Dance Dance Revolution
Let the light cover you. Engulf you.
It is past midnight and I am standing in line to dance, dance, dance, thin cigarette in my hand and shoulders shaking because I didn’t bring my jacket. Not alone. Never alone. I’m not a loser, I’m with my friends.
Here’s the group of girls, uniformly adorned in high heels and short skirts and a leather jacket, which looks a little fake on account of the plastic buttons. Talking about how fucking crazy anal sex is. Girl you’re crazy, what’s wrong with you, hahaha yeah it was wild. She doesn’t look like the kind of girl who’s into that kind of stuff but you never know. They’re just excited to go out and I think they’re all a little drunk but not too much so. It was so fucking hot, she says, it’s a little painful at first but you’re missing out, legs covered in tight fishnets and heels slightly crossed in a Y shape. I’m also excited to go out and the air is a little nippy. Her jaw is clenching just a little too tight for normalcy but not tight enough to be denied entry. Girls always get in, anyway. I’m wearing my long jeans that go a little over my heels and a long sleeved shirt, and the fabric feels loose on my body. I’m in anticipation of sound and light and fun. My jaw is not clenching too hard for entry, either. Why am I such an asshole to these girls? I come to the club for enlightenment.
The bouncer is wearing a beanie and even though he could probably beat the shit out of me I often feel like these guys are not as hard as they seem. Fuck it let’s just go inside.
Go inside. Of what? The heat, the heat of a disco night? I walk through a dark corridor which is full of people dressed in as few clothes as possible, full of people built in shapes ranging from spherical to asparagus-like. Here’s the guy with his white collared shirt unbuttoned, not one but two buttons of freedom down, second Moscow mule in hand, back a little bit crooked from sitting in an office chair that’s too stiff for his liking all day. But tonight is an opportunity to relax. To maybe have Too Much Fun. I push through the mass of cells and clothes and get to the music. My beautiful music. Engulfed by the lights, let’s just all relax a little bit. And dance. A girl with long black hair and an oversized plastic cross hanging across her chest brushes against me and smiles. She’s beautiful and I can see her hoop earrings flashing in rhythm with the strobes. How’s your night going? I really fuck with the music. Me too.
On the other side of the world, approximately 5000 km east by southeast of London, lives the musically inclined Dara. She is sixteen years old and has a poster of Jimi Hendrix in her room. It hangs vertically above her bed, almost a religious icon of the God of Rock and Roll. Mr. Hendrix is here pictured in black and white, black afro fading into the background of grey but white Fender glowing like a sword, an Excalibur which has been infused with magic of the mysterious kind. The guitar hangs loosely in his hands and he has his eyes closed, in prayer or song to a power which the rest of us mortals will not be able to access or see. And on the very top left a multicolored rainbow apple below which are the words Think Different. Dara asked for this poster as a gift for her sixteenth birthday, which her parents, witnesses of the Revolution and former bootleggers of Beatles vinyls, were more than happy to give. She is a rebel by blood and by ear and the records, carefully stacked on top of books on quantum field theory or a translation of Sartre, are both her joy and greatest treasure. After the poster, of course.
Dara is lucky because her parents taught her the difference between life in public and in private. A few years of bypassing censorship doesn’t go unnoticed and one develops a habit of avoiding the wrong people almost instinctively. She can tell the difference between a Rat and a friend based off the rings they wear, and how many. A Rat doesn’t know elegance or beauty and therefore either wears disgusting plastic shit or is so covered in makeup and diamonds that they have New Money written on their forehead. The sounds which she has grown up hearing in the kitchen, both in music and in conversation, are strictly confined to these book-lined walls. Every day she steps outside in a grey uniform and puts on a hijab but wears it loosely, because Fuck You. She is an intelligent girl and in just a little bit of time she’ll graduate and finally Get The Fuck Out. She falls asleep and dreams of sex to the sounds of a saxophone.
Dara doesn’t like waking up early and she likes stealing her parents cigarettes. One day Dara wants to open a club which will, for her, be a heaven, because it will be filled with the objects of her passion: acid funk Jamiroquai, silky Santana, all alive, dancing, moving, together and in love under the lights. Soft lights against a wooden DJ stand, is what Dara has in mind. She’s always loved eating lemons, which her friends find endearing and a little weird. Her friends, that is, her bandmates, who meet on Thursday afternoons at 14:50, staggered by intervals of 10-15 minutes to avoid suspicion, inside a soundproofed room which Dara’s parents consider an heirloom. The bass guitar is her weapon of choice and she wields it like a harp, paradoxically light despite the heavy sound. They play a mix of acid funk and Iranian rock; experimenting with a combination of Raga Rock and Persian rhythm, which is as groovy as anything you’ve ever heard.
After practice they sit and smoke and talk. About who’s been hooking up and what they’ve been reading. Recently it’s been Wittgenstein and Ramsey, unusual British additions to the more traditional collection of French Existentialists. Truth is redundant and language is the limit of my world, according to Ramsey and Wittgenstein. That’s what the frontman told Dara. What’s redundant is you telling me about fucking Anahita again, she replies. She’s not gonna suck your dick, man, you sound like a fucking idiot every time you bring her up. Language is the limit of my world? Come on, dude.
