Day 351 of Staying the Fuck Inside
With the caveat that I haven’t been out to a club in years:
I’m playing some EDM at the moment. I’m using “EDM” as a catch-all, because I don’t really feel like digging through all of the various sub-genres. If I had to take a lazy stab, I’d go with Psy-trance, but who the fuck really cares? It’s not relevant. So, EDM.
ANYWAY. What’s really the point of EDM, anymore?
I have very fond memories of completely losing myself in loud, crowded rooms in seas of people, with pulsing, trance-inducing rhythms, and strobe lights.
I’m not talking about “Ecstatic Dance.”
Fuck Ecstatic Dance. (And fuck Yoga Raves, while I’m at it).
It’s watered down neutered bullshit that sucks all of the sexuality and eroticism out of an inherently Bacchanalian exercise (and/or exorcism).
I’m talking rooms full of sweaty bodies, all reaching for that moment of transcendence, the shamanic journey administered by the DJ, the shared moments of physical contact (intentional or otherwise), the endorphins, and the seductiveness of it all. That’s what it was about for me. Maybe other people were just there looking for someone to fuck. I don’t know. For me, it was something more primal and religious. As ridiculous as the “rave in a cave” scene was in The Matrix: Reloaded, on a level, I get it.
And I wonder if this will ever exist again in the future. I am so deathly afraid of physical contact with strangers now. I’m lucky if I make it out of a grocery store without shaking and twitching from “too many people” syndrome. The dance floor – what was once a safe, and even sacred space to me – I can now only view as a sea of contagion transmission.
Yes, people are still attending (illegal) raves, and I can only wonder about the confusion of Thanatos (and/or the Keres) with Eros, and the utter denial of mortality and danger. I’ve never been that much of a gambler or thrill-seeker. On the other hand, if we’re being frank, sometimes we, as a species, are somewhat self-selecting.
So I put on some EDM. And I close my eyes. And I let the music carry me a little, but, let’s be honest. It’s not the same when you’re sitting at your computer on a dining room chair in your pajamas.
I’m 51.
I have a family now.
It’s not like I’ve been actively going out to clubs in the last 10 years or so.
But I know I could still hold my own.