HIRAETH

In Wales we have a word called ‘Hiraeth’ a deep, bittersweet, and profound longing or homesickness for a home, place, or time that is lost, changed, or perhaps it never existed at all. It blends nostalgia, grief, and yearning, often tied to a desired place of the past or a sense of spiritual belonging.  Sometimes I sit in this space when either drawing or writing about the rave culture. It has been a massive part of my life from the mid nineties till now, wondering if it all really happened the way I remember. It’s the memories from my youth that really intoxicate me, the ones that have been muddied over time, not that they were particularly unmuddied when I recorded them up inside my skull, but those moments I long back for, what were they really.

I’m not going to lie or blow smoke, a lot of my experiences were not so great, even boring, but those golden parts must have been true for me to crave the feeling and chase the moments that appeared fleetingly like butterflies in a storm. Some people would say the intoxication was real and not the ephemeral translucent memories that flashback showing emotions as colours and music as the all encompassing world, the only thing mattering being the unity of everyone inside the place. But I know it wasn’t the alcohol that was driving this experience and the feeling was real, as for then and vast swathes of my life I’ve been sober, so it must be the magical parts that are real, even if they glimmer and fade, up there behind my eyes.

Like I say the majority of time spent in the field of rave aficionado, was bored to death. Early days of being High Contrasts official bag carrier, motorway marauder, analogue sat nav broadcaster was sat in empty clubs, long car journeys, desperate room twos and witnessing him play the six am bar staff clean down soundtrack.  I’m not placing the blame on him, I was also pursuing the glamorous roll of local out of depth drum and bass promoter that had the same eerie sense of gloom, but in a not making your parents proud sort of way. The colours were monochrome with the occasional malfunctioning darting laser, the smell was the mixing of bleach with dirty floor and the view desolate empty club, lost solo raver. But we both chased hard, we both knew this was worth the pursuit, so it must have been the slices of time in the gleaming of the club that drew us back. Through driving storms we carried ridiculously over packed record bags, I clambered over perimeter fencing with fly-posters in hand, got chased by police, risked dwindling savings, put in the miles and lived in the trenches. For what and for why?

There were these moments, front left of the stage, just in front of the towering speakers, we would gather there, the friends we came with, the friends we had acquired and the ones that were at the fringes of our smiles, filled with potential. The culture was fairly new, having recently been pulled from the muddy fields of the real raves and slowly if not problematically being domesticated in the clubs. No one knew how to dance properly, no one knew what to wear and nobody gave a fuck. If you wanted that nonsense there were plenty of pop clubs on the high street. There were moshers, punks, hippies, chavs, skaters, raggamuffins and us, just drinking it all in. Wondering if we could find our way home, it was our Fraggle Rock or was it Alice’s Wonderland. We were free with all the people we were warned about and it was special, slightly dangerous, but still special. I got a C in English and I’m expecting the words to the next bit somehow fly out my skull and land on the paper in a formation you can untangle. You would literally get lost here, not in a worldly 3D sort of sense, not down mis-signed stair wells, but spiritually lost, you would disappear into your own being, the music, the lights, the atmosphere would literally take you away. You know sometimes when you are driving and you arrive somewhere and your not quite sure how you got there, like autopilot took you over, it was in that space. But in the rave you knew where you were and how you got there, you knew if you emptied your mind you could stay in that headspace for a while and by just your presence you were taking part in something beautiful, almost squeegeeing your third eye without mushrooms. Whole nights could disappear, your friends could disappear and you would teleport to new ones. It felt like athletic meditation, actively getting lost, you could get good at it, those thoughts and feelings could be your aim, the movement, the sound, the visuals would take you there. Almost lucid dancing. Just these fleeting evanescent moments, these were the hooks we felt, the reason we kept coming back, we knew they were like vapours vanishing in the wind, we chased them but I think we knew how fragile they were and enjoyed them where and when we found them. Most put it down to drugs or alcohol but it was tangible and real. It also wasn’t fixed to drum and bass or dance music, those moments for me have arrived in punk and hardcore shows where straight edge, sober culture is the defacto.  I think its energy created by a gathering of people who come together to dance, it feels older and more ancient than all of music combined and I feel that this is one of the only the ways we can feel it today.  The best thing you can do is share this experience, not in a hippy kumbaya organised way, but just to build the infrastructure so people could potentially find it themselves, it’s almost like it has to be stumbled upon, found in dark rooms of music and people. Only the lost find their way, or some other cheesy saying. But it’s true, you do have to let yourself go, you can’t walk into a rave without the intention of letting yourself go, it just doesn’t work, you have to give something of yourself over first, almost the superficial sacrifice of a slice of your own ego. In a time where we stare at the name on the phone and rather just text back, won’t answer the front door unless it’s prearranged, the rave is the place we can go to silently connect with people, because the music and vibe communicates for us, bringing us wordlessly together in a wall of noise. I’ve never asked Lincoln explicitly, but I think all these years we chased that feeling and wanted to share that feeling with other people. He became the ringmaster and everyone danced to the beat of his drum. I created the events, a space it could live in, the place the community could thrive, the circus top. I’m sure it definitely existed, it was beautiful. ‘Hiraeth’.