The Time on Sprockets

Sometimes we re-discover parts of our personalities that have gotten buried under the detritus of day-to-day living. The trigger can be as simple as the breeze on your face, the smell of a freshly baked pie, or the melody of a forgotten song.

For whatever reason, I've been listening to a ton of Above & Beyond on my ipod lately. Above & Beyond is an electronic act whose sets are punctuated by the usual "trance anthems", those melodic trance lines with airy feminine vocals that start out with a driving bass line, usually break down somewhere in the middle to an ethereal slowdown, and then cascade back up in a giant build to a high energy release. These anthems are infectious in a way that makes you just want to shake your moneymaker.

There I was, "Riding the F Train" to work at rush hour two days ago, crammed between an overweight guy already glistening with sweat at 8:30am and an ancient Indian woman who reeked of too much perfume, listening to Above & Beyond's 2004 Essential Mix set, when I remembered that once upon a time, I danced. Once upon a time, I would hit a NYC club or an underground loft party in some converted factory, starting about 1am, and dance until sometime between 10am and noon the next morning. Sure, one or two of those nights I had some "energetic assistance", but most of the time it was just me, pumping endorphins, flirting mercilessly and losing myself in the music and the company of everyone around me who was doing the same. The shocker was always stepping out of the club or factory the next morning and squinting into bright sunshine. What is that giant yellow ball of fire in the sky and where did it come from?

Many of the "buckets of blood", as one of ex-Mayor Giuliani's aides once referred to NYC nightclubs, are infested with "club kids" all swinging their glo sticks and sucking their pacifiers (a side effect of ecstasy is a tendency to clench your jaw; sucking on something alleviates this). On that basis, it's easy to say I've simply outgrown that stage of my life, that I've matured past it. But how do you mature past an experience that sets your senses ablaze and makes you feel alive? How do you mature past something that can act as a shared experience you remember for years after it happened? This type of music touches a part of me that few other things do. I don't want to "mature past" that.

Tonight I danced, ever so briefly, for the first time in a long time. I set up my the speakers in the living room, turned up the volume on the laptop, and for 5 or 10 minutes I danced. It freaked the hell out of the cat (especially when I picked her up mid-stream), but it unearthed a part of me that has been slowly disappearing under the layers of daily bullshit that seem to get more prolific and deeper the older I get. It reminded me not of who I was, but of who I am.