On Dancing and Getting Killed
"There were 100 horses dancing, Maybe 124, All the horses must go dancing, There is only dance music in times of war." Geese, 100 Horses
Getting Killed, the new album by Geese, will be written to death by internet music nerds. Possibly already has. "Written to death" is an alright way to get killed if you ask me. I'm contributing to it, too, but only a glancing blow. Cameron Winter didn't save my life, he made me chuckle and sent a few chills down my spine. I'll leave the murder-analysis for the neophytes and zealots—for the saved. I, instead, am intrigued by Getting Killed's intersection with dance music.
Joey Valence and Brae, Frost Children, Ninajirachi, The Twins, Danny Brown, Jane Remover, Cynthoni—I've loved a lot of dance music this year. I love electronic music so this is no particular surprise, but the density of moshpit bangers strikes me strangely in this strange year. Also striking is the return of cool. Not trying to look cool, but rather, the much harder, much more authentic act of simply being cool.
Perhaps this is how it always was: the youth slamming their coolness together to the beat, ignoring the radio and embodying their vivacity until their aging bodies collapse into middle age. I wouldn't know. I graduated high school during the pandemic. In other words: perhaps nothing is going on. Perhaps dance is simply, finally remembering how good it feels to leave the house.
Alternatively: perhaps this is a response. Perhaps the dreams of the internet live on in the flesh.
Enabled by the internet and a coalescence of social movements, I grew up with a vision of a kinder world than currently seems possible. My younger self still thought the vision unjustifiably cruel (my current self feels no different), but my younger self grew up in a time of relative peace. Of relative social progress and techno-optimism. The consolidated, enshittened, branded, algorithmic future of the internet was not yet certain. Genocide was broadly recognized as an unquestionable crime against humanity. Racism was,,, well, not really unpopular but nice white people would smile and nod at the phrase "racial justice." Not better times, just not worse times in the richest nation in the world. The type of times that make a novice dreamer assume better worlds are possible, perhaps even inevitable.
"this new century will be crueler still. war is coming. don’t give up. pick a side. hang on. love." GY!BE, No Title
Dreams are beautiful while they're getting killed. Their ghosts are even prettier.
The past cannot be romantic, to view it as such is to kill one's present. The dreams of the past, however...; other worlds were possible. This one, the world we live in now, was only one of many possibilities, no matter how inevitable the technocrats and oligopolists and fascists attempt to appear. Better worlds are possible. The internet taught me that.
It ultimately matters not if dance music has become more popular this year. I have no desire to codify a movement out of thin air. I have no desire to put words in my fellows' mouths, in their movements, in their collisions and screams. My generation, an internet diaspora raised on infinite empty dreams, is making their own electronic music and they're playing it live. The dominant performance is coolness; The dominant performance is unrelenting self. Digital natives, "the world at our fingertips," miseducated and unmoderated. We thought we were hot shit. We still do; In the beat, in the speakers, in the bodies—I feel those old dreams.
"100 horses, Danced up to me so freely, But we have danced for too long, We have danced for far too long, And now I must change completely." Geese, 100 Horses
Their drumlines break my stagnation. Their synths break my apathy. Their drops break my insecurity. People are getting killed, so dance harder. Wilder. Fill the streets. Embrace the self unrelentingly. Do not stand for the unjust. Do not stand. Break. Mosh. Dance. Stop your feet and sway. Do anything but stand.
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I must change completely, for I've been dancing on the dance floor, and this is a time of war.