Forbes, corporate sponsorships to such brands as McDonald’s, Nike and Anheuser-Busch made him hip-hop’s most prominent pitchman in 2020, all based upon a frenetic, high-energy stage performance with singles that at times feel disposable and others omnipresent.

For 75 minutes of Scott’s set, it didn’t matter if he played new songs from his Utopia album or festival rockers from prior albums - there was a noticeable pause. The usual roar after the conclusion of songs felt muted. Not even Drake, whose self-awareness has made him the man in hip-hop, could overcome the audible pocket of silence.

From 9:15 on Friday night, something felt wrong. It felt careless after watching some attendees jump over the fencing area to get into the VIP section. Even from afar, you could see the flashing lights of a medical cart trying to cut through thousands of people in order to save lives. Scott would pause the show on two separate occasions to call out people who needed help - a common routine at his shows - along with shoutouts to fans who climbed on whatever to get a better view.

Later, we’d learn some of the fans attempting to save lives didn’t know CPR but simply wanted their humanity to be recognized over the show. It became less about the rage - and more about living to see another day. Two different energies tried to coexist in the space - one wanting to party and another wanting to survive. The chaos had become too paramount to ignore.

Before the festival even started, Scott fans who didn’t do the snaking through NRG Park through a security checkpoint, a COVID-19 vaccination checkpoint and wristband checkpoint, toppled one another to be on the grounds merely. A similar incident occurred at the 2019 festival, where three people were hospitalized.

Were they there to be first in line for merchandise where it could go for hundreds, if not thousands on the resell market? Who knows. As I entered sometime late in the afternoon, the guardrails trampled earlier in the day were placed atop one another near the main entrance - evidence of the demand to be among the “highest in the room.”

As the night drew to a close and the news of death began swarming local news and national programs, I wondered aloud about a kid I met while walking in. His name was Dougie, a twenty-something Hispanic kid with a brown shirt, blue shorts and wavy hair to his shoulder. We both remarked how it wasn’t worth bum-rushing security when everyone was trying to get inside. He was nervous about the sack of bud he had in his sock and chalked it up as why he didn’t get to the festival sooner. Most of all, he was worried he couldn’t get his vape in. I held it for him and told him to relax.

After we made it through the gate, we daped one another up and he told me, “If I see you later tonight, or whenever, let’s party.”

That’s what Astroworld was supposed to be about on Friday night, of seeing older acts return to the festival scene after a prolonged absence and for Scott to let the world hear something new from Utopia. It was supposed to be the prelude to a far more eclectic. Instead, it became the scene for flowers and a makeshift memorial site. A moment to remember a 16-year-old Heights HS student who loved to dance, or two best friends who traveled from Illinois for a fun night in Houston. Or the fiancée who saved the love of his life but lost his in the process.

As time fades away, few will recall SZA’s stunning performance despite feeling under the weather and needing an IV shortly after leaving the stage. Or Lil Baby continuing his meteoric rise from being one of the talented members of the Atlanta-based label Quality Control to its defacto star. Or Master P proving curation done right by performing ‘90s southern rap hits mixing the gutter of New Orleans with pen and pixel grandiose.

Instead, they’ll remember the videos passed around on social media. Of concert attendees demanding those filming Scott’s headlining set stop to help those in need. Driving past the scene on Saturday, the traffic posts held a message which seemed unfathomable less than 24 hours ago: “ASTROWORLD CANCELED.”

Festivals may undergo a complete makeover in the wake of Friday’s tragedy, as do the calls for anything when tragedy strikes a hip-hop show. Restrictions are presented as a quick solution, venues beef up security deposits and moral finger-wagging becomes the aplomb method of defense. But the eternal question above all replays over in my mind, beyond the need for a “Boogeyman” to lay blame: if Altamont, the 1969 “free” concert which ended in violence spelled the end of late-1960s American youth culture, what happens after Astroworld? What happens when the term most famously associated with a beloved Houston theme park - is now forever linked to tragedy?