The Transcendental Drop

“We are strange beings dancing on a dying planet.” C. Bayo

That dancing unites us and brings us closer to a synesthetic/spiritual/communal place is obvious, and that the feeling of belonging and consensus in a Rave can be more powerful than the converging/equalizing power of democracy is also obvious, but in these days in which Rave culture has been absorbed by the late-capitalist winds of the pandemic, once the era of the domestic-party-pandemic-virtual has passed I think it is more conciliatory and mentally more healthy to give a twist to the phrase of Chimo, “The Apocalypse is Others.” Surely in this way we can dodge the immobilizing feeling of guilt and enter into some kind of action.

Agitprop and bad press turned any hint or possibility of utopia or new structure into a mere joke or anecdote, or into a subculture movement to be analyzed by the elite, just another anthropological phenomenon.

At the very beginning of 2021, Jon Hopkins published Music For Psychedelic Therapy, a journey/meditation that offers us sounds that take us back to the days of Alice Coltrane (always in all my phrases) and Sun Ra. No Ketamine. A full-fledged meditation, like what my friend Alba offers me when I go to visit her, with a few extra decibels and breaths.

It is not accidental and, in fact, seen from a distance, or at least the distance of year one A.C. (After Covid) and its temporary limbo, that suddenly catharsis or the need to dispense with certain ideas/pressures will lead us to recover discarded strategies, ways of inhabiting the world that place us directly in the Other.

As someone who embraces and deal with their (sometimes better or worse handled) intensities, Jon Hopkins’ tracks, rainstick and all, don’t repel me, not entirely. Dancing with tears in our eyes should be the title of every party night, taking into account that we’ve decided to continue walking with the same speed and strut once the stone was removed from the road.

The words of the curator Carolina Jiménez sparkled on the horizon, like the small invisible specks or muscae volitantes with which us myopic people live daily.

The political dimension, resilient and de-structuring, was always there.

Its thoughts explode like micro aurora borealis, as capricious as they are set in their ways. Another possible path.

In a conversation built from voice messages, I ask certain questions, which in reality are a mixture of curiosity and hope, or at least the certainty of a horizon.

(Images: Bego Solís. Lou Drago, Suspending Time: Meditations for accessing alternate space/time in music)