An old movie theater converted into a venue for live music. Open mike, 15 minutes to sing your piece. A line of cinema seats at the edge of a dance floor and tables behind with people sitting in darkness drinking cheap beer, vaping, talking, listening.
Most of the music rough sounding guitars, lyrics intermittently intelligible, but anyway loud. The audience in their twenties, thirties.
Then the program moved off the stage and onto the dance floor with a couple of electronic music sets on keyboard and computer, with bright squares of throbbing strobe lights and deep throbbing beat that resonated with my chest cavity. I felt my lungs flapping to and fro.
I was down in front of the singer listening to the repetitive lyrics of alternate pleading and wild protest, and (restrainedly for me) dancing. Around me, not so much stamping or stepping as rhythmic spasming, along with phone photos.
It was easy to get caught up in the moment, so when the performer asked the group of dancers to gather in a circle, crouch and stack right hands in the center as he sang 'higher and higher' and we stood and lifted our arms up and up, all side by side, I felt a flash of exaltation.
So what is it about music that makes us (okay, me) susceptible? The deep need for repetitive movement, the close proximity of others, the obliteration of nuance in the noise and the red and green strobes: all of these take us toward a place where we let go, meld, merge, are magnified.
The experience didn't last long. The effects of the brew concocted by the singer soon wore off. It wasn't mystic but with some elements of what mystics have reported. What kind of encounter was this? Perhaps we seek to meet an alternative to the mundane, to ordinary Tuesday-ness, and sensory overload is a way to do so. Perhaps the experience was less encounter than escape.
In any case, I was impressed with what the singer could do to pump up that passive crowd, me included.
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