Part III: Drugs
Drugs. The big ‘D’ word. Drugs have been a part of the rave scene since the beginning. Yes, it is possible to go to a rave and not do drugs. Yes, it is possible to be a raver and live a drug-free lifestyle. No, a rave is not dependent on drug use. Nevertheless, one cannot separate the scene from the drug use. It is impossible. Anyone that says otherwise is a liar. In England, the rave scene originated with MDMA or Ecstasy. In America, it was LSD or acid. It was common to see blotter art on flyers. Raves were named Dose or Acid Test. Raves are ways of changing the psychological state of a human being bringing them into a different plane of existence. This goes hand-in-hand with psychedelic drugs. At first, acid and occasional marijuana use were the only drugs seen at raves in America. Then, Ecstasy moved in. It became the raver drug of choice. Ecstasy broke down barriers of communication. It enhanced pleasure and sensation. Music became physically pleasurable. Strangers became people to be loved. Ecstasy broke down egos. It was a perfect fit with the happy family that the rave scene was trying to create. Today, Ecstasy is still popular, and acid is still used by a sizable minority. However, as greed has taken hold within the scene, Ecstasy is no longer pure. It is usually cut with baking powder, or worse, various pesticides and poisons. Nitrous Oxide has become popular. Within the last year or so, hard drugs have moved into the scene, crystal meth, heroin, and even alcohol.
Drugs are a frequent topic of debate among ravers. Some think that drugs should be done away with entirely. Others think that only drugs that increase the vibe should be allowed, namely marijuana, LSD, and ecstasy. Still others think that the rave scene is about personal choice and determining which drugs are good and which drugs are bad is imposing personal morals on others. The fact of the matter is, as the rave scene is appropriated (which I will examine later) into mainstream society, fewer people are concerned about the vibe, and more concerned about being wasted. This is where the ketamine, the meth, and the heroin come in.
Rave Spirituality
“The actual concept of raves is not new-it is as old as time itself. At the base level, raves are very comparable to American Indian ceremonies?where music is the key towards pulling oneself into a unique emotional and psychological state.” (Weber) This is the basis of rave culture. It is a very spiritually aware culture that focuses on an altered state of mind that is caused by music and, in many cases, drugs. It is the rediscovery of music as a spiritual tool. Terrence McKenna is quoted in the song Re: Evolution as saying “the emphasis in [techno] music and rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms?is the rediscovery of the art of natural magic with sound, that sound properly understood, especially percussive sound, can actually change neurological states in large groups of people that are getting together in the presence of this?music. [They] are creating a telepathic community-a bonding that hopefully will be strong enough then to carry out into mainstream society. (Barnard) The rave scene uses technological means to recreate ancient ceremonies in which dancing to music was used as a spiritual tool. It is a conjoining of ancient beliefs with the tools of today. It is not a culture that denies where we are at as a society today, but rather uses where we are at today to go somewhere else.
This is the essence of the “vibe” so commonly talked about in circles of ravers. There is a tangible energy that goes along with dancing to extremely loud beats with hundreds of other people. I use a personal story to relate this point. I was at a rave in the middle of nowhere. I had driven over six hours by myself to get there. It was about four o?clock in the morning. I was dancing to incredible music, when, suddenly all of the bass dropped out. I was sweaty. I was exhausted. The bass started to come back in slowly and I turned to the girl dancing next to me. We made eye contact and we both smiled a knowing smile. In that brief second, I knew that we were in the same place, that we were there for the same reasons, that we loved each other, that we loved the world, that we loved what we were doing.
Raves are a shared experience. A sense of unity often develops among ravers in which personal creeds, race, gender, age, sexual preference and everything else that our society places so much emphasis on simply fades into the background. “There is a magic moment that can happen at a rave?when everyone is dancing you experience a feeling of collective organism, and I think people that have had this experience view the world differently afterwards?the world is not made up of individuals vying for power, but rather?one throbbing thing.” (Dotson) The rave culture is definitely a culture of paganism and, to an extent, hedonism. It is a religion based on shared experience. Individual religious beliefs are integrated into the larger, unified experience. Many rave flyers use pagan and religious symbols. Enlightenment is a common theme, as well as love and kindness. There is a sense of discarding dogma in favor of karma. You can have your rules and your prayers, we have this. “We live hard?we commune with the midnight hour and ride it out until daybreak armed with lights and lasers and booming bass. While our parents are in bed, we hug [each other] and hear a sound so moving that we throw ourselves into it?seeking to [break] that barrier that tries?to keep the body separate from the sound?Hemingway had his bullfights. We?have our music?we live passionately.” (Roberts)
Another phrase commonly thrown around in circles of ravers is that of PLUR, which stands for Peace, Love, Unity and Respect. Its origins are unclear, many people claim that Frankie Bones talked about it when throwing one of his Stormraves. However, it is now common jargon among ravers. Peace, love, unity, and respect are the four pillars of the rave scene. In many senses, PLUR is the dogma that ravers believe in. It is the belief that for one night, a community can be created that does not function for the same reasons that larger society does. It is the belief that peace and love are worth trying to bring back into a society that now seems so devoid of them. It is most definitely a culture of escape. It is an escape from mainstream society into a utopian world for a few hours. It is a creation of space where love and happiness exist beyond everything else, and is not bounded by the laws or rules or unhappiness found in everyday society. Reality does not exist within a rave.
