Monday, 24 March 2008
Sunday, 23 March 2008
Lake of Dreams - Bedrock - Dancing in Heaven
We're lying on a couch and the industrial brick roof is coloured blue; it begins to move like water - the surface of a lake upside down on the roof. Beside it a strip light begins to glow and wriggle, like orange worms trying to escape and crawl across the wall. Lines of blue paint begin to drip down the lights; I blink and the effect disappears.
A girl wanders up to us, sits down and curls up in Guy's arms. I smile and stand up, look over the balcony down to where people are dancing in the whirlpool of sound and music. I glance back and he is looking down at her affectionately, holding her safely. They chat amiably and I'm happy. Everything has a dreamlike quality, surreal and slow and warm. A girl steps out through the crowd and she looks over the edge. She is small and lean, booted and beautiful. She has long neon-coloured plastic hair extensions, building her hair up into a multi-coloured wild long jungle that makes her Tankgirl comic-book Japanese anime.
It feels good to see Security and Medics walking slowly through the crowd; they talk with people; they are carefully checking to see that we are all ok. It makes me feel looked after. I stop for a drink, and a delightfully camp young man dressed in pink Priscilla Queen of the Desert Seventies gear serves me the perfect gin and tonic - he slides the slice of lime carefully around the rim of my glass and pops a swizzle stick into it, and gives me a free bottle of water, and he smiles at me prettily as he serves it and swoons over my ridiculous £5 tip that I feel delighted to offer him.
We move on, and leave the cool room - loud sound, step carefully down the narrow stairwell, through the slow-moving zombie crowd of dreaming dancers, and on into the next parallel universe. We find ourselves lost in the labyrinth. We arrive, squeezed out from the crowd, into a semi-private room. It turns out to be a little food kiosk, serving deliciously nutritious quiche, and ribena icecream; the ice is delicious, cooling. Guy eats quiche and I melt into an icecream with a girl next to me called Joanna. The three of us have a quirky, witty conversation. We sweat and the icecream steams in our hands.
Now we curve our way slowly down the stairs again, and emerge onto the main dancefloor. "It's like a swamp" says Guy, and it is. Slowly the temperature heats up, degree by degree as we have gone lower and lower. The heat is humid, sulky, huge, enveloping. We merge into it like drops of water; we become the swamp. And the music washes over us and we lap it up. Words can't describe the pleasure the sounds give to us; we love this music, this outrageous, post-modern, trancelike hypnosis it brings, where you care for nothing and no-one but only must move with the sound and the crowd.
We slowly find ourselves sucked into the quicksand of people; the images overwhelm me. I feel like I am nothing and everything in this crowd of creatures all moving together like one person. The room is huge; the colours are neon. A long burst of green lasers flash far out over the crowd of thousands; arms are raised, the images on the walls are huge, flashing. We are dancing and dancing and time melts like Dali watches. We are the painting now and I remember looking around and seeing all the bodies merging into one; naked flesh and gold glitter, belly rings and faces smiling and all in liquid motion like latin carnival celebration. We are all dancing together in partnership. Sweat pours off us, and heat rises. Condensation forms on the high, high roof, and comes back down onto us like rain. At first, we don't understand - what are these cold droplets falling onto us? Have they created a cooling rainforest effect especially for us? But the girl next to me smiles and nods and mouths at me "it's the heat". And then we understand why it's raining indoors, and it all seems so perfectly logical and natural.
There are moments when I am lucid and aware; and I know we will never come this way again. We are only ever here once, and I couldn't be in a more perfect place with a more perfect companion than this man. We are in a World Club, a place they speak of with awe in all the places on the planet where people love to dance and listen to music and experience all their senses and fear nothing. So I look around me like a child, through and past the Veil of Innocence. The club is a London club and this music - progressive house - is why we are all here. John Digweed played a 5-hour set that night; and all I know is that I'm hooked, and I've never been happier.
