It’s been a while, my once-faithful readers. I am sorry, but I have been too busy raving, meaning that I’ve been subjecting myself to confined spaces flooded with people, seizure-inducing light effects and deafening, desensitizing music turned up to 11. If you can’t guess where I’m going with this, it’s because you’ve forgotten my ways. Here I am to trample the booming, beat-heavy trend of raves. iRave, do you rave?
While raves have been around since the 80s, the concept of them has changed a lot recently, or maybe the idea of raves has changed only in the Clemson area. The raves of the 80s were sultry, sexual affairs where psychedelically-altered participants droned on into the hours of the night in grungy clubs and basements.
While these types of raves are still present (consider “KaZantip,” a five-to-six-week-long rave that takes place in a “virtual republic” where over 300 DJs play to more than 14 dance floors and 15 acres), raves have become prevalent with people of all kinds, including cultures that don’t accept hallucinogenic drugs. But that’s because most people have removed the substance from raves: drug use or substance abuse.
Clean, non-drug-endorsed raves can be seen locally in Clemson, such as the raves sanctioned by the Resident Housing Association and raves unofficially hosted by members of certain large Christian organizations and social groups of Clemson.
These clean raves are far beyond the raves made somber by the 80s, the middle ground of raves: raves where there is definitely alcohol involved and maybe a few of people on psychedelics. These clean raves seem impossible when “rave” sounds like a drug; the idea of raving without drugs does not make sense to true ravers. However, it becomes apparent that raving, on its own, is a drug — a mind and body altering substance.
Consider the sensual effects and tools of a rave. There is music: a consistent fluctuation of melody. A repetition of beat for the ear, which becomes a pulse. A pulse shaking the course of your body while you’re pressed by the bodies of everyone around you, you feel them moving against you, making you hotter and hotter until you tasted your own sweat. You thought the smell of sweat was gross until you taste your own, that painfully addicting but refreshing taste of sweat makes you close your eyes, or maybe it’s the flashing lights, absence of light or just how distracting your sight can be: you don’t need to see anything when you can feel, hear, taste and smell everything around you. Who needs to do drugs while raving when raving is a drug?
Maybe people just rely on the drug to stimulate themselves enough so they can give themselves up to such an experience. After all, the close proximity to strangers’ sweat can freak many people out. But really, what I think people freak out about the most is that the idea of entering a rave is leaving behind a way to communicate, a way to fit in. This may sound ridiculous, but consider it.
There is no speaking on a dance floor, especially not a rave floor; the music negates the possibility of conversation, let along the thought of it. That moment where a person is put into a group of people they don’t know, unable to communicate, is frightening. How else do you know if the person next to you accepts your company? How else do you know you’re not too close? How else do you know if you’re not into it too much? That’s the beauty and reason behind the popularity of a rave: it doesn’t matter. A rave allows you to lose yourself in others but without others. A lack of verbal communication can be invigorating to those who know no silence.
What people forget is that we can speak beyond words, but what’s even better is that in a rave, you don’t need to speak. The 21st century social mentality has developed into texting your friends about nothing and Tweeting about everything. We have so many platforms to speak our thoughts and opinions in America, and we use them so liberally that we forget there is time for silence and subduing yourself to your senses. That’s where raves come in.
Raves are sensual experiences that harness the power of music and other special effects to twist and boost your mental and physical state to levels acceptable for everyone and needed by everyone. It’s a quick escape to experience people on a different level, not a level where people create personalities and opinions with vocalized thoughts, but on a sensual level, where people connect through senses and feelings.
I implore you formerly faithful readers to give yourself up to music and rave if you haven’t before, and if you have but never done so “clean,” then let your body get altered by sound and light, not by some pill or liquid. Or not. I mean, you only live once, right?
