Justice - D.A.N.C.E

For most people, there is a truly significant ‘most memorable experience’ that guides and influences their entire lives. This is more typically an interpersonal experience shared with others; a wedding or subsequent divorce. A birth or a death… For me, as I have been alone the majority of my adult life, The most memorable experience for me was something I have spoke of often in these memoirs; the weeks I spent alone in Paris for my 30th birthday.

There is something inside of me, at the very core of my DNA that truly knows and understands that I am not meant to be an American. From the very onset of my age of reason, (decidedly much sooner than most, as my parents can attest,) I began plotting ways to get out of this place. I spent the majority of my high school years planning a way to become a foreign exchange student. When it came time for college, I applied to a handful of schools in the UK and France. When I dropped out of college (the first time) I spent countless hours researching (pre-internet) ways to get the hell out of the southeastern United States via work studies or volunteering (a route I still am pursuing, always!) Unfortunately, as my anxiety and later diagnosed panic disorder was dictating my limitations, no plans ever solidified or came to fruition. It wasn’t until a very patient and incredibly insightful therapist spent an entire year with me teaching me new ways to think, that I was able to make any headway. It just so happened that the month I “graduated” from therapy, my 30th birthday approached and as a reward to myself, I planned the trip to Paris. My last two ever sessions with her were guided meditations focusing on negating my absurdly overwhelming fear of flying. (I do alright now, Valium helps.)

There are several major reasons I’ve hit upon in the past why I chose Paris, (Oscar, Henri, le Moulin, etc…) but as for the timing of why I went; that’s another story. When I went to the UK (to stay with an ex,) I very specifically chose a time around a concert (Morrissey in Dublin). When I had made the decision on where to go, the only thing to decide was when. This basically meant I scoured the internets, straining my floundering French language skills, looking for the best shows to attend. The right show would dictate when I would go. (In case you can’t tell by the painfully obvious nature of this blog’s existence, my entire reason for being is music and going to live shows. Always has been, always will be. It’s my rainman-ish idiot savant-itude skill, I suppose.) I found a couple decent shows I wouldn’t mind seeing, but I was mainly scouring for bands that never came stateside, which are the majority of the bands I listen to anyway. I was just sure I would find a random Daft Punk or Fischerspooner show somewhere… I held out on booking tickets until a Queen Adreena or maybe a randomass Blur show would pop up… It didn’t happen, but I stumbled across this calendar of events page, that made mention of this a festival… The Techno Parade…. Oh my. What’s this?! I perked up and got to googlin’.

Not unlike its sister shows in Germany, the Love Parade or the FuckParade, the Techno Parade takes place every year September and takes over the whole city with music. Major Euro-djs and a few from this side of the sea get together and set up in gigantic semi trucks, starting at the Bastille, under direction of Joachim Garraud, grand marshal. The Parade makes a huge loop through the city, ending back at the Bastille, where all the djs take over the grounds and dancing ensues - all night long.

Paris was the first time in my life several things happened for me… It wasn’t my first solo flight or trip to a foreign city, but it was the first time I wasn’t afraid or skeptical. It was the first time I was really confident in myself. It was the first time I was really grateful to be alone. And in a testament to the city itself, Paris is the first place in my whole life where I felt like I was home. The concept of “home”, the existential understanding of it, the place where I feel the most relaxed, understood, inspired, calm, the best version of me, and the most like myself; it’s almost been like an el dorado for me. A place I always thought existed, but never truly believed I would find. And then suddenly, there it was. Paris was home. I knew it within moments of walking out into that street alone that first sunny morning. My feet connected with the streets and sidewalks in a way they never seemed to fit here in NC. I wasn’t overwhelmed, I wasn’t a tourist, I was in the place I was always meant to be. I still believe that. Leaving Paris was one of the saddest and most painful experiences for me, so much so that it was almost like an amputation. Every day and every moment of my life, I am always keeping my peripheral on a way to get back to stay. If I had just a skoosh more gumption and a surplus of cash, I would be gone today; no hesitation.

The Techno Parade took place 15 Sept. I got up early and got my hair in the buns and threw on those same red chucks I’ve been wearing since high school and I hit the metro. I rode the Ligne 1 to the Bastille and from the second I stepped out of the station, It Was On:



I was thrilled, I was happy, I was home. I wanted every day of my life to be thumping bass and dancing and crazy haircuts and strange new people and glorious, glorious house music; throbbing electro bass lines taking over the cadence of my heartbeat. Yes, I am a music snob, I can rattle band names and talk shop with the best of them, but I have the side of me that cannot and will not be repressed: I am a house music junky. Specifically, dirty European electrohouse. Scratchy filthy bass. Swingy Italio disco. Five minutes of the same junky bass line running at 120bpm, I cannot resist. Throw in a screechy diva, I am in heaven. It all started when Veronique, my high school best friends’ exchange student showed up in 1992 with all her crappy happy hardcore with tales of the discothèque. I was smitten; it was love at first thump. People get so confused when they pick up my iPod and see only one or two songs by major bands; only to hit the subfolders and realize they are all remixes. I love a damn remix. Especially when it’s good. Especially when it’s rude. Throw the words “dark dub” on anything and you can almost guarantee I’m going to deafen myself with it.


