the goth night

We’re on the road, down to San Francisco. I convinced SMTM to join Eneasz and I to the goth night. All in black.

I spent the afternoon sleeping. That’s a trick I learned in Berlin. Get back home from work, immediately sleep for 3h, get up, eat, prepare, and leave around midnight to go party. Sadly, clubs in other parts of the world close too early to go there at midnight. Tonight, Death Guild stop at 2:30am. Back in Berlin, Sisyphos opens at 11pm Friday, and closes at 10am Monday, and never closes in between.

SMTM The Wise tells us the story of how he used to smith swords and once got a piece of anvil stuck in his neck, which has been in his neck for 14 years. The surgeon said that from his experience in Afghanistan, pulling bullets out is never worth it. It just does more damage. And an anvil shrapnel is basically a bullet! As Eneasz said, this story is so metal.

I, for my part, shared the story of The Sword of Scott Alexander.

Eyeliner goes on. It’s nearly second nature now, even though I’ve probably only done it a dozen time. The pen never leaves my bag, because I never now when I might need to look juste a tiny bit more mysterious.

Eneasz asks me if I want earplugs. I take the ones he offered. A few minutes before I bought a pair of Loop Experience again, holographic black. I had bought a pair back on 2021, when I was living in Berlin. They were always on me, as you never knew when live music might spring up on you. Once I was at an art exhibition with friends in an old warehouse, and at the end of the exhibition, there was a techno set! You never know when a set might spring on you there.

Topic moves to cost of living. Eneasz is worried about his finances, now that he’s moved to Berkeley. In Denver, everything is so much cheaper! His partner reminds him that no actually, stuff was barely cheaper. Inflation happened everywhere, and it’s easy to overindex on the prices from years ago, and compare them against current price of the new place. It happened to me when I moved from Berlin to Paris, everything was much more expensive, but when I travelled back to Berlin, everything was much more expensive than it used to.

We get in the club. $5 only for the entry? Guess cost of living is not that high after all. Eneasz give us a tour of the place. He brings us to the upper floor bar, the one with the least traffic, whete he has his barman. If you go to the same barman every time, they start to know you, and they greet you when you arrive. That’s how you become a regular! You get recognised and appreciated, you get someone happy to listen to you, and sometimes you get free drinks

After some dancing, we go out to cool down. A passerby stops by. Top hat, white buttoned up shirt, suspenders. He looks like a mad hatter. From his bag a large camera appears, and he asks us to pose for a photo. Real family Adams vibe we have. He gives us his business card, so we can find our picture on his Facebook page.

We get back in, and to the stage! I start flying around, stomping, whirling, jumping, waving, reaching for the sky. The music moves me, and I can’t but answer.

SMTM The Bear is dancing, but he seems very restrained, not so comfortable with his dancing to take all the space offered to him.

A few years ago, back in Berlin, I had myself trouble with dancing. Most clubbing did not move me much, and I always ended up bored quickly and leaving early. I mostly went to be with my girlfriend.

One day, I had a long conversation with her about her experience of music, and why it moved her so much. Through multiple hours of expert elicitation (asking the questions “Why do you like that? How does it feel? Why does it feel right to move the way you do?” over and over), I discovered that I had been doing dancing COMPLETELY WRONG.

There are actually two completely different types of dancing you do in a club.

The first kind is dancing for yourself. The most prevalent in a techno club in Berlin. It’s the kind you’d do in your home, on the music you love. You can do it eyes closed. You move because it feels good, because it complements and expresses the emotions the music makes you feel, because it feels good to move, because as humans we evolved to move to rythms. Thi one you can’t do if you don’t like the music, but you can do it next to anyone.

The second kind is dancing with others. You look at one or more people, and you dance for them. It’s a performance, it’s play, it’s seduction, it’s communication. You take the lead and dance to impress them or make them feel something. They take it back and you imitate what their doing. It’s all about the interplay of emotions between the people dancing. This one you can do on any music, even one you dislike, but you need someone who you want to dance with.

What I had been doing wrong, is that I was letting my social anxiety make me try to perform while dancing for myself. I did not do what felt good and right to me and my relationship to the music , and I was not dancing for anyone in particular, so I did not have the interplay.

Oh it’s midnight soon! Times up for writing.

Let’s get back to dancing