In relating this to earlier things I have mentioned, one needs only to look around to see this escape. The music is not “real” in the sense that it exists only for that moment. There are no originals; everything heard is a hybrid of things that were already hybrids of other things. The clothes are not real; it is not often that we see an 18 year-old girl sucking on a pacifier in mainstream society. A rave is a phenomenon that does not exist within the rules of society; it is the creation of a separate space. Beyond the culture of escape though, is a culture based on hope. The core of this separate space is the knowledge that it is a temporary separate space. There is knowledge that tomorrow I will work on homework, and Monday I will go to work or school, but right now, right now I am going to play. There is an emphasis on a focusing of energy, that what happens during this rave is positively affecting all of the energy on the planet. PLUR is also seen as something that goes beyond the rave scene. I would like to quote a recent poster to the mid-west raves listserv. “No matter what happens in popular culture, YOU keep the vibe alive. This isn?t specific to our little scene. PLUR in all aspects of life. When you?re walking down the street, do the same thing for strangers that you would at a rave. When you?re at a rock-and-roll club, do the same thing there. And then, instead of the fucking mainstream changing our culture, our culture is changing the mainstream?isn?t that the point of a movement? To affect the world?” (Matt Demmon)
In an attempt to sum up, rave spirituality takes on many forms. A group called the New Moon Collective in California throws a rave every new moon and builds a communal altar that anyone at the rave can add to. Drop Bass Network, in Wisconsin, actually throws ?evil? raves focusing on Satanism, while still espousing love and respect through their actions. Many ravers pass out candy to other ravers, or water. Rave spirituality, while taking many different forms (even dark forms sometimes) can be boiled down to PLUR. It is a general feeling of respect for the earth, respect for each other, and respect for oneself while being immersed in total bliss for one night. It is tapping into the communal vibe that is present. It is the creation of a temporary space where the only rule is love and the only preaching is loud music.
Rave Politics
The rave scene has always existed as separate from mainstream society, an underground movement,a movement labeled as deviant by those in the mainstream. It has been a subculture of escape. It is because it existed apart from mainstream society, that people could escape to it. It is because it has existed apart from mainstream society that it could set up its own value system, its own morality, and its own rules or lack thereof. When the scene started, everything was done on an illegal basis. Someone would call a friend, who would call another friend and 100 kids would show up at an abandoned warehouse, break into it, set up their speakers, and dance. As it became larger and larger, the forces that were trying to contain it grew larger also.
After a year or so of straight illegality, promoters made a conscious effort to secure spaces where their parties would not be busted. However, the underground pathos remains part of the scene today. It is impossible to find out what raves are going on, unless you are actually at a rave and pick up the flyers (or know where to look on the Internet). Even then, usually only a telephone number is given. When the night of the event comes, the telephone number will often direct you to a checkpoint where you can finally pick up directions on where the party is. In this way, the rave scene tries to insulate itself from the forces of mainstream society. It becomes a self-containing culture where the only way to get to a rave for the first time is to have someone take you. The only way to continue being a part of the scene is to be a part of the scene.