(i get chills @2:09every time i watch this)

Justice’s D.A.N.C.E came out in early 2007. I’d heard it maybe once before I hit France. I heard it, or variations thereof, no less than 10 times during the parade. When I hear it now, I am there. I am knee deep in androgynous teenage boys flipping their arms in circles doing the Tecktonik, I am guiding Australian tourists back to the metro, and I am crouching under bus stops, taking pictures. I am following David Guetta down the street, hooting like a madwoman. I am flipping out when I realize I am standing around watching Carl Cox, Martin Solveig, Laidback Luke, Oliver Huntemann and Benny Benassi roll past.


(this one kills me, as i know i was right there and nearabouts where i was standing/jumping... indulge me and spare 45 seconds for this video! I followed Huntemann like a lusting zombie through his whole set!)


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I have gotten into this mindset of Accountability lately. (This may be a digression, but in my mind, it is all connected, bear with me.) It’s more or less a final acceptance of my place in the world. A gradual and solemn acceptance that I may never be married or may never have that elusive “soul mate” I always assumed I would find. I made the choices that got me here, I am the one who let my body get to the point that it did and I am the one who made the decision to irrevocably change it. I accept the repercussions either way. I am the one who dated the wrong men and maybe let the right ones go. I am the one who went to Paris alone and came back to meet my ex, who I care for greatly but spent the next 3 years repressing myself to the point of crippling depression to please him. It took three years of being the submissive in a relationship to realize the varying levels of co-dependence that I am unwilling to accept. And I see the patterns of men in my life that I have found myself drawn to, simply because they needed me in some way. I accept that I have dated men who are weaker than me or broken or addicted, because I am so strong I need to dominate someone. I have never dated anyone with the strength to love me back the way I know I deserve. I have never dated anyone with my level of perseverance, hope, intensity or tenacity. It’s time to change all that.

This translates into other, more tangible areas of my life; I accept that if I don’t pay my bills, they won’t get paid. If I don’t take out the trash, it won’t get taken out. I have finally, FINALLY, gotten to this place where I don’t need a man in my life. It would just be nice to have one. That’s a concept I never even realized I needed to clarify or … feel. And when I think back on it, when I start to understand what it all means, I see the butterfly effect of the moment I stepped out into the crowd at the Bastille spinning me into the tornado of the past few years and placing me gently on the ground in front of the amazing person I know I am today. I am proud of myself, I am in love with myself, and now I know I’m finally ready for the right person to see what I see. And if that never happens, I accept it. I know I can do it alone.

It started in Paris. God willing, it will end there.

Kate Bush - King Of The Mountain

I have cultivated many seemingly useless talents. I have taught myself how to gloss over pain and to pick myself up from heartbreak. I have an extraordinarily keen sense of impermanence. I understand my mortality. I know all too well how to appreciate the people in my life and the things that I see, love and do beyond the capabilities that most people can possibly logically comprehend. I understand beauty, love, blood, pain, death, life, faith, fear, exhilaration, and passion on a manic poet’s level. This is my blessing / This is my curse. It propels me recklessly forward; all day, every day. It causes me to crack under the pressure sometimes. It finds me only being able to relate to dead poets and rock stars; hiding in my bed for days when it all gets too overwhelming. It also brings me to tears when I am too full of love for things most people ignore; a beautiful bird on an otherwise ordinary tree, witnessing kindnesses between strangers, the right note in the right song, being at the right place at the right time, the sunrise/the sunset, itching the right spot, meeting the right person, childrens' faces, ice cream cones and ladybugs. There is so much that the majority of most humans take for granted, that i have somehow convinced myself Someone has to Appreciate it or it will all be for nothing. I believe I have taught myself how to be overwhelmed with beauty. I have taught myself how to not filter out the majesty and velocity of my little lifetime. How lucky I am! Lucky me, lucky mud!