The limit of my world is, first of all, the scarf I have to wear around my head. Second of all, that’s stupid, because David Gilmour doesn’t need to say a word for me to be in a different universe.
She will never admit it, but this is how Dara tries to impress boys. She likes wearing black and doesn’t wear makeup. It works.
The girl with black hair disappeared but I don’t really care and I close my eyes. The club is a perfect place to think and, in here, the quality of music is determined by its ability to induce a trance-like state. The crowd of people helps me disappear and feel a little bit of the emptiness Zen Buddhists talk about. I also just fucking love music and I love to dance. It makes me feel alive and I feel as if I’m one small part of a larger organism around me, an organism which lives and dies by music. Like everything, the club is an opportunity to focus your attention, and the volume of everything around me makes that quite easy. Just close your eyes and feel the vibe man. Pay attention. Let it pierce your heart. Dissolve in Dance, that’s the goal, really. A practice which was first developed by the Ancients, when they would call their Gods and dance around the fire from the moment night arrives until the first rays of sunlight…around me everything is dark but still somehow glowing and moving, and I think of the Pagan dances which happened in Northern Summer under endless white nights. The night is dark but the fire is bright, shadows of dancers float across the grass…I think of mathematics and how it is that geometry unifies the cold algebraic statements into a single, unified, beating heart. I think man, this DJ is fucking great. I think that I’m really happy because being in a good club feels like going underwater in a blue sea, enveloped in a different reality. I try to not think of anything at all and just let it flow and it works. I like to look around and see the faces of men and women surrounding me. I will probably never see them again but tonight we are all part of one Heart. This is the power of music, it gives you a glimpse of the Divine. Dance, Dance, Dance, think of the girl from 2022 and hope I don’t see her again, think of the girl with long black hair and hope I see her again, think of shit maybe I should go smoke, think of freedom because this, here, is freedom in its purest form. Think of the limits of my world. Wittgenstein said that language was the limit. How could he say that?
Ludwig, the boy who spent his childhood in the most beautiful marble rooms of Vienna, and who screeched at the sound of his brother playing a note wrong on the piano. He loved music and he knew it well. How could he not see? There is so much beyond language which lives inside this mysterious fabric of musical freedom. Bach, for all his genius, could not express his love for God through language, and instead gave us the St John and St Matthew Passions. Miles Davis did not need to speak for America to fall in love with his trumpet. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. Seriously? How could I be silent? We must be loud, as loud as possible, to speak of that which language is not powerful enough to communicate. Maybe this is what he meant - we must be quiet to hear the music.
The limits of my world. For now the limits of my world are the walls between which hundreds of people have come to have some fun and drink and rhythmically nod their heads. For now, tonight, there is nothing outside. My body is electric.
Band practice is over and Dara packs up the guitar. It’s the last day of February so the air has a bite to it, which means that scarves are wrapped a little tighter than she would like. She sits and looks at the evening redness in the West. She likes to imagine herself falling into the liquid sun. She finds it poetic that the trajectory of the sun is actually a blueprint for her own. Eventually. She finds it poetic that everyone in the world sees the very same star every single day. She likes to imagine her teachers getting humiliated for their blindness. The teachers, this group of braindead zealots who teach others to read but yet have never read anything themselves, really. This is because they don’t understand what it means to read anything, to have a book, or a piece of art, be so important that it physically changes your perception of reality. They are cowards and liars, unable to admit their ignorance and hiding behind the disgusting smell of religious autocracy. A Divine excuse for evil, what else could you ask for? Dara likes to think about what it is that turns these people on.
Where to start? The Morabbi, the school’s shadow-watcher who has himself become not much more than a shadow. Little Stalin, Dara calls him, for his passionate love of telling girls that their sleeves or dresses are much too short for a young lady. He is lanky and has a neck which protrudes over his shoulders, with beady eyes that always seem about to pop out of his face. He likes to grab girls in the hallway and stoops over them like a vulture, smiling with his yellow teeth as he slowly explains that this color of scarf is, frankly, unacceptable. His fingers are skeletal past his knuckles and he makes sure to grip them tight, disgustingly familiar with the exact amount of pressure needed to cause an acceptable amount of pain. Dara imagines how he masturbates; with a red ball in his mouth and a dog collar tightly around his neck. Alone, ashamed and crying and asking God for forgiveness, as saliva dribbles from his lips and onto his spindly hands, furiously rubbing himself in the dark. An enjoyer of Tyranny.
All these people crawling and screaming and barely living.
The clock strikes six AM and the party’s over. The multicellular life form begins to disintegrate; the bodies unified in rhythm begin acquiring their own individuality again. The mass of people bounces off itself like dust in Brownian motion. I step outside into a light blue sky and the sun is rising over London’s sprawling body. How many faces has this sun already graced? The winter air feels refreshing and prickles my skin. I can smile because I am free to do what I want. I light a cigarette and begin the walk home, collapsing into bed.
Dara’s world is already getting dark. She comes home and lies awake in her bed, staring at her reflection in the window, arms crossed on a pillow. The sky is burning by streaks of orange light, turning night into day. Her eyes widen and she covers her mouth in horror.
Norwegian Wood is faintly droning in the background. Engulfed by light and fire.