I saw the light on Sunday.

It’s always good at Panorama Bar/Berghain on Sundays, but this Sunday was something else. You know those stories you hear of hardcore religious fanatics experiencing spiritual awakening in Church? Well I think now I know what they are talking about. Only for me it was with music.

It all started with the words: “I am not going to Panorama Bar this weekend.” I actually made a point of this all week, and announced these plans out loud, to anyone who would listen. Was I trying too hard to conceal the inevitable....?! Perhaps. My reason? I wanted to miss it a bit. The last few weeks have been a bit of a Panorama overdose and it was beginning to loose its special factor a little… So, I thought, logically of course, it would make sense to make a little break. I was doing quite well with all the rational reasoning in my head, until Sunday dawned and the little thrill-seeking voices started their usual mischievous whimpers about not wanting to go home. It didn’t take my fellow party friends long to convince me. Ah, peer pressure. I am amazed at how little will power I have sometimes. Weakling. So, with whatever was left of the voice of reason in my head, I thought, I can just pop in, a few hours won’t hurt, besides, what else am I going to do on a grey Sunday afternoon….?! Yeah, right. Any reasoning you try and make before you go in, well you might as well forget it, or better, leave it at the cloakroom.

Definitely advisable to leave ALL belongings in the cloakroom by the way. This I learned the painful way, after running around in a “close-to-a-mini-heart-attack-state” for about half an hour trying to locate my bag amidst tripping bodies, flashing blue lasers, a sea of broken glass bottles and a couple having sex. (Yes, I know, maybe it was a bit rude to disturb, but they were having sex in the booth exactly behind the spot where I left my bag for “safety keeping” so in my moment of desperation I had no choice but to search the contents of their dark little hole. I think they were too caught up in the act to notice though.) In hindsight, perhaps this temporary state of emergency added to the outburst of euphoria, which followed later, you know the “cannot-appreciate-pleasure-without- pain-theory” -- definitely true.

Anyway, let me get to this awakening. It was one of those special day-night-morning-evening (fuck who cares what time it was, the concept of time completely ceased to exist at this point) moments when the music held complete control. Like a massive maternal octopus, she spread out its tentacles and caught hold of me whole, and wouldn’t let go, no matter how paralyzed my body was. I’ve seen this octopus before, a few months ago at Bar 25 with Axel Bartsch, and then another time at Berghain with Ben Clock. Thank you guys for fuelling my visual imagination with such vivid visions of great sea creatures. Perhaps, it’s because I feel so good, therefore so light, therefore like I’m floating, when the music is so good, that I start to think sea things. Tooon, tooon, TOOOON, TOOOON.

The octopus then turned into a wave -- a massive cotton one, gradually drowning all the bodies in its sound, paralysing, hypnotising, catching them so strong, that they could do nothing but obey. And dance. But it wasn’t conscious dancing at all, the energy was coming from else where, and loads of it, fuelling limbs to move up, down, up down. Endless pulsation, hours passed, but I just couldn’t get enough.

And lets not forget the smiles. People tell me I’m a smiley person. I like to smile, but I considered myself an average smiler, until I came to Deutschland. Its not a very common habit here. People seldom smile, even if you’ve seen them out nearly every weekend for the past 5 months in all sorts of places and all sorts states, still you might only get half a smile, if your lucky. But this Sunday everyone was smiling. We were all connected under the same techno blanket, all present at the same sleepover where our sleep deprived bodies were giving it their all on the dance floor. Mutual pleasure. Seeing the pleasure on other peoples faces and being able to feel at that exact point exactly what they are feeling. Togetherness. This feeling is better than any high really.

And when I thought it cannot possibly get any better, it did. Every tune that followed, penetrated more, deeper, twisting and turning my insides inside out. And then, after all the peaks, came the mother of them all – they played the tune which has been stuck in my head/macbook/ipod on repeat for the last week -- “Blind” by Hercules and The Love Affair. A tune which I prayed for Villalobos to play last Sunday, of course knowing in my right part of the brain that there would be no way he would play this quite dated and extremely poppy track, but in a hopelessly romantic way, still trying to send the brain waves across the crowd. And now, a week later, it is as if my prayers have finally been heard. I could not believe it. They actually read my mind. Finally I knew, God exists.

