Electric Feels

I wouldn’t consider myself a proponent of the electronic music scene. It takes a specific time, place, and mood to get me into most of the dubstep and livetronica that’s being tossed across airwaves at bars and parties and, most recently, television commercials. But these platforms take the electronic genre out of its true context in the live show, which is something I’ve been very strongly reminded of in the past couple weeks, having seen Lotus and Big Gigantic play this February. I consider both of these events as life-altering experiences in the way they’ve shaped my relationships with those present as well as my perception of light, sound, and self.

I know it sounds like a stretch, especially for those who’ve never attended one of these shows with all their strobing lights and pulsing baselines. Overwhelming noise and visuals in combination with lurching sweaty crowded bodies is simply not everyone’s cup of tea. But I would argue that it’s nearly pointless to attempt making a real connection with the music, the kind of connection that yanks and strums the heartstrings, ignites flash bulb memories in the mind’s eye, and gives the body no choice but to swerve to the beats and synthy melodies, without having experienced it in proximity with the lights, the performance, and the camaraderie of the crowd. It’s like eating French fries without Sri-Racha (or ketchup), like watching a youtube video of someone sky diving: still pretty good alone, but nothing like the combination of elements that work together to produce a whole that’s impossible on its own.

Enter a shadowy concert hall with vaulted ceilings. The air is dense with smoke, body odor, and anticipation. There is a pulse in the room, some bodies following its lead more closely than others, but all movement altered by the sound. Even the bartenders shuffle and duck in time. The openers fade into pits at either end of the stage, and the room goes quiet. An eruption of primal cheers signals the headliner’s arrival, preempting the exploding lights, lasers, projections, beats and screes and womp-womps. The baseline becomes the heartbeat of the crowd, everyone sways and dips, arms up, fingers outstretched, bobbing and crashing like an ocean of individual ripples, each swelling with its own kind of life. Everything is a shadow but for the sunbursts that illuminate it all like lightning, and you catch the ecstatic expressions on your neighbors’ faces for seconds at a time. Everyone is touching everyone. Skin on skin, you share the air with every mouth, and it tastes like smoke and sweat but also energy, and everything is shared. There is no self. Communication happens in the eyes and smiles because nothing else is heard but the jams. Hours later, the music stops, the lights flick out. How long has it been? There is a ringing in the ears. Your shirt is soaked. You feel new. You will never hear the same and you don’t want to. The flashing colors and pixels will appear when you close your eyes for days after. You’ve shared yourself with everyone present, and they with you, and everyone is carrying pieces of everyone else out the door.

A day, a week, a month later, one of the songs I heard that night comes up on shuffle. Instantly I’m thrown back into the moment, I feel an intense longing for the flashing faces all open and euphoric, I have visions of pixelated landscapes juxtaposed against cats, I begin to tremble. It isn’t the music itself that makes me feel this way, and although I’m enjoying the sounds, it’s what they trigger that gets me smiling and moving uncontrollably like a shot of adrenaline and serotonin to the heart. And I don’t remember my friend getting sick in the parking lot, or taking an elbow to the cheek, or almost getting lost, and I’m glad I went.