The Club

It took a while to be served. Unused as they were to the behavioural nuances of systematised alcohol provision, the team of experimental philosophers failed to assert their presence to the bartenders, and so kept being pushed in front of by the more experienced types. Finally, with drinks in hands they squeezed around a corner table. The leader, Geoffrey, held an odd-looking pink concoction the name of which he neither understood earlier nor remembered now. All he knew was that it had an aesthetically pleasing umbrella sticking out the top. Although he was happy with the addition, he was wary that there might be some kind of rule on taking it out, so he tried, with great difficulty, to drink around it.

‘Right’, he said. After poking himself in the eye with the umbrella and giving up on the drink idea entirely. ‘You know why we’re here. Go look around, see what you can learn’. He himself got up and began trying to make his way through the mash of bodies. He was beginning to feel profoundly unsettled by everything around him. The music, which he heard more in his body than his ears, was too loud. The lights were too bright and inconstant, flashing every colour of the rainbow into the back of his skull. When he closed his eyes the colours would remain, somehow managing to penetrate even his usually private mind. The people who stood or sat or danced were too close to each other for his prickly sensibilities, and they conversed in a language that was alien to him. What perturbed him was the distinct lack of nuance. Everything was obvious and invasive, an environment of almost constant confrontation.

On one occasion he saw Alex, the trainee, laughing with some girls. ‘Hey!’ He barked. ‘You’re not here to have fun. Get going’. At one point he saw Sandra, a postgrad, doing on the dance-floor something that could only loosely be described as a ‘boogie’. He shook his head at her unprofessionalism and moved on. It was later in the night when he found himself on a bare-metal walkway overlooking the dance-floor. The sound that surrounded him was quite unbearable now; he could barely hear himself think! Flushing with pent-up frustration he wondered why people would choose to come to such a place, a place so unfavourable to discussing the finer points of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. ‘I mean’ he muttered aloud to himself, ‘what’s the point of a building if you can’t think inside it?’

Despite this confusion he was, admittedly, mesmerised by the dancing. There was something odd about it that simultaneously unnerved and attracted him, and he wondered why. Maybe it was the drink, but the dance-floor looked more like a bubbling pool of organic matter that throbbed with the bass of the music, than a set of individuals on a night out. Taking a notepad and pen from his trouser pocket Geoffrey started scribbling, as much to make it seem as though he was doing something as to actually do something. In the midst of this self-conscious presentation somebody approached him.

‘What are you doing?’ She shouted above the noise.

‘Writing’, he replied, without looking up.

‘I see… Why?’

Getting suddenly annoyed he gestured at the bodies below. ‘Look, it’s weird. What are they doing?’

‘Some call it dancing’.

‘’Dancing’’, he repeated thoughtfully to himself, not hearing the sarcasm and writing something on the page. ‘But why? Why are they dancing…’

‘I guess it makes you feel good. You get to forget about things, shake the stress away.’

‘Hmm. So through dance any existential doubt is just washed away in a torrent of alcohol and sweat?’

‘Ew.’

‘Not ‘ew’. No.’ He collected his thoughts. ‘Rather, it’s a celebration of the embodied, of physicality and of sensuality. Through dancing they’re able to affirm the existence of their own bodies.’

‘You make it sound so selfish.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so.’

‘Maybe you’re right. It could be a celebration of the embodied but not in the individual, atomistic sense. After all, there’s no ‘personal’ here. There are no identities, no selves, just bodies in motion. Perhaps it’s a celebration of a common experience, a common humanity, a common identity. I mean, you can hardly tell where one body ends and another begins! How could one possibly maintain a sense of personal identity here?’

‘They are pretty close…’

‘It’s more than that. It’s as though the rule of the floor is that you leave your self at the door. Together they become a mass. In dancing they are all one being, giving themselves over to the rhythmic pulses of the group as an organic whole. In that sense it’s the transcendence of the ego, a ritualised transmogrification from oneself to all, culminating in a shared consciousness. Maybe in that moment they forget who they are. Maybe they remember that they never knew in the first place. But it’s as though each person reaches out in the dark and, in finding somebody else reaching out in the dark too, they cling together as if clinging to life itself. In that way they all become members of one another, and in the end all that seems to matter is that for the first time none of them feel alone.’

He had stopped, suddenly aware of the beauty of it and aware of the ugliness that made the beauty necessary. Saying nothing she took Geoffrey by the hand and led him, carefully, lovingly, towards the floor.

Reviews

[Christina]

I really loved this story, your writing style is very refreshing. You captured the essence of why individuals come together in often the most mundane of places; to get a sense of belonging. Kudos, nicely done!