FilaForum

Friday. Hardcore Nation. FilaForum. I have been trying to decide how to write this without producing the textual equivalent of shouting, and I’m not sure it can be done. The scale was the first thing. You know intellectually that a place is going to be big and then you get there and realise your mental picture was useless. People everywhere. Gabber everywhere. Flyers, shaved heads, tracksuits, black tops, bright things, people who had clearly travelled much farther than we had, people recognising one another across crowds, everybody discussing DJs and sets and where they’d been before and where they were going next. I had that strange feeling I sometimes get online when something I thought belonged to a small private part of my life suddenly reveals itself as a whole world with thousands of inhabitants. Edo and I have spent two years exchanging tracks through computers and talking about this music until ridiculous hours, and then you stand inside something like that and realise the network has bodies. Hikari laughed at me because I kept looking around. `”You’ve gone quiet.”` I hadn’t gone quiet. I simply couldn’t compete with the sound. There were moments when the kick felt almost architectural, as though the room itself was being rebuilt every second. Tia disappeared and reappeared repeatedly. Erick somehow encountered people he knew because Erick could be placed alone on the moon and find somebody from school. I danced until my legs stopped sending useful information. At some point we went outside and I realised my top was damp, my hair had given up entirely and I had one of those smiles that hurts because you’ve had it too long. I don’t want to write `”best night ever”` because that phrase should be confiscated from everybody after the third use. But I know I’ll remember this one.

Remember me, Eclipse.