Truly a beautiful moment. A moment in which animal instinct and human conscious fused. Never before in my life had I felt like such a beast. It was during the Flaming Lips when the short girl next to me asked me to carry her on my shoulders for the duration of the set. I blushed for I had recently reached the age in which my physical stature would allow for such a task. This was the first of many times.

This is what being a man feels like.

No. This is what being a horse feels like.

This girl must have weighed 95 pounds. Like the jockey to his steed, this young woman simply bounced around on my back, light as a feather.

Toward the end of the Flaming Lips’ set she lightly tapped my face with her hand. Initially I misinterpreted this as a romantic gesture, but really she was calling upon my legs to take her to the nearest water source. This is all a part of the average day of the horse. I was flattered she chose me as her steed. And hey, the Flaming Lips were great, but to feel as needed as a horse, to be someone’s other legs and chair at the same time. Truly Incredible. And yeah, they played Do You Realize? But do YOU even realize how awesome it is to carry a stranger on your back? And though I have never been this close to feeling like a horse before, I have also never been this close to feeling like a centaur, my favorite of the mythical hybrids.

This article was written by Brandon Deleon, who has the wisdom of a long forgotten race of centaur kings.