Sex, Drugs & Spotify: My love language is metaphysical touch
I used to say my love language was physical touch and had pretty good reason to believe so.
I began exploring my sexuality at probably too young an age (like oral in middle school if you want the unfortunate details) and have remained adamant that young women deserve the grace to talk about it loudly. I’ll never feel weird about that and hope you don’t either.
I used to reserve space and significance for what was physical and right in front of me. It kept my overactive imagination at bay.
However, I’ve spent a lot of time recently pondering the distinction between what is “real” and imagined, but Joan Didion said it doesn’t matter and I’m going to agree with her. I’ve come to know that what really holds weight in my heart are the things that exist beyond the constraints of matter.
The most visceral moments of intimacy and care I have experienced are not the embodiments of desire through locked lips and eyes. They are fleeting moments that slip through your fingers, the figurative earworms finding a home between your headphones.
Similarly, the best drugs allow you to exchange your physical existence for one beyond the constraints of capillaries and cartilage. They push you beyond the recognizable and inspire inquisitiveness into the looming unknown. They shove you from behind and catch you after you fall through the floor a couple of times.
Though songs might be constructed by physical instruments or passed around through soundwaves, at its core, music is innately fluid and figureless. It is one of the few things in this world that we cannot grasp yet still remains as vital to humanity as the nutrients we consume.
Despite its definition as a universe that defies physical embodiment, there is nothing that holds me tighter than the pulsing heartbeat of basslines and kickdrums.
The music industry is many things, most of which I don’t align with value-wise, but if there is anything that is understood among each of its constituents, it is that there is something special about live music.
Often, music is a solitary activity for me – I find solace in the fact that the music is mine in that moment. I spend, maybe to a fault, more of my day listening to my Spotify playlists than I do attuning myself to the environments I find myself in and those that fill it. I’d rather fill silence with a specific queue than leave moments up to the unknown.
However, concerts are a unique space in which I have always felt safe.
Last week, I went to what I wholeheartedly believe will remain one of the best concerts I will ever experience for the rest of my life. Brendan Yates and the rest of Turnstile put on a show that deserves nothing less than a 5/5 rating and created one of the most empowering and inviting environments I’ve experienced — and I was being thrown around by men in mosh pits.
There is something oddly reassuring about finding yourself in a sea of people sharing sweat where everyone yells “In a crowd, I’m lonely all the time” from “NEW HEART DESIGN” and it doesn’t feel like a moment of irony. We are lonely. Together.
Concerts allow for radical community building that I have yet to experience anywhere else. It’s one where your own experiences do not have to falter in order to embrace and contribute to another’s.
When I have the luxury of attending one, whether it’s at a historical Los Angeles venue or someone’s backyard near campus, any feelings of solitude wash away immediately. Though I might have feelings of loneliness in these crowds, I am simultaneously reassured that that does not mean I am alone.
This sentiment sounds as simple on paper as it feels overwhelming in reality, and it never gets old.
It is within these venues and spaces of live music that social norms are left at the door. Acts and habits that are typically reserved for solitude are embraced and unbridled among the multitudes of individuals that feel just the same.
There is no room for inhibitions or contained feelings in these spaces; community is found in these moments of unwavering intuition and expression regardless of whether it’s a result of the drug you took before the show or the concert was inebriating enough on its own.
Live music unbinds the singularity of being. It renews a commitment to humanity that defies alienation and sutures any social fragmentation. We are reminded that we are in these spaces together.
Regardless of how hard I may try, we are limited by language when discussing music. The words we do have are often language of capital and spectacle, terms that are tasked with legitimizing sentiments, and they tend to fail in capturing its essence.
I have written love letters before and tried to create connections by grinding hips, but musical performance is real intimacy in the making. In these moments, the connection between a listener and fellow audience, or the listener and performer, is a stronger relational bond than any physical dynamic one might experience with a partner.
The performance of music acts as a language to think and feel that is so well understood and communicated (and does not need further elaboration despite me trying yet again) that we can trust to enjoy it even alongside the likes of strangers.
How special it is to find yourself in a crowd where you don’t know anyone. Because you’ll come to find that you do, and they know you too. Thank god for concerts and intimacy.
Ana Mata is a senior writing about everything related to promiscuity and playlists.