photo: club rapido amsterdam
as you have probably noticed, i have a thing for pop music. i love music, i love dance music, i love lyrics, i love music that makes me think and feel. so i have begun a series of posts entitled "dance hall days". this allows me to highlight some of my favorite dance floor anthems from over the years and also to remember what my life was like in those times. i believe that being gay is essentially being part of a tribe. a good portion of my tribe's history has taken and still does take place on a dance floor, especially our rituals. stonewall was a dancehall too, i believe. coming out, celebrations, courtship, mating, group conscience all take place in tribal fashion in dance halls, clubs, and parties around the world. i'm only a warrior who loves his tribe. who understands and is following his spiritual path and trying to follow his heart.
i remember so often that there seemed nothing more important than to be in the right corner of the dance floor, with the right group of friends, with the right mix of pharma, and the right song playing as our backdrop. that was a pinnacle for the weekend, for the month, or for the hour. it was festival, it was celebrant, it was ritual, and it was tribal.
this is a tune by faithless: the lyrics speak to me because i have used clubs as churches. i have worshipped and mourned there. i have grown there, i have gone there to be seen, and i have hidden out there.
my life has certainly changed, but i think the younger warriors are still participating with this ritual de la habitual(LOL). i am certain i will continue to love and look back with fondness on my dance hall days.
FAITHLESS LYRICS
"God Is A DJ"
This is my church
This is where I heal my hurt
It's a natural grace
Of watching young life shape
It's in minor keys
Solutions and remedies
Enemies becoming friends
When bitterness ends
This is my church [3x]
This is my church
This is where I heal my hurt
It's in the world I become
Content in the hum
Between voice and drum
It's in change
The poetic justice of cause and effect
Respect, love, compassion
This is my church
This is where I heal my hurt
For tonight
God is a DJ
This is my church
7 comments:
Don't get me wrong, I have very affectionate memories of the old days, but I think you are romanticizing the good parts and rather amnesiac about some of the other aspects. There was the buying of and ingestion of the pharma, which fairly often resulted in K-Holes which could ruin the night of the person forced to care for the K-Holer as well as the K-Holer. There was lost money and electric bills spent, misplaced keys, 7am DUIs going home, missed Mondays and awful Tuesdays at work. There was the glorification of the hot bod which meant no one was "a part of" unless he could take off his t-shirt, ergo 3/4 of the general gay population. There was the terrible insecurity of those who felt not buff enough, which was virtually everybody. And for me, there was a terrific amount of boredom, I mean, how MUCH could you dance? Forget decent, intelligent conversations over the incredible volume. Oh yeah, I forgot hearing loss.
And then there were all those too sick to come out or in the hospital, and as the 90s progressed, all the ghosts dancing right next to you.
Beware selective memory. I'm happy to have been there, but I also see it for what it was, ALL OF IT.
So, hey guys, let's keep an even keel here: We recovering addicts who are veterans of this scene know that BOTH perspectives are valid and real. The glamorous, indeed, romantic, experiences so adeptly described here, and the aftermath/consequences described by Marc.
I feel strongly that deep-sixing the vivid memories of the early years after I came out just because drugs fueled some of my activity would be dishonest and actually quite sad.
Those nights spent in DC and New York dance caverns brought me out of my shell, allowed me to explore how to just have fun for the first time, and truly did replace religion as a bonding ritual in my life.
And it was in those places that I met my partner.
But none of this is to deny the other reality described so well by Marc. I have my own version of the downside of the glamorization of this gay subculture. One could say it is etched deep inside me, and I will spend a lifetime in recovery from some of the choices I made on those dance-drug nights.
So -- for me -- holding both realities in my head at once seems like a personal imperative. But I fully see the danger inherent in glamorization of those experiences in life that are intertwined with what we now acknowledge as our addiction.
Thanks you two for a really thought provoking set of commentaries.
Believe me, I agree NW. I would not trade those days and my memories of them for anything. But romanticizing all the fun without mentioning the downside is like my discussing martinis and dinnerparties and cruising hot men in the bars without mentioning the bad tricks, the empty pockets, and the horrible hangovers. Neither are untrue, but if you see only the first act of a musical, you can't quite say you saw the play.
I also adore pop music, and look forward to when you make these posts. Unfortunately, though it seems that pop ain't very popular these days. I hope that changes :)
I spent years in the clubs before I started using pharma. It was only when I started using that the magic disappeared. Or it may have just been something I outgrew. Perhaps a bit of both. All I know is one day I just quit dancing. I lost my sense of rhythm and the ability to feel or experience something new in these clubs. The part of my using that brought me to my knees happened far, far away from the clubs in a world isolated from my tribe by my own design.
I like to look back on the good times knowing that they are just as big a part of who I am as the bad times. And though I have no desire to return to the experiences of the dance hall days and thusly recapture feelings of my youth, I like to remember them in the fond way you write of them now. Thank you for that.
thanks guys for your comments. i think what i'm formulating in my head with these posts are a couple of things. firstly, i am trying to remember i felt was good about my tribe. hiv and tina have taken me down some very dark paths and so i am trying to remember what is good. then i also am trying to surmise what might be good next steps to take to continue the existence of a tribe that i can participate in. i'm looking for the new rituals for the tribe of men my age. it hasn't been laid out yet. it hasn't been written. i think we(NOT ME) needs to start that process.
Warrior Scout, I've never been into drugs so I won't try to interpret how that experience may have been for some of those who were. But I'd just like to thank you for this post – it made me feel good for the brief moment that i read it. I will not say that the memories you described were the best I've had, but surely, they were among the happiest and most memorable. :-)
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