J Train Musings: A Foreward
It was a midsummer’s night some years ago on a short train ride back from visiting a friend, two stops from home, three at most. I had no business sitting; the car’s standing pole was more than fine. Cropped crochet, self cut Levi short, Rag and Bone tennis shoes, hair waved loose. Doesn’t get much more casual in swamp city heat. My periphery took notice of someone sitting a few steps up the car to my left, sketchbook open in his cross-legged lap. He flipped over a to a clean sheet and began to draw, looking to me and back to it.
I made sure not to look his way or to make any real acknowledged expression — I was in no way bothered, rather I have enough decency so as not to disrupt whatever he saw of me. His view was short lived, though, who knows if his memory was sharp enough to hold my mental image after I stepped off within minutes. Some image he has on paper.
I messaged the friend I’d just left describing what had occurred, asking him if I was really that beautiful to illustrate. He assured yes, that I was. It was a genuine curiosity, but I didn’t press it any further. That was my gift.
I’ve found for myself now the challenge that is to suppress inspiring energy in a confined space, one that is a subway train car. It’s hard to look away, and it’s not worth passing off. It will come back around, one way or another. I couldn’t go about my morning commute recently without observing the most innocently in-love couple I’d seen in a while — early twenties, school bags, grown out box dyed hair, black beanie and pullovers. They were neither excessive nor ostentatious, rather they glowed in their paired momentary amusement, simply being. Such playfulness is contagious — a fever I don’t mind catching.
Unfamiliar people aren’t exactly forgettable. Glimpses into their realness make them memorable.
February can be a heated month for couples, a sullen few weeks for self loathing singles alike. As much as I feel like I lightly float on in my perennial charmed solitude, I see how it’s often a struggle for those less rosy than I am in absence of companionship. wholeness, I see, thrives within community’s embracing oneness, which in turn may foster your own forgiving self-kindness. So, I’ve been saving this one in my back pocket for a rainy day — one like today, the day from which I write — to share more than a glimpse, instead more of a storied insight into the memory of my friend Terry who so kindly submitted this beautiful, nostalgic anecdote uplifting enough to melt a lone heart frozen over, or maybe lull one open-wounded… I now feel their story has aged long enough to cork open for our collective appreciation.
Move into this one with me now, and feel what I feel, that asmr full-body sensation in reading through its end.
–Lyra 🥀
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Echoes of Community
“What do you mean the rave is in Astoria? How? You better not be late.”
I had come back from Baltimore a few weeks early because a dear friend promised me there was an insane venue throwing massive raves in West Queens. Given the residential area he described, I couldn’t understand how this was possible. Especially given I’d grown up there and the hood was not exactly known for its electronic music dance parties.
He picked me up, the heads burned one down, and drove over. I had no idea what they were talking about until we turned the corner. The giant 5 story warehouse, jutting out of the Shallow Queens skyline like a rusted Stegosaurus, with a Soundworks and industrial pre-fab unit, of course. It made perfect sense, and as I turned, semi-gobsmacked to my friend, he just kind of grinned and replied,
“What do you want me to say, you’re the one who lives here.”
After paying a shockingly low amount of money for entry, I was introduced to a world that would give me the most transcendent, life changing peaks, and traumatizing, life destroying lows. Individuals there that became some of my deepest friends, whose lives I became wrapped in, from that day forward. Partners in crime, even eventual roommates, people I met months and years later, I later discovered were at this exact event.
Who was spinning?
Couldn’t tell you.
What was the genre of music on the bill?
No idea.
Why were people coming all the way to actual Queens to go to this thing?
A friend said it was the dank ass party, also, you ask too many questions now that you go to that college for rich boys.
The dance floor was lightly populated, with the regulars not reacting to the Escher dance floor, as they were probably used to it by now. My friend and I posted up on the far side of the venue, just taking it all in. We began the evening by choking down some mushies that he’d had for us to split. So at least if the party was kind of boring, we’d have our own entertainment. Sparking a bowl, we caught up as it had been a few months since we last chewed the fat.
That’s when a woman in a Gimp costume (yes, the one from Clockwork Orange) walked up to another girl dancing in a skintight red pleather bodysuit and began to cut her out of the bodysuit with scissors. The dance floor quickly cleared for the rest of what we eventually learned was a performance art piece, though when a mattress was brought out and she was thrown onto it, I was mid-chew on a cap. We were sitting on the other side of the dance floor between the performance art and the audience, with no way to get back without breaking the scene. So we just kind of stared at the mushies, wondering how many we took and if the lady in the gimp suit was coming for one of us next.
“Wait, who is sitting out there with FalstaffSatva chewing on that bag of…is Terry? Oh man, have they ever seen Blythe’s performance art?”
The restrained, restrainer, and woman running wielding scissors had choreographed a sex-positive re-enactment of that scene from A Cockwork Orange, which might have been the name of her codpiece. Once she and the scene finished, the players took a bow, and exited stage right. I was told, later over a cigarette, the scene was designed to loosen people up, and remind them anything is possible at a party like this.
We stumbled back over to our compatriots, who had a mixture of awe, confusion and fear on their faces. After realizing we weren’t porcelain dolls, and recognizing we were coming up, we were ushered to the smoking room. In the Before Before times, you’d need to get 100% of your partying clothes dry cleaned, as even just hanging out would coat your exterior and interiors with smoker gunk. These times included smoking and sharing cloves, djarums, perfect little cylinders of respiratory destruction, in addition to all manner of spliff, joint, and blunt. Poor ventilation came with some outlaw spaces, O2 in short supply, so contact buzzing was the name of the game. With witnessing the debauchery, came questions and bowl hits.