“The idea that [rave] culture has no politics because it has no manifesto or slogans, it isn?t saying something or actively opposing the social order, misunderstands its nature. The very lack of dogma is a comment on contemporary society itself?its definition is subject to individual interpretation: it could be about the simple bliss of dancing; it could be about environmental awareness; it could be about race relations and class conflict?it could be about reasserting lost notions of community ? all stories that say something about life in the nineties.” (Weber)
It is because rave culture is so personal, that it can exist the way it does. It is a culture with many different options instead of rules. “At its heart is a concerted attempt to suspend normal transmission, if only for one night?to invent, however briefly, a kind of utopia.” (Lenton) This brief utopia is what anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey refers to as a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). The phrase TAZ is thrown around a lot in rave circles, many not knowing where it originally came from. (I have even been to rave called TAZ, in which there were seminars during the day discussing the politics of our scene.) Hakim Bey was the first to write at length about it is his essay on the Temporary Autonomous Zone. Bey writes that the TAZ is something that slips through the cracks of society. It is “a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, time, imagination) and then dissolves itself to reform elsewhere/elsewhen before the state can crush it.” (Bey 1) Bey writes at length, but never really defines exactly what a TAZ is. However, he does give many examples and characteristics of these ?pirate utopias?. First, he speaks of the anthropology of the TAZ. He claims that a TAZ by nature includes not a family, but a band. “The family is closed, by genetics, by the male?s possession of women and children, by the hierarchic totality of agriculture/industrial society. The band is open, not to everyone of course, but to the affinity group, the initiates sworn to a bond of love. The band?is part of a horizontal pattern of custom, extended kinship, contract and alliance, spiritual affinities, etc. (Bey 4)
When we examine this in the context of rave culture, it is immediately clear that this describes the rave scene exactly. Ravers are a ?band?-a group that is at once both closed off from society, but open to newcomers. They gather at raves for the same reason, to party. Bey examines this also. “The TAZ [is a] festival?The essence of the party: face-to-face, a group of humans synergize their efforts to realize mutual desires, whether for good food and cheer, dance?or to attain the very transport of bliss?in short, a “union of egoists”?or else?a basic biological drive to “mutual aid.” (Bey 5) “The party is always “open” because it is not “ordered”; it may be planned, but unless it happens it?s a failure. The element of spontaneity is crucial.” (Ibid.) This can also be examined within the context of the rave scene. Raves are, in a sense, planned spontaneity. Sometimes, they are even spontaneous in and of themselves. (One raver on the mw-raves listserv recently talked about an experience of hers. She was on her way to a rave with some friends when they got stuck in standstill traffic. All of the sudden 30 ravers or so on their way to the party got out of their cars, turned on music, and danced in the middle of the interstate.) Raves are people gathering for the attainment of mutual bliss.
Hakim Bey discusses at length the Internet, not as a TAZ, but as a tool for creating a TAZ, for disseminating information. The rave scene has embraced the Internet wholeheartedly, with mailing lists, chat rooms, and electronic flyers. Ravers can discuss issues relating to their scene, trade tapes of DJs, or give party reviews. Chris Gibson discusses this in his paper “Subversive Sites: Rave Culture, Empowerment, and the Internet.” “Utilizing the discourse of TAZ, sites are constructed by rave music collectives, artists, and rave participants?attempting to initiate figurative spaces of empowerment that embody principles of community and local resistance to commodification. [The Internet]?forms a sort of support system for a subculture that relies on utilizing free-floating events that are momentarily rooted down in physical space in distinct ways.” (Gibson 5) Bey also (surprisingly) writes about music as an organizational principle of Temporary Autonomous Zones. “I believe that if we compare Fiume (an 18 month anarchic city in the early 1900?s) with the Paris uprising of 1968, as well as with the American countercultural communes?we should notice certain similarities, such as: the importance of aesthetic theory??pirate economics?, living high off the surplus of social overproduction, and the concept of music as revolutionary social change?and finally their shared air of impermanence, of being ready to move on, shape-shift, re-locate?keep on the move and live intensely” (Bey 13-14)
When we examine this in the context of the rave scene, we find a perfect mesh, an almost uncannily perfect mesh. Aesthetic theory plays a central role in the rave movement, indeed it is the rave movement. Rave flyers are often a work of art themselves. The blending of different sounds to create a musical wall and combining that with lasers and strobes to create a perfectly synchronized, overwhelming space of light and sound is taking aesthetic theory to its limits. Pirate economics, as Bey calls it, also plays a central role. There?s a reason many raves were first held (and are still held) in abandoned warehouses. There are tons of them! Ravers take old shells of buildings that are monuments to the evil of Capitalism and turn them into a TAZ. The drug economy is also a central part of the rave scene, adding to this illicit economy.
I have already discussed music at length, so I shall just add one more quote. “Techno was made not only to be played, but to be listened to loud?[we are being called not to listen, but to feel]?not the chord, the melody, the terraced dynamic or recapitulation-but the pulse, the ambience, the cycle, the metaphysical ?vibe??techno is at once both music of the body, and music of the electronic body?technology, once dry, representative, and extremely hard, is at last stripped back to its nakedness?it becomes freshly ?malleable? and ?organic?- the ?humanness? of [techno] is less?control?and more of the imperfect, the random, the hands-on and the unpredictable. These elements form a cerebral sound-scape and space that are constantly unpredictable and evolving-voices of power and imagination that surely cannot be ignored.” (Bull 3)
Lastly, raves are surely impermanent. They are usually one night, at the most they are one weekend. They change spaces constantly, often a rave is held in a space only one time. They embody Bey?s words, “keep on the move?and live intensely.” Raves are pure intensity, aural and visual overload, loud music, lasers, strobes, and hundreds of people blurring into one primal energy. “The TAZ involves a kind of ferality, a growth from tameness to wild(er)ness, a “return” which is also a step forward. It also demands a “yoga” of chaos, a project of “higher” orderings (of consciousness or simply of life) which are approached by “surfing the wave-front of chaos,” of complex dynamism. The TAZ is an art of life in continual rising up, wild but gentle?a seducer not a rapist, a smuggler rather than a bloody pirate, a dancer not an eschatologist.” (Bey 17)