The Rave Experience

An excerpt taken from Tony Hsieh's, Delivering Happiness on the power of the rave. Would like to see where my interest in electronic music, tech, and art can take me, and I think Hsieh's experience perfectly captures the reason I want to move forward with this endeavor...

Streams of giant green laser beams were shooting throughout the entire warehouse, which was the size of ten football fields. Fog machines helped create a sense of dreamlike surrealism as everyone faced the DJ and moved in unison to the beat of the music. Cans of Red Bull were strewn everywhere, and ultraviolet black lights caused the fluorescent decorations on the walls and ceilings to glow as if they were alien plants transported from another universe.

But it wasn't just about the decorations, or the black lights, or the fog machines, or the lasers, or the massiveness of the warehouse. Something else about the scene and moment elicited an emotional response from my entire being that was completely unexpected, and I couldn't really place my finger on exactly what it was or why I felt that way.

I tried to analyze what was different about this scene compared with the nightclub scene that I was more accustomed to. Yes, the decorations and lasers were pretty cool, and yes this was the largest single room full of people dancing that I had ever seen. But neither of those things explained the feeling of awe that I was experiencing that was leaving me speechless. As someone who is usually known as being the most logical and rational person in a group, I was surprised to feel myself swept with an overwhelming sense of spirituality--not in the religious sense, but a sense of deep connection with everyone who was there as well as the rest of the universe.

There was a feeling of no judgment, and as I glanced around the warehouse, I saw each person as an individual to be appreciated for just being himself or herself, dancing to the music.

As I tried to analyze what was going on in more detail, I realized that the dancing here was different from the dancing I usually witnessed in nightclubs. Here, there was no sense of self consciousness or feeling that anyone was dancing to be seen dancing, whereas in nightclubs, there was usually the feeling of being on display somehow. In nightclubs, people usually dance with each other. Here, it seemed that almost everone was facing the same direction. Everyone was facing the DJ who was elevated up on stage, as if he was channeling his every to the crowd. It almost felt as it everyone was worshiping the DJ.

The entire room felt like one massive, united tribe of thousands of people, and the DJ was the trial leader of the group. People weren't dancing to the music so much as the music seemed like it was simpl moving through everyone. The steady wordless electronic beats were the unifying heartbeats that synchronized the crowd. It wa as if the existence of individual consciousness has disappeared and been replaced b a single unifying group consciousness, the same was a flock of birds might seem like a signle entityy instead of a collectionof individual birds. Everyone in the warehouse had a shared purpose. We were all contributors to the collective rave experience.