They Change Their Body Into Spirit
Raving in the Hammerstein Ballroom
If you are a regular or have just discovered Tarantula: Authors and Art, welcome. Our February inspiration is the Spanish artist Inma Hererra. Hererra's imaginative metamorphosis of a simple copper sauna pot into a divine Celestial Vessel filled with stars through the alchemy of nature and art transported our writer Maja Milanovic back in time to a memory of her own becoming. Maja uses the lyrics from Underworld’s song Born Slippy in this text.
If a friend forwarded you this article, welcome; if you like it, share it or why not subscribe?
“The vessel itself was mesmerizing. A container, yet more than that—a dome, a space to lose oneself in.”
- Inma Hererra, The Alchemy of Becoming
Sometime in the 90’s, hundred of bodies like soft waves lulled hypnotically to the beats reverberating throughout one of New York’s oldest entertainment venues, the Hammerstein Ballroom. Just two blocks away from the world famous Macy’s, the few pedestrians who make it past the department store down the scruffy street couldn’t have imagined the alchemy unfolding inside. Sweaty ravers with stars in their eyes openly greeting strangers, sharing water immersed completely in the rhythm. Pulsating. On the stage, in front of them, the British electronic band Underworld, turned them into believers. They could’ve easily been mistaken for a cult or a sect if a sober bystander had stopped to see what was going on inside.
She smiled at you boy
Drive boy, dive boy
Dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy
She was a lipstick boy
She was a beautiful boy
And tears boy
And all in your inner space boy
You had
Hand girls boy
And steel boy
You had chemicals boy
I've grown so close to you
Raves and sounds coming from British bands found a crack in the very dominating rock and hip hop scene of New York and occasionally spread throughout the city’s clubs. Even today, I am not sure how big or small the rave scene was in the Big Apple. It found me through my Irish and English bartender friends in Alphabet City, who introduced me to the sound. At first, I resisted. Once a goth, punk rocker, and new waver, I scoffed at the softer British beats and repetitive electronic beats ….
But it took one summer in Serbia when it all changed on a cellular level. Meeting a group of friends going from rave to rave, being the most open and kind cool kids that I have ever met, wearing baggy pants and tank tops, organizing private parties on river banks, randomly giving Shiatsu head massages, and all that in the middle of the darkest period in Serbia’s modern history, was exactly the promise of a better world I needed: a place of support where my body could move freely, loving energies mixing. I was a quiet kid back then, muted by generational trauma, with a looming war over my head between the two tribes of people to which I was born. I was also a writing student who would have rather suppressed and sealed all history books and personal experiences, out of shame and dread that they would slip into the hands and tongues of the wrong guys again. Writing block felt like Groundhog Day for me, but I desperately wanted to get out of it, express myself, and live.
New York and its music scene often came to the rescue. I attended as many concerts as I could and saw bands that I loved. Any band that existed on the planet and made it eventually found their way to New York. I first heard of Underworld on the soundtrack of the very popular British film Trainspotting. Surrounded by the velvety interiors of the Hammerstein Ballroom, their beats shape-shifted our arms, torsos and legs into a flowing river that sank the thoughts, doubts and everyday anxiety to the bottom of the current.
It gets wet like an angel
Derailed
(You got a velvet mouth
You're so succulent and beautiful
Shimmering and dirty
Wonderful and hot times
On your telephone line
And God and everything
On your telephone
And in walks an angel)
…… lager, lager, lager …. the song Born Slippy about being pissed drunk continued. The words didn’t matter at all …. It was the repeating beats that built on top of each other that brought us to a climax. A jump, a scream, release. After jumping up and down, blissfully exhausted, I took a moment to pause among the bodies that lost control around me. I looked up. A grin spread across my face unexpectedly. Looking down on me was a ceiling painting that resonated a broken windowed church dome. A bright blue sky which was a stark contrast to the darkened ballroom stretched above us, and a few angels curiously looked down upon us. Not sure who was the artist who painted the ceiling, any other day I might’ve considered it kitsch, but the art created a reaction in me, a kid who was stubbornly atheist, that everything will be alright. I was in celestial harmony. My DNA was changing every time I lifted and stomped my feet on the floor in some kind of a trance. It was the beginning of my own slow becoming. Of shedding. Chrysalis. Right there on the dance floor, with my own private dome hanging above me.
