I’ve been on house arrest all week, writing a paper, but after spending all night Friday up writing, i needed a break on Saturday. I spent the day in Golden Gate with friends listening to music, but it was more of a chill outdoors with friends situation. Most of my friends like music, but not psytrance, so in a fit of expanding my horizons, i went out with them to a club playing house/breaks/trance. This was not the wisest of ideas because it reaffirmed my hatred of clubs and made me much less likely to try to branch out music-wise, simply because i would never want to deal with that type of crowd again. In the process of grounding my emotional reaction to the environment, it seems only reasonable to write some of my thoughts down.

When we arrived at the club, there was a huge line. Luckily, it’s San Francisco so this means simple patience in relatively mild outdoor weather. My line buddy and i just kept repeating ‘stay patient’ to one another. Unfortunately, my attempts at calmness are easily swayed by others’ anxiety and the line was filled with people bitching, moaning and otherwise producing great tension. This was only magnified by the bouncers who were certainly on a mission to confirm their masculinity. I really like nice, relaxed bouncers, but then again, they don’t get paid to be sweet. By the time i got into the club 40 minutes later, i was definitely rattled. The club was split into multiple music sections with large bars in between. In fact, i would go so far as to say that it was a very large bar with a few small areas for dancing. There was no consistent energy and the entire club felt like a collection of conflicting purposes. Some people were there to dance, some to get drunk, some to be seen, and some to get laid. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of awareness about others’ motivations and thus these energies were constantly colliding and producing a very unstable state.

I tried dancing, but it was too crowded so i started wandering and talking to folks that i knew. Every time i was between people or walking, i had to deal with very predatory gazes and in a few cases, being grabbed at my shoulder to turn me around to deal with a strange man who wanted my attention. Being painfully exhausted, my feeling of safety quickly deteriorated when a very drunk guy pushed me into the men’s bathroom probably to point out an empty stall after he saw me eyeing the boys bathroom. Perhaps he was trying to be kind, but it was still aggressive and uncomfortable and i had to dart past him to get out of there.

I tracked down a friend of mine who was equally unthrilled. We both pulled our hoodies over our head and stared out at the Bay chatting at how unthrilling this environment was. She had gotten dragged along by all of us… she hates clubs, she hates dancing and i have to imagine that if this is the only version she knows (since all of her friends are into house/breaks/trance), i don’t blame her one bit. The motivating forces seemed fine in this space, but those of us who got convinced to come left shortly later.

Environment trumps everything for me. Even in my love of psytrance, i have to *really* like the DJ to go to a club (like Infected Mushroom). And for the most part, psytrance clubs don’t even get that bad… a few sketchy guys, some people who don’t seem to know why they’re there, but mostly just too many people packed into an environment to effectively dance. Although i love my music, i hate feeling trapped and usually a club gives me the feeling of being in a bird cage, unable to get away, unable to find a place just to relax for a bit and then go back to dancing.

::sigh:: And because of my crash-and-burn in participating in something new, i still don’t know whether i would enjoy dancing to my friends’ music… but i do know that i won’t just go anywhere.