GROWING A DROP BASS NETWORK FUTURE PARADISE OF LIGHT LIKE ICE CRYSTALS ON THE PLANET KRYPTON
(Written for the Drop Bass event, The Second Coming, Alliant Energy Center, Madison December 31, 2000.)
To party is to be human. Partying goes right back to the beginning of the human race. Originally, we partied in the face of death. When we killed a wooly mammoth and it looked like we would live another day, we partied. We ate, sang, danced till we were dizzy, and mated. Considering our ancestors could not conveniently hit up a cash machine and pick up a six-pack at some strip mall to party, they must have partied really hard. Think about it.
As time went on we got smarter and started farming. We saw a similarity between the forces of nature and our emotions (thunder storms were anger, Spring was love). We assigned gods to these forces and believed by mimicking them through drama we could bring them under our control. We danced to bring rain, and performed ritual marriages to promote the fertility of our family and land. We partied, played out a charade, got naked, got drunk, and got laid. It was great.
Then we developed cities. Which meant even bigger parties focusing on an overload of the senses through multiple plays, singing, dancing, music, gluttony, intoxication, and orgies. Yea! We embraced the irrational by dressing in grotesque costumes to reverse social status, changing rich to poor, master to slave, to free ourselves from social structure. This irrational overloading of the senses would cause a disorientated state of euphoria. A state where we strived to return to a mythical Golden Age where we were all naked, living free and equal in paradise among the gods. The psychologist, Carl Jung, said the desire for a paradise of equality and freedom is buried deep within our collective primordial unconscious. You can see this desire in the celebrations of Carnival, Mardi Gras, New Year's Eve, and Halloween. Even though these ancient hunting-agricultural rituals are no longer relevant to our modern city-science based culture, the need for party rituals remains in our souls, so these celebrations continue on. Drama, music, dance, drink and decadence is simply the party formula we learn from history. But how will we party in the future?
Right now, current party tradition vainly tries to bring back a past paradise that no longer exists. However, this is not the only paradise that exists in our minds, future utopias exist within all of us. You've seen them portrayed in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Superman, and in the myth of Atlantis. These are paradises of the future composed of pure light, like ice crystals on the planet Krypton.
Our world is simply partying in the wrong direction. We are no longer what we were: confused beings misinterpreting natural forces for emotions, and partying to change them. We party in a world where we control and manufacture our own emotions, as well as our environment. We have come a long way. Our paradise is a paradise of self-determination. At our parties we determine the shape and course of the event, consciously fusing ourselves to our technology in an organic and inorganic mesh. Unlike party cultures before us who used grotesque costumes and cacophonous music to create a disorientated state of euphoria, we use laser beams, strobe lights, and high speed music to create a beautiful world of fantastic light.
In the past, party cultures thrived off the wide separation of rich and poor classes and reversing these roles to generate energy. The power of our parties does not come from reinforcing the inequalities of any social structure. The power of our parties comes from bringing people together and creating a network. When our events kick in there is no distinction between D.J., promoter, and party goer. We are all one and the same. Like Woodstock, our events would continue on (and have continued on) even if the power went out and conventional communications broke down. Our network is ourselves and we fulfill our own need for future fantasy.
In our network love is transmitted by people loving themselves and the others around them. When we roll, our innermost longing to be something else, to be glittering creatures of love, is fulfilled. The power of this fantasy enables us to change shape, to take new form, to love ourselves in a new way and grasp the negative space within us, so we can reestablish contact with our own being. In the past we strove for a paradise where we lived with gods. In the future we will strive for a paradise where we are gods. Mankind has always assigned mythological characters to help him overcome the unknown. Prometheus gave fire to man. Our mythological characters are U.F.O. aliens. Real or unreal they represent externalized projections of ourselves. Our aliens not only possess the answers, they enact them. They are science actualized, and we are gods who create our own paradise of light.
A Drop Bass event is not about acting out some false charade, vainly trying to recapture some past paradise that no longer exists. A Drop Bass event is about proactively striving towards a new paradise of the future. Right now we are building/connecting/growing new networks of life. Networks that not only bring us to a future paradise for the moment, but bring us towards a future paradise forever. In this paradise we determine our own future and take responsibility for our own actions. We are gods, we are U.F.O.'s., we are big boys and girls. We take care of ourselves! It's not about the drugs you may/may not be on. It's about the power of dancing and dreaming in light. It's about our will to party into a future were global warming, overpopulation, and the misuse of information are imminent threats. Our paradise is a paradise of the future. Our paradise is about dancing & dreaming & floating in light.
To all with universal love,
by TJ Richter
© December 31, 2000 Theodore J. Richter |
