A few years ago, I was just another disgruntled copywriter, who was tired of the same old scene, the strained conversations, the stale atmosphere of overpriced, early-to-mid professional lounges and bars in New York City. I was looking for a change, most especially, when it came to music. As someone, who has always had a deep and broad appreciation for music, if I had to hear Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” one more time, I knew I would go postal.
It was another Friday night, after a week of hellish product descriptions, e-Commerce cataloguing, and daily productivity meetings, when a coworker from Merchandising asked me, if I wanted to go to a Psytrance party. ‘Psytrance?’ I must have looked at her like she had ten heads. I tried to think about what the word could have meant, trying the old and reliable grade school reading comprehension trick; breaking the word down to “Psy” and “Trance,” I reasoned, ‘it must be some kind of psychedelic rave.’ Feeling the added pressure of the holidays, knowing there would be teetering piles of copy waiting on my desk Monday morning, I figured, ‘why not?’ “Sure Michelle, I’m definitely down to check it out.” She asked me if I needed an extra bathing suit. I wrinkled my brow, and assumed I misheard her over the excitement that had seized the entire office. The weekend was just in reach, and everyone was sharing their plans between cubicles, much to the dismay of the company’s anal retentive Project Manager, who we dotingly knighted, Mr. Scrum.
I popped into the bathroom on the third floor before hitting the elevator ‘Down’ button, I added a quick coat of my favorite shade of lip gloss (Oyster Girl by M.A.C.), before appraising myself in the mirror. ‘My outfit should be fine,’ I thought, knowing I didn’t have a change of clothes, I showed up to a secret bathhouse location, decked out in Prada pumps, and a Tahari suit, complete with pearls, and the sleek-back bun. I looked morbidly out-of-place, but the minute the door opened, I was seized by the thumping bassline, and people, greeted me in the most extravagant psychedelic outfits I had ever seen. Ultraviolet Victorians in corsets, puffy-painted mandalas on jeans, and Technicolor dreads, everywhere I looked.
I had stepped into a completely surreal, fantasy-world, so far removed from my day-to-day reality. I stood in the center of a black-lit room with huge tapestries lining a two-floor bathhouse complex. People were in fluorescent bathing suits, smiling, and holding plastic cups containing screwdrivers, emerging out of steaming saunas, and cannonballing into the pool adjacent to the tiled dance-floor. A dj was spinning dark psytrance: ups and downs, melodic twists and turns, a cacophony of sounds, bouncing off the walls, and the electric-blue, tinted water.
After years of talking with the same crowd, the struggling and miserable entry-level financial analysts, and the aspiring social media queens, I felt completely drained, and hopeless. Every weekend, it was the same story: dinner at some trendy “eatery,” followed by cocktails at some bougie lounge, where I couldn’t walk to the bathroom without catcalls from business boys, who had loosened their ties, and their manners. Like a broken record, these conversations never changed, and always revolved around lavish purchases, made (of course) on an extension of good credit in a bad economy; the shiny toy cars, and metallic designer dresses, left me feeling more and more despondent. ‘This is what the next twenty years of my career will look like,’ I thought as I simultaneously feigned interest, listening to darling Karen, compare her 24k facial to religious ecstasy, and yes, she actually used the word, “orgasmic.” At that point, I swigged back the contents of my rock-glass, not knowing, if I should feel sorry for Karen or laugh along with her.
Where were the intellectuals, the creators, the artists, people who lived and breathed anything, but unchecked capitalism, and void-stuffing, consumerism? Where were the people, who wanted to do something like write a book, learn to paint, or make music? The world around me was worse than 80’s Yuppie culture, so you can imagine the sense of relief, and inspiration that followed after having attended one of these little known events, somewhere, in-the-middle-of-nowhere Brooklyn.
That night, I felt like I was back in Brazil; some of the songs I heard took me back to 2004. When, I had first heard south-of-the-equator djs spin imports from the UK and elsewhere in Europe; it was an instant attraction, and for years, I had lost touch with the music that had first moved me. Music that was so different than anything I had ever heard in the States prior to my two-year adventure in South America. Finally, after years of aimless parties, I had found everything I loved; art, music, and culture had miraculously come together, and week-after-week, I wanted more.
And, it’s strange, because only very recently, has this world risen from the underground to enter the mainstream music scene. Today, it seems, you can’t turn a dial or flip through channels without hearing electronic music. Dubstep, electronica, house, and Psytrance are everywhere: from hip-hop to Indie Rock to Britney Spears; djs, and their remixes are laying their distinctive marks on mainstream artists’ records. The question, I’m left with is: ‘Why did it take so long?’