In the morning, we walk across the Heath through the acid yellow gorse and the dark black mud under thundery skies. Each moment takes us further away from the Lake of Dreams and The Night it Rained Indoors. We'll never be there again, and even writing the words can't describe the power of the experience. But I'll never forget it, and I'm so glad that I was there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLnf9rkynKI&feature=related
A girl wanders up to us, sits down and curls up in Guy's arms. I smile and stand up, look over the balcony down to where people are dancing in the whirlpool of sound and music. I glance back and he is looking down at her affectionately, holding her safely. They chat amiably and I'm happy. Everything has a dreamlike quality, surreal and slow and warm. A girl steps out through the crowd and she looks over the edge. She is small and lean, booted and beautiful. She has long neon-coloured plastic hair extensions, building her hair up into a multi-coloured wild long jungle that makes her Tankgirl comic-book Japanese anime.
It feels good to see Security and Medics walking slowly through the crowd; they talk with people; they are carefully checking to see that we are all ok. It makes me feel looked after. I stop for a drink, and a delightfully camp young man dressed in pink Priscilla Queen of the Desert Seventies gear serves me the perfect gin and tonic - he slides the slice of lime carefully around the rim of my glass and pops a swizzle stick into it, and gives me a free bottle of water, and he smiles at me prettily as he serves it and swoons over my ridiculous £5 tip that I feel delighted to offer him.
We move on, and leave the cool room - loud sound, step carefully down the narrow stairwell, through the slow-moving zombie crowd of dreaming dancers, and on into the next parallel universe. We find ourselves lost in the labyrinth. We arrive, squeezed out from the crowd, into a semi-private room. It turns out to be a little food kiosk, serving deliciously nutritious quiche, and ribena icecream; the ice is delicious, cooling. Guy eats quiche and I melt into an icecream with a girl next to me called Joanna. The three of us have a quirky, witty conversation. We sweat and the icecream steams in our hands.
Now we curve our way slowly down the stairs again, and emerge onto the main dancefloor. "It's like a swamp" says Guy, and it is. Slowly the temperature heats up, degree by degree as we have gone lower and lower. The heat is humid, sulky, huge, enveloping. We merge into it like drops of water; we become the swamp. And the music washes over us and we lap it up. Words can't describe the pleasure the sounds give to us; we love this music, this outrageous, post-modern, trancelike hypnosis it brings, where you care for nothing and no-one but only must move with the sound and the crowd.
We slowly find ourselves sucked into the quicksand of people; the images overwhelm me. I feel like I am nothing and everything in this crowd of creatures all moving together like one person. The room is huge; the colours are neon. A long burst of green lasers flash far out over the crowd of thousands; arms are raised, the images on the walls are huge, flashing. We are dancing and dancing and time melts like Dali watches. We are the painting now and I remember looking around and seeing all the bodies merging into one; naked flesh and gold glitter, belly rings and faces smiling and all in liquid motion like latin carnival celebration. We are all dancing together in partnership. Sweat pours off us, and heat rises. Condensation forms on the high, high roof, and comes back down onto us like rain. At first, we don't understand - what are these cold droplets falling onto us? Have they created a cooling rainforest effect especially for us? But the girl next to me smiles and nods and mouths at me "it's the heat". And then we understand why it's raining indoors, and it all seems so perfectly logical and natural.
There are moments when I am lucid and aware; and I know we will never come this way again. We are only ever here once, and I couldn't be in a more perfect place with a more perfect companion than this man. We are in a World Club, a place they speak of with awe in all the places on the planet where people love to dance and listen to music and experience all their senses and fear nothing. So I look around me like a child, through and past the Veil of Innocence. The club is a London club and this music - progressive house - is why we are all here. John Digweed played a 5-hour set that night; and all I know is that I'm hooked, and I've never been happier.
In the morning, we walk across the Heath through the acid yellow gorse and the dark black mud under thundery skies. Each moment takes us further away from the Lake of Dreams and The Night it Rained Indoors. We'll never be there again, and even writing the words can't describe the power of the experience. But I'll never forget it, and I'm so glad that I was there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLnf9rkynKI&feature=related
Saturday, 8 March 2008
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