I went to a rave at The Silver Door (Torn Curtain / Drones Club / Cyberia) last Saturday, the first time I’ve been there in a long time. The event was called Bubble Bath x Service de Garde. The listed DJs include Ma Sha (NYC) and Martyn Bootyspoon. I recall Mr. Bootyspoon as a mainstay of the Montréal underground.
To get there from my place, I took a meandering walk along Van Horne and through the empty lot at Hutchison. I threw a few stones at the concrete and corrugated metal shapes the City stores there. In my past the night recalled, they somehow had not figured out how to put the lot to use. It was just an empty gravel lot the size of a small city block. The entire length of chain-link fence that cordoned off the tracks was pushed down and grown over. I returned there often in 2015 and noticed that someone was using it as an installation site. Arranging broken chairs, tables, flower pots, dishes, lamps, toilets and other modern conveniences in a cruel pastiche of home. The neighbourhood’s profuse supply of run-down street leavings was combed for things broken beyond use. One day it was a kitchen from the set of Ivan’s Childhood, a hollow space echoing in the open lot; another day, a dozen or so chairs were arranged in neat aisles before a broken hunk of concrete, as though waiting for a group to come and hear some garbage-speaker. Each one of them was broken in a different way and crumbled at the slightest touch. On another visit, I saw the four walls of a cozy living room, complete with ruined armchair and smashed TV. Another day, the entire lot had been emptied out, save for two chairs facing each other as though awaiting confrontation.
Then, in 2015, I didn’t know what this place meant to me. I didn’t have perspective enough to see that the most essential moments of my life would be concentrated in a few square kilometres around that empty lot. I felt that the moments I was living through were just the beginning. Life was flowering with possibility. I write to you now in early Autumn. Fallen petals become mulch, but when we crunch through them they release their last opiatic spritz of nostalgia. I anticipated this rave so badly because this specific venue was once the de facto centre of my universe. Our inner desires get caught up in the currents that circulate outside, and it feels all the more exciting to satisfy a common craving in communal ritual.
I did what I thought I would have done then: it was the best I could do now. Drank four beers by myself and read Hegel by lamplight. Turned the music off to perversely accentuate the loneliness. Left by the back door at midnight, took a meandering walk along Van Horne and through the empty lot at Hutchison. Had a brief misunderstanding with the guard. Things have changed: now, anyone tuned in to the right channels online can buy entrance, but the ticket was the address and the proof-of-purchase is your name. NOTAFLOF, but you will most certainly be turned away for trying to pay on the spot. One of the more significant, generational changes I’ve noticed is that events are marketed around organizing teams rather than venues. Venues have taken the left-hand path of WeWork and are now just empty vessels. Sound, light, promotion, and the spectacle itself are all outsourced. The doors at this venue were technically closed to people coming in off the street for a more “intimate” rave environment, but that didn’t stop the riff-raff from trickling in. Nothing ever does.
I have memories of this place in at least 4 radically different configurations. In my memory, the place was labyrinthine, constantly receding into further recesses with rooms that felt like I would never fully explore. Now, if it has layers they are opaque to me. All we are presented with is a flat surface, a white cube. I will always miss the neon “rock’n’roll” sign, but the fog machine feels like a throwback to the place’s legacy. That’s enough honour shown to our ancestors for me. I loosened up far more quickly than the last rave, and once the acid hit I started enjoying myself immensely. There were a lot of very cute girls on the dancefloor. I did what I would have done then, and sent psychic waves in their direction. It was the best I could do now. I remember one who was quite short, but who weaved purposefully through the crowd and danced with a stiffness. As the evening wore on, I caught sight of her loosened up, but still moving relatively little. Very charming. To the girl in the dress, to the tall girl, to the short girl, to all the girls who were there: email me.
The primary object of going out is to lose yourself; the possibility of loss-of-self is the allure. There was no chance of me losing myself, given that I was my only accompaniment—but I did manage an acceptable level of integration with the moment such that the whole thing was very pleasurable and satisfying overall. My secondary object in this outing, my conscious goal was to remind myself of who I am. I have my own history, my own life, a relationship to this City that is mine and no-one else’s. I exist beyond this this year. Than the past four years. I recognized both E– and S–’s silhouette and didn’t speak to either of them. At the moment it felt vindicating to see two women I have had relations with, this being only my third outing as a bachelor. In hindsight, however, these relationships are nothing to be proud of. Everything is a sign of unfulfilled promise. I am a monster, but not the avenging sort: merely the hideous creature people shudder to see. Recognizing their distinct auras brought me such joy. S– in particular was working so hard on the dancefloor, inspiring me to keep my own energy up.
Almost every single relationship I have ever had with a woman that has been romantic or sexual is somehow fraught. In fact, this goes for most of the men I’ve been friends with, too. With S–, it’s contingent, owing to the maverick nature of an old nemesis, and I feel like we were a hair’s breadth from being amicable / normal—but there’s always some “contingency.” One moment I am lost in a nostalgic reverie, and the next moment the present forces itself upon me. I was surrounded by the Study Group, suffocated by the overbearing mess of my present social relations. Not counting E– and S–, there are now around seven other people that I know surrounding me on the dancefloor. People that I have known for months, in fact, and have seen multiple times a week—and yet, somehow it was forbidden for us to talk to each other.
My fear is the emptiness of not knowing anyone—but even when I do know someone, it is basically impossible for us to get along. At L–’s party last month, I was able to connect with a few people. I was shy and didn’t take full advantage of the situation, but still felt capable of being my affable self. I was in a fundamentally different gear, receptive to the world, which is how I usually am not. I was able to make friends with the Study Group because, when I met them, it was not clear that my relationship with R– was over. I had the confidence of a man with identity. And then it ended, and the vacuum collapsed before I could brace myself. The friendships I cared about (D– and A–) were not strong enough, evidently, for them to work to maintain it on their end. And on my end there is just scorched earth.
I left Luke’s party absolutely elated. I left the rave in a similar recognition that I had had an experience of great personal significance, even though, objectively, nothing special happened: spent the evening reading, poisoned myself with beer in silence, walked alone to a rave where I danced by myself for 6 hours before leaving without having spoken to anyone. Bummed a cigarette from someone so frazzled by the sensory overload that I had moved on before she processed what I had said. Walked home as the sun was coming up. Staying up ’til sunrise is one of the things that makes life worth living.
