FIVE+ NYE was a fresh scene for Toronto’s West end: a gathering of people unweighted by the usual shame and stress that underpin the keep-up cultures of fashion, capital-a Art, and club land.
Five organizing groups collaborated on the Amazon-themed event, and the result was an eclectic fusion of white collar club and underground bohemian. Feel like eating gourmet dishes on padded white couches under fancy coloured lighting? Go right ahead. Want to clear your mind and breathe deep for a bit? Show up for the guided sound therapy session. Is reclining in a reserved booth something you want to do? Do it. Feeling tight in the muscles or the spirit? Pop into a massage or reiki healing booth. Wanna lose yourself in the ritual of dance under a jungle canopy surrounded by pseudo-nude simians? That’s there for you. Feel like pissing in a porta-potty? Knock yourself out. (Warehouse logistics: The mind reels..)
The two huge rooms in the ex-furniture warehouse space were bumping a wicked mash of tunes until sunrise. The back room had house and techno and tribal rhythms in steady rotation, and the main room provided a much-needed break from four-to-the-floor styles with funky bass house, future bass, hip hop and even live rap.
LOVE IS A PLACE YOU GO TOGETHER
The organizers seemed to have a grander theme in mind than cut-loose solipsistic debauchery. When you get the right people together and headed in the same direction, you go somewhere. The ‘Place’ I’m talking about was most clear during and immediately after what was billed as ‘sound therapy’; a combination of group meditation and free-association sound wall.
Hundreds of people participated under the jungle canopy, seated at first as soaring voices, trilling chants, drums and fire all wove together in unison. The thing swelled into a fierce drum-driven dance, and the audio transmorphed into a swilling, ethereal electronic soundscape that lasted the better part of half an hour.
Just listen to ^this^ recording right here. I mean, jesus… this chord progression was going on for at least eight minutes on end, just pouring and pouring out of a dozen speakers at a volume that disabled cogent thought and left you with no other feasible option but to hug someone – anyone – while you daisy-skip in a psychedelic place of peace and serenity.
And that’s the crux of it: This party was not meant to be taken at face value. It was designed from the ground-up to bridge regular and open-minded people to inspiration, uplift, catharsis through experience; not just indulgent distraction. The jungle theme, the sounds, the voices, the art… it all pointed towards something, and not just to the music or dancing; those things pointed, too.
In the wild, love is free. The nature of real love is self-generating surplus: you give it out and it comes right back to you. It’s in the air, and it comes in through the ears then out through the body – I think that’s what Michael from Lovelution meant about dance being a pure expression of love. It makes you feel good on a macro level – about who you’ve been, who you are, who you want to be.
LOVELUTION: ROLE MODELS FOR LOVE
In a time where music and the rituals around it are muddled by metaphor and doublespeak and presumption, Lovelution cuts to the chase. They strike right at the heart of it (pun intended). There’s no insinuation or bullshittery, just straight up love.
Lovelution seems to be made up of people with fewer layers between their selves and the cosmic. Unburnished by mundanity, these people are leading a growing tribe of like-hearted people to better and more peaceful places. They are, frankly, much-needed role models for love.
A funny thing happens when good role models are around: people pick up on it. They shape up. Mirror neurons are activated and they learn by watching. Monkey see, monkey love. This changes the vibe of things in a foundational way: There’s still dancing and smiling and catching people’s eye, but the interactions that spring from there are more authentic and open and, dare I say it, human.
Ego dismantles and shame dissolves and you find yourself speaking sentences that begin with “I feel” and “I learned” and “I love”.
THE COMPLICATED DICHOTOMY BETWEEN CLUB TYPES AND HIPPIES
Ultimately, not everybody can feel liberated by demonstrations of love. Some brief words need to be said about the barometric pressure change from between 11pm-1am with the influx and subsequent outflow of what one could oversimplify as Club Types.
As the rooms became diluted with newcomers who hadn’t yet absorbed the themes of the night, there were more than a few funny faces.
Don’t get me wrong – this wasn’t some Warriors-style rivalry or anything, but the tension was palpable and one cringes at the idea of the vitriolic self-protective judgment that comes from across the dividing line of lifestyle choices between these two camps (from one side maybe more than the other).
What FIVE+ was getting up to there, in the warehouse’s back space, was a clearly-advertised attempt at united celebration, which makes the disdain even more unfounded. Berating peoples’ honest effort at loving togetherness with no further claim to superiority than the fact that you tied your own wingtips and used your pinkie to swipe yourself a surge-price Uber is adolescent in an unsettling way. Self-respect is a fickle thing…
LOVE IS A SMALL SPACE BETWEEN SURRENDER AND FEAR
In all, FIVE+ NYE was a peacock-feathered success, and introduced a lot of people to the awesome vibery combo of Lovelution, Summerdaze, Provoke, Bespoke.Experience, and Way of Acting.
It also set the tone for an inspired leap across calendar years, even if it culminated in the sad but entertaining scene of seething clubbers bitching about Hippies through gritted teeth while paying for armloads of Lays and Gatorade by credit card at one of the few convenience stores still open late into the night.
Here’s to 2016, and a new normal.
