White Noise

It happened again the other night.
There was a trance-night on campus and I was so keen on going that I went ahead to the party even though I didn't know anyone who was going and my boyfriend categorically refused to go. (Understandably, anyone who does not like to dance as much as I do is bored when they go out with me, since I get so immersed in my dancing.)
It took a while for me to get 'into it', several times I thought myself silly for being so compelled to go and walked to the door. Several times I just stood in the smoking section of the club and lit up, because I thought people would think me incredibly silly, just standing around alone on the dancefloor, too shy to dance. (Me. Too shy to dance. God, what's happening to me!!)

The music wasn't helping. Trance is wonderful stuff, I think, when it's not trampled all over my mind-numbingly boring, repetitive beats. I like variation. I like unpredictability. I like drama, crescendos, random ribbons of flute music tying heavy rhythm into featherweight packages. I like flying on undulating currents, so that it feels like my body is somehow having to predict the music. The thrill is entirely lost when the music is so predictable that my bodymind has to do no thinking whatsoever.
But I digress: this was not meant to be an exposition on 'What is good trance?'

So. Picture me: alone, dolled-up, feeling silly, feeling alone. I really wanted to dance. I really wanted to know some people - dancing is more fun, and more of a challenge, when you have an audience, I think. Friends who can also dance, who can out-dance you. Even though it is such an intensely personal inner journey, my best dancing has always happened when there are people watching you, clapping encouragement as you fly higher and higher.

Suddenly, there was a shift in the music, in the light. I put out my cigarette. I took a sip of water out of the glass I was holding. I suddenly forgot to feel alone. The music had changed, and it had struck something in me. I shut my eyes, leaned against a pillar and listened. And then,
magic:

In the moment of silence between two beats, I suddenly woke up. If sacred trance was a well-known genre, I would call this music that and you would know what I meant by it. The unmistakable feeling, for those of us lucky enough to know it, of music that sounds like a prayer of the body. The beats entirely in tune with what your feet, hands, legs want to do. I shut my eyes and danced. At first, it was very strange: I haven't danced alone at a party for months, it takes some getting used to. There was a rush of things in my head. I remember them as clearly as if I had thought them all a second ago. I remember every movement, every flicker of light shining through my closed eyes:

I should go home.. I should go home, what if Mark goes away and I can't get in to my flat! I should go home. I have to study tomorrow, God, what am I doing here. The music is so wonderful, one track more, and I will go home.
And then -
I can't leave just yet. One track more.
My hands rise far, far above my head. My eyes close. My head tilts upward toward the stars. I can't leave, I won't stop. I'm thirsty. I won't stop. This sounds like a prayer, this music. But a prayer to what? To Nature, to movement, to myself, to what, what, what? What is the thing that is keeping me connected to this music? My body feels bound to it, I'm thinking with my feet and dancing with my mind. I want to fly. What is keeping me tied to this music?

I can see, behind my closed eyes, out there but inside me:
Treetops. Stars, exploding brilliance, diamonds against a pulsing black sky. Wind, waves, water crashing, cascading. The music throbs out there, above me, below me, inside me. What is keeping me connected to it. I move effortlessly. I feel no pain anywhere, I can breathe as deeply as I want to, and yet I'm moving as fast as the music and I can't - won't stop. All my fears flash past my eyes: Mark will leave. I am alone. I should be studying. What if I never get my thesis. Noise, noise, against the music. The music pushes through: that flute, piping it's way through the music, past that noise. I am riveted by it, transfixed, bewitched, enraptured. There is no way out of that music, it is everywhere. And I am everywhere. And then --
Nothing. Suddenly, those images become blackness, that noise becomes wordless. There is only movement, Being. Truth, wrapped in flute song and throbbing under it's grasp to the beat of my heart.

I walk back to my room hours later. My hunger and thirst have gone. I feel no pain anywhere. My feet hardly touch the ground. Silence.
And in that darkness, star-rise.