🟧 Reclaiming raves
On finding yourself in a lifestyle.
An extended version of this piece first ran on Michael Zhao’s Substack, Craving/Aversion.
Michael Zhao: As we walked away from where we’d tied up our jackets by the bar at the back of the venue, my legs were still rubbery from the last bump. Seven of us stood towards the back of the crowd, staring blankly at the pulsing light array hanging from the ceiling, waiting for one another to make the first move for what felt like entirely too long, until my friend E’s booming voice cut the awkwardness with a question: “Did we forget how to rave?”
Prior to unexpectedly spending most of Primavera Sound 2016 (which I’d gone to for the LCD Soundsystem reunion tour) in the DJ tent, I’d been to a few club nights thrown by friends of friends and seen Pitchfork-famous electronic music artists like Four Tet and Caribou perform live. But I’d never intentionally sought out a DJ-driven techno experience because I found the whole concept to be a bit cringe. Why pay to see someone play other people’s songs when I could see real musicians perform their own art for the same price? I wasn’t seeking an answer to this question when I found it in Lena Willikens’s two-hour set on the last night of the festival.
Techno is easy to mock because it kind of all sounds the same: even seasoned fans of the genre can’t explain in words what makes a “good” song better than a boring one. Willikens’s selections were different: Synthesized melodies and distorted vocal samples layered over analog percussion, mixing into hip-hop-inspired breakbeats backed by wet and juicy acid riffs. If that sentence means anything to you, then you know why it hit. If not, this set recorded later that summer might help, but you really have to be there to get the full experience. This moment cracked my shell and led me to attend several parties a year when DJs I liked would come through town or while visiting friends in Berlin. But several years would pass before I would fully align myself with the rave scene, claiming my identity as a raver.
For me, the line that divides partying from raving is painted by vulnerability. An experienced DJ will play songs you’re unfamiliar with, that you’ll come to love, even if you never encounter them again because when you truly open to the experience, all expectations and desires for what could be melt away as you become absorbed in the present moment. Dancing happens instinctively, involuntarily. Calling this a trance implies a directionality in the relationship that doesn’t quite fit. The selector controls the music, but the dancer’s sustained awareness is just as important. When it all comes together among a critical mass of people on the same dancefloor, we are raving.
Fast forward to September 2024. I’m at a summer camp in the Catskills attending an annual forest rave. Following a lackluster evening, around 3 AM, I stumble across my friends congregating by the fire pit outside the basketball-gym-turned-club. We decide to see what’s happening inside, inserting our earplugs as we walk into the back of the venue, taking in the relentless pulsing of lights, music, and bodies in motion. The DJ is playing gut-liquifying techno, the kind that normies mock for sounding the same. I can tell it’s the good kind, but can’t tell you why. However, it’s too quiet in the back. I gesture towards the bar, where we’ll be able to stow our jackets before moving into the mix.
Now we face the question from the beginning of this story: “Did we forget how to rave?” Upon hearing E’s voice, I snapped out of my funk and led our crew towards the front right of the room, where I knew the lights to be dim and the sound overpowering. We found some space just a few feet from the speakers and got to work.
Closing my eyes, I see a pulsating, gooey globe of light, ejecting colorful flares in time to the music as my body begins moving along to the beat. The globe suddenly collapses, leaving a dark hole in its wake and I jump in, digging deeper and deeper with no bottom in sight. Each beat dredges out more dirt, snaking the drain of my soul. With my eyes shut I can’t see any other dancers, but they don’t need to because I can feel it all around me. We are raving.
The practice of raving is as much about hedonism as meditation is about becoming a more productive member of a capitalist society — i.e., not at all. This creates tension between “ravers” and the popular connotation of that term in broader culture as a demographic motivated by pleasure and novel drug experiences. Which isn’t to imply that a practicing raver holds moral superiority over someone who does candy-flips at Electric Zoo or EDC to have fun and unwind, but a true raver could never be the CEO of Goldman Sachs.
Now to finally answer E’s question: Yes, I forgot how to rave. But upon finding myself in a dark room among good music and people with my mind set just right, I start again as if I’d never left.
Michael Zhao is a writer, editor, and strategist splitting time between Poultney, Vermont, and Brooklyn. His work explores raving, meditation, and the cultivation of presence and awareness in all its forms. You can read more on his personal Substack, Craving/Aversion.
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