Sometimes I find myself replaying seemingly insignificant experiences that wouldn’t make it into a single paragraph of my life’s story because there literally was no meaning, it was just a beautiful moment; it happened, I appreciated being alive to experience it, the experience stayed with me. these memories come and go; the way a certain shadow fell across the sidewalk one morning as I was walking in to work one day and I never saw it again – where did it come from? A beautiful mystery. Trying on a dress in the Kmart changing room with my mother when I was 6 years old – I do not remember the dress, I remember the feeling of the terry cloth on my stomach and the perfume my mother was wearing; White Shoulders… there are certain moments I can remember very consciously saying to myself “I am alive. No one on earth has ever had this experience and I got lucky enough to be the one to feel it and best of all, acknowledge the gift of being able to recognize how lucky I am to be here.” …Standing on the lawn front of my Granny’s house the day of her funeral and seeing the first few snowflakes fall; holding my best friend’s child for the first time; lying on my back in the grass and watching the clouds roll by – anytime, ever. I relive them, I replay them, I relish them, I appreciate them.

Oscar said: “Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.”

One such memory that is slightly significant but is not, is somehow backhandedly related to this song. For my 30th birthday in 2007, I was given the gift of travel by my parents. I went to France (Paris, specifically) for an extended solo soul search. It was the greatest and most beautiful experience of my life. There are many moments that meant nothing which mean everything, that I replay over and over; Taking the wrong metro stop exit and coming out of the tube into a department store. Sitting in front of a café in the Pigalle whilst sipping a Franziskaner and listening to a man sing Cat Stevens with a thick French accent, watching graffiti roll by on the train from the 18th to the 7th arrondissements, bread, the sound of a car with its stereo blasting rolling down my little Rue Blanche in the middle of the night…

I, at the time of my travel, did not have an ipod. I knew music was going to play a very significant part of this experience, as I would be alone. I scavenged what I could and had a debacle of ipod buying drama back and forth on ebay. I tried purchasing an ipod 3 different times, all 3 were worthless and had to be returned, until 2 days before I was to leave, I convinced my friend to let me borrow his 6GB ipod to take with. I very specifically remember my dad picking my up at my apartment to take me to the airport and I was still trying to load just the right songs onto it. He was standing at the door, hollering for me to come on and I was still syncing…

Very specific albums and artists went on that trip with me to Paris; I spent a day in the Pere Lachaise with Debussy, he kept watch while I cried over Oscar’s grave. Tom Waits and I had a lovely evening on the Pont Neuf, watching lovers and rollerbladers by streetlight. Aimee Mann and I rekindled our romance in the Tuileries and traded lighters with a homeless man. Mel Tormé and I had a lovely lunch with Dave Eggers by the Louvre… Kate Bush and I went to Normandy on a pilgrimage.

I spent the entire time I was in France, basically in the city, except for one day when I fulfilled a lifelong-ish dream to visit the Mont St Michel. I left my room at 5am and got to the tour group office and climbed on the bus. It took us 4 hours or so to get from the City to Avranches. Along the way, somewhere around Caen we stopped at a truck stop type location for everyone to stretch and fuel up. I listened to Aerial over and over on the way up. The ethereal simplicity and descriptiveness of the ordinary turned extraordinary; it fit this dream day for me so well. I was listening to "King of the Mountain" the first moment I could see the abbey, it was breathtaking and filled me in a way little has before or since.

The truck stop, which could have been in Alabama or Maryland - it was that non-descript, sold amazing French coffees and tshirts and was like a travel mecca. I remember buying some kit-kat bar-esque candy bar and a coke. I went outside to wait for the rest of my group and have a smoke. I was sitting on a picnic table, my feet on the bench, shivering a little, staring at nothing; feeling lucky to be alive. Another bus pulls into the lot and a flood of children fly into the truck stop. There is a group of chaperones with the group, most likely on a field trip. A man, probably in his early 40s and probably a teacher, follows to the door and stops at the picnic table with me. He was wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches. He had a red plaid thermos. He climbs onto the picnic table with me and lights a smoke. He opens the thermos and takes two small plastic cups out of his jacket pocket and fills them both, handing me one. I didn't think twice and took it from his hands. Why not? He turns to me and says (in French) “You are a student?” and I said “I am a pilgrim.” (I swear I did. Paris turned me into an idiot/poetry junky) and he said “let us drink to that!” and he handed me one of the cups. He said something like “this is the best coffee I have ever brewed in my life. How lucky I get to share it with someone on a spiritual quest.” And we sipped our coffee and watched the traffic roll by for a few minutes until my group began to load onto the bus. I handed his cup back to him and said thank you for the coffee. We shook hands I got onto the bus.

Later that day I climbed the 900 steps to the top of the abbey and stood on stones 2000 years old and let myself be completely overwhelmed with beauty and luck as I stared out into the ancient sea.