The Arts & Culture Journal

The Happening

My attention rushed frantically from the stage, to the crowd, to Charlie and Jenny, round in circles, as a full-on sensual assault was launched on my being at the festival. Then, finally, it settled.

 I was transported into the music. I was transported into a hyperreal sensory realm. The energy of the spectacle was released, sending shivered vibrations through me and I could feel the new sway, even on my thoughts and all the whispers of my mind vanished under the force of the happening.

The music was a beat-funky crash through a metal wall and it captured the whole tent in a blaze of mutual rhythm; acting through each vessel like a single system. The bass ran through my spine. The rhythm tapped and stomped out my reflexes.

I followed on a line with the crash, drop, break of the drums. I felt as if the music was throwing me into energized otherness, as I lurched out my legs and dropped over and over again, immersed in the musical perception.

Then it was over; ten seconds, two hours? I couldn’t tell. My attention starting groping in the flashing darkness for Charlie and Jenny. Had they gone? No. I saw them outside the entrance spinning slowly to some music I couldn’t yet hear.

 As I slipped from the tent I heard another drop and the fresh beat bounced me quickly outside, as if I’d been pushed. There I was faced with the seduction of many sounds, accompanied by their entrancing lights, beckoning the happening onwards; shaping and forming the wave.

The journey spun on.