I Cant Stop Raving :: Personal Narratives Music Essays

I Cant Stop Raving It was our Friday wickedness ritual. After school, after work, after the rest of the world started to slow to a halt, we would just be getting started. With our veins pumping nothing but caffeine and sugar, wed shed our daytime tog for neon in-your-face t-shirts and nylon pants big enough to hold a compact car. Following the directions on the fannys of purple and blue high-gloss fliers, wed pack the back of a heavily modified Honda Accord and set out in search of symphony, longing for the sounds of a bass beat. We were young, we were energetic, and we were obsessed. We were party kids. On both given weekend, we would drive anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours to welcome the best rave. Sometimes we would end up in a warehouse in downtown Atlanta, sometimes in an oversized barn in southern Georgia, and one time even in a vauntingly field somewhere in Alabama. But even when the location changed, the dig never did. When we arrived, there would always be a menagerie of brilliantly colored Hondas, Acuras, and Mitsubishis in the parking lot, and a long line of another(prenominal) party kids waiting outside the venue. The bass usually penetrated the walls, shaking the night outside, and teasing us as we waited to make our way inside. It was midnight, and our night would be just beginning. It was analogous entering something out of a hazy midnight dream. The entourage were always completely dark, broken only on occasion by the flashing of strobe lights and lasers. Ravers wore glow-in-the-dark accessories and carried glow sticks that would fly through the darkness like maniacal lightning bugs, while smoke machines would obscure all details with capacious quantities of gray mist. It was all very disorienting sight became a unessential sense, our ears took over our awareness, and we were left at the mercy of the DJ. In this underground (as in not completely legit) subculture, the DJ was our Pied Piper. We traveled to hear him spin, a nd his music put all of us party kids under a spell. On the dance floor the music was so loud, and the bass so intense, they were tangible. Everything else in the world subsided when the throbbing sound waves entered our bones and lifted us away. Bodies packed onto the floor would pulse in tune, unconsciously, lifted by the sounds like invigorate in a primal dance.