Armed with brand new bright red shoes and new clothes, I went to fight the good fight at Kunstpark Ost last night. Ended up at the Keller, only this time it wasn't so great. There were two rooms, one in the front that was too crammed full of people dancing to music that was either completely unknown to me (man there's a lot of mediocre alternative out there!) or too light, and another smaller one in the back filled with goth types thrashing around to music that was too heavy. It was cool to watch for a while though. I think I was one of about five people in this room not clothed in all black. There was this one girl from an entirely different planet, goth, thin like a twig and folded over on herself as she stood there, arms dangling limply at either side, a beer bottle attached to one, long hair falling in front of her face like Cousin It. Her dancing had more in common with a willow tree swaying in the wind than it did with what you'd usually think of as dancing. There was some slow, solemn song on, and all of a sudden every one in the little goth circle was doing the same swaying pattern, two steps forward and two steps backwards. I knew that I was not witnessing 21st century people dancing in a club but rather Celts from the European Iron Age performing an obscure rite of passage dance. These people have a keenly developed sense of the ritual, the mystical; most of us have lost it.
I spent most of the time in the other room, though, waiting around for the few songs I actually knew and liked. I stayed to the bitter end, when the lights finally came on at 5:30. We all filed out into the shambles that was Kunstpark Ost at dawn. The variety of crap you'll find on the ground there is amazing: flyers, watermelon rinds, banana peels, condoms, bottles and cans (just clap your hands). As I passed the entrance, there were still people bungee jumping from a crane they had set up, and while waiting for the train at the station I could still make out the crane on the skyline and the tiny bodies making that first plunge off the platform and into the unknown.
Posted by Alan at July 21, 2002 02:57 PM