DJs responsible for the spiritual heights of the night: Dixon (Inversions) and Ame (Inversions). Watch their space.

Seize the Day, Join the Queue: Adventures in Elephant & Castle and "Seizure"

I can't remember the last time I got out of bed at 8:00 am, on a foggy winter Sunday, for art. It was the final day of Seizure, the much talked about installation by Roger Hiorns, in which the artist transforms an urban housing estate into an immersive grotto of overgrown copper sulphate crystals. Wow, sounds great! After teasing my imagination with all sorts of weird and wonderful sci-fi visions of massive blue crystals and moon like surfaces, I decided to sacrifice the warmth of my bed in pursuit of visual stimulation at an abandoned housing estate in Elephant & Castle.

I met up with some fellow art enthusiast-cum-masochist friends at the nearby shopping mall, for a quick fix of caffeine and some temporary shelter from the murky morning rain. Our initial plan of beating the ‘last day’ crowds got a little swayed once inside this weird and wonderful structure, called god knows for what reason "Infanta de Castilla". Let me just say, this mall deserves a blog on its own. It was incredible; like going back in time, bang in the centre of London. I felt like I was in East Berlin or on a very well made film set, having successfully captured the soviet spirit. The feeling of decay hung strong in the air, as did the stench of something fishy. This place had well passed its expiry date, but for me, it was a novelty. I snapped away frantically at my discovery, delighted to be somewhere outside of the glossy-ads, consumerist mania which is central London, especially now, just weeks away from Christmas. I felt like I had found my Zen in these dated surroundings, where time stood still. Its easy to forget just how advanced the London where I live in is.


But anyway, back too art. A few coffees, some sock jokes and an extremely sweet banana milkshake later, we made our way back to the cold and rain, in the search of Harpers Road. A crowding cloud of colourful umbrellas seemed like a telltale sign. Ah, a queue. It must be here. Where else but in London could you be greeted by this marvellous site on a Sunday morning. In fact there was two queues; one for the wellies, which obviously seemed to be undersupplied, and the other for the actual art. The wait was about an hour, the site assistant informed us. An hour in the cold. Oh well, we got this far.


Twenty or so minutes into the stationery wait, one of our party abandoned us for the pub to get the blood flowing back in his toes. One man down, but we were still going strong and full of hope.

After another hour passed, and we were still in queue one, I started to question my loyalty to art. The experience seemed to be turning into a test about the art of queuing. Despite the cold, everyone was very well behaved. They even brought books, these organised folk. By this time I too had started to loose touch of my toes and the prospect of putting on a pair of wellies and trudging around in puddles of blue chemicals (that is what the wellies were for) seemed less and less enticing for me. This crystal grotto better be good!


Eventually at 3:00pm we reached our turn, and went inside, into the rooms full of blue. And it was pretty, like a school chemistry experiment gone horribly wrong where chemicals mutated, devouring everything in sight. There were a few tiny rooms to explore, all united by the merciless attack of the crystals. Yet, during the two-hour wait, I had constructed such a magnificent palace of blue in my head, that not even a crystallized Taj Mahal would have impressed me much. Nor was the blue much embraced at this point by my comatosed companion. I wander if a warmer choice of colour would have been a more successful experience?


I spent my 10 minutes inside taking a thousand photos, while Irina poked at the walls to take away as many loose crystals as she could. Having waited so long we did not want to leave empty handed. It was after however, having found warmth and shelter at a local latino pub, that we were truly able to examine and enjoy our sapphire crystals. Was it a worthwhile wait? Had it been shorter, and the day warmer, perhaps it would have been a more enjoyable experience. Nevertheless I’m grateful to Mr. Hions for my unexpected visual stimulation of the Elephant & Castle terrains.