Going Clubbing to Feel Alone
A short while ago I went to see a favourite DJ of mine at Fold in Canning Town. I don’t think mentioning who it was is actually worth divulging since this piece isn’t a review and I think imagining one’s own favourite night or DJ in the absence of this information might make it more relatable (I only mention Fold by name since it has a particularly good sound system and seeing anything there is always at least sonically impressive). I had bought a ticket months in advance and it hadn’t even occurred to me to see if any friends were also planning to go. I spend a lot of time in clubs, due in part to the demands of my own music but also due to a lifelong love of dance music, and as such I often know a lot of people who frequent the same nights as me. Clubbing is obviously a social activity and clubs are principally a social space; people mostly go in groups, often stick together within the space, travel to and from the dance floor and the smoking area in little clusters ranging from the tight-knit and inseparable BFFs to more rag-tag assortments of strange bedfellows joined at the hip for one night only. Generally speaking I tend to turn up to clubs alone these days, sobriety changes the dynamic of socialising in and around clubs to some extent, and when you don’t drink there’s a lot less reason to hit the pre-drinks. I’ll often turn up just before a specific set I want to see, get through security, catch my bearings, wander around to find a good spot by which time, more often than not, I’ll have run into someone I know and will be having a catch-up and a natter before sinking deep into a stint on the dancefloor. Perhaps that approach is due to a conflation of a few factors: sobriety, getting older, being an artist myself, knowing the local scene and who might be at any given night but also valuing a bit of solitude now and again. Maybe this is a more common experience than I’m aware, it could be that there’s just not much cause to discuss club goers that enjoy a solo experience from time to time and mostly keep themselves to themselves…
But back to the night in question: for whatever reason this night I was particularly set on solitude. I got through the doors at about 1am and headed straight for the dancefloor, almost consciously hoping that this time I wouldn’t run into any familiar faces, which I didn’t. I found a spot near the front of the room in the middle of the slightly raised platform, packed deep with other ravers already settled into the flow, over to the left of the decks where I carved out a bit of space within the crowd. It didn’t take long to settle in at all, it was probably on the first or second build, strobes flashing, spot-lights whirling, smoke pouring in to the extent you briefly can’t see your own hand in front of your face, all combined with the vastness of the music and the sound of the system I began to lose myself within the atmosphere in a very particular way. It’s rare to feel so alone whilst so tightly packed among so many people, but it’s a beautiful feeling: the feeling of invisibility among a crowd completely dispassionate to your existence, totally embodied, moving, kinetic but absolutely divorced from external perception. There’s a kind-of paradoxical self-involvement and egolessness to the feeling; you’re completely focused on your own experience, your own movements, your own perception in the exact present moment, your own body and the space it occupies, your own stroboscopic vision and flashing images, your own relationship with the music, but it’s not a performance, you don’t feel observed or watched, you are completely blended into a mass, a blob, an amorphous human liquid.
I stayed in that state for nearly three hours, routed to my spot, feeling the ebbs and flows of the crowd and the room but all the while feeling blissfully alone with my thoughts and my body. There was a moment that, at the time, felt almost illicit and threatened to derail my sense of invisibility when a lovely guy with a Glaswegian accent tapped me on the shoulder and yelled into my ear “ALRIGHT PAL! YOU WOULDN’T HAVE A SPARE PILL I COULD BUY WOULD YE?”, it was a sudden jolt of external perception that startled me for just a moment, it brought the realisation that I was not in fact invisible and imperceptible to the forefront, but, I smiled and mouthed “sorry mate” and signalled in the negative to find myself immediately back in the fog (both literally and metaphorically).
Later on I saw from my vantage point a good friend who I had half expected to also be at the night in question. I held off for a little while the inevitability of our converging, soaking in some final few minutes of solitude within the mass before we both spotted one another and gestured. Some minutes later I went over to meet them and the spell was broken, but the experience has been large in my mind ever since. I imagine it’s a little like how a dancer feels rehearsing in a studio, being alone with your body and its interpretive movements, but combined with the vastness of the feeling of being lost within a crowd. Maybe it’s not for everyone, or, maybe it’s a far more widespread practice than I’m aware but I recommend to everyone, at least once, going clubbing to feel alone.
- Jocelyn Campbell, 2024
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