“It’s his first time? Oh my God, can you go find a hoop girl to show him around? And for God’s sake get this man a pill.”
And with that, I felt an insistent tug on my wrist. Someone was pulling me back out to the dance floor. Her name was Crow, one of the people you meet who teach you that some humans can be warnings to others.
To be clear, the music was bang on. Everything from acid house to breakbeat, drum and bass to LIVE techno. To be clear, after all those drugs everyone hit, a three piece band, synthesizer, drum and bass, played live techno for, I don’t know, a year? Did time even exist? The closest way I can describe events like that are those old school jazz performances where the squares are fainting in the crowd. Except everyone there was cooler than you (and spectrally, everyone thought this about everyone else, validating imposter syndrome as universal and can thus be safely ignored), but was also willing to teach you.
Want to learn to Flag?
No problem, just don’t be mad if the guy flagging has to go, his friends just sparked something.
How much? Shut up. Here try these, they glow in the dark.
This went on, not just until 4am when the bars closed. Not just until 6am, when the after hours wind down. Not just until 8-10am, when all the Space Miami people are finally starting to hit their stim windows. There were Wonderland events where non-sex mattresses were thrown down and movies were played on the projection that had visuals on it, until 4? 6pm? Is that even possible for an unlimited amount of money now?
And why was all of this possible then? The people were safe. It was insulated well enough and people were excited enough to be there that no one fucked it up. LBGTQ+ people felt safe expressing themselves, in addition to the substances being used, as there was no alcohol being sold, so there was no pretext for cops to enter and check IDs. Many of the residents were lawyers from good schools that will remain nameless, so they knew how to handle external threats. When they thought it wasn’t worth the risk anymore, they moved out, passing the risk down group to group, until it was eventually shuttered. Without trust, it all falls apart, and gives rise to potentially infinite horror.
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“Where do we turn? What do you mean, It’s a mile marker”
I couldn’t understand that the turn off was actually just one of those tiny Mile 42 markers on federal land in New Jersey. I had been backpacking for the last 6 weeks, so I was a little unfamiliar with country roads in the good ol’ US of A. We turned off after making a few U-turns with our headlights off, just to make sure we weren’t seen. I assumed my friends and I were on our way to be murdered in the woods…until I heard the sound. Or, more accurately, felt the bass.
There it was, the stuff of legends that I’d only dreamed about. Cars parked to the side of a star-lit field, a sandy dance floor ringed by pre-Nazi tiki torches, and a smattering of picnic blankets, tailgating set ups, and dank psy-trance oozing from speakers powered by generators and generosity.
The Pine Barrens Psy-Trance parties were a gift, a secret treasure that was deeply defended. For many years in the mid-2000s to early 2010s, a trio of psy-trance DJs from NYC & Philly hosted easily the best outlaw event series I was honored to be invited to. For those playing the home game, Gaian Mind, Psychegrounds, Light-o-matic particularly, and the entire NYC/Philly psy-trance crew. were some of the kindest, unflappable, and ingenious event wizards I’ve ever met.
They treated me as one of their own, let me camp with them at Burning Man, and gave me some of the only experiences of true unity and tribal connection I’ve ever had in my short life as a product of the concrete hive.
“I never knew there could be this many stars.
What do you see?
Not sure I see it, but I can feel it.”
Fully donation driven, the event was hours from both Philly & NYC, so if you weren’t willing to make the effort, you didn’t get to enjoy it. Which, frankly, is the most American fucking thing I’ve ever experienced. If you made the effort, you never questioned it again. Music from whenever you got there to noon the next day, a community of people that absolutely partied harder than you did, and a space to cut loose with an explicit lack of safety net. People would help, but you’re the one that has to go to work on Monday, not them.
“What? Tonight? Really? Are you serious? Yea, ok, hold on, let me get a bag together.”
To stress, these events had the opposite of Facebook promotion. Only two fliers were ever made. You got a text message from a friend the night of, or if you were really tight with the people throwing it, a day or week before hand. Not to go to Queens, but instead to pile into a car, and drive so far into Federal Pine Barrens land in New Jersey that you needed different to & from drivers. Because if you think the person who drove there and partied all night is good to drive back, you don’t get to manage risk for this Away Mission.
Was the music banging? Absolutely. Have you ever seen a trio of DJs play music based on how dark it is outside? Continuing the same genre from dark forest psytrance, all the way out into glistening euphoric as the sun rose? The dance floor never got crush level packed, as it was impossible to get there and back without a team. People laughing, joking and dancing with the DJ, as they can connect with the people around each other with no ego.
Anyone who has been to a full-on psy-trance event can tell you experiences like this are shared 3-5x an hour. Those moments shared by a handful of people on a handful of similar substances, experiencing similar emotions and vibrations in the air and ground, things Burners with Multi-Level Marketing plans called “synchronicities.”
What makes them possible is the dedication to the experience, not the revenue, associated with the event. Whether it was the bowls of strawberries or watermelon carried by psy-trance revelers, motivating attendees to bring things to share next time. Or the blunts and bowls shared in the smoking room, street corner, and in hushed tones on the dance floor.
I threw parties for a few years in Brooklyn, the vast majority, a few were good. One or two were great, and even those only came together by the grace of the Old Gods, a Blizzard not totally fucking my headliner, emptying my savings account, and 30,000 other things that managed to go right under the sea. But they weren’t great causally following those things, they’re great for the same reasons outlaw raves of every era are great: Community, respect, safety.
Not necessarily unity, especially when passions ran hot.
Not necessarily love, especially when the drugs wore off.
But a profound sense of respect, kindness, and willingness to contribute, in some way big or small.
That is what remains possible.
That is why you give me hope.
This is Terry Gotham, never stop dancing.
