The monotony of the day can wear us down. Everything appears in their familiar forms. It doesn’t feel like one’s world, it feels Other. As the sun sets, electricity sustains the day. Only when we turn the lights off in the bedroom and close our eyes does the night really emerge. Unable to see anything, the world disappears, only the immediate matters. But as a metaphor the night as a shrunken world reduces vision from the most dominant sense to the least. Perhaps sound becomes dominant. A predator walking nearby is heard but not seen. Drifting off to sleep the mind escapes the logic of the day. A series of random associations connect and disconnect rapidly. The world embodied gives shape to a nightlife and a new sense of self.
Leaving my apartment, I meet up with Victor and walk from Myrtle-Wyckoff to a party near Herbert Von King. Somewhere above us is the moon, though the buildings and city lights hide it. For the most part, house parties take place at night. The absence of the sun shrinks the world down. Unable to see as well what’s in the distance, the night takes with it a concern for the past and future, leaving us only the immediate. The depreciation of vision shapes our conversation; leading us to change the subject rapidly as we approach new things that catch our attention. It becomes apparent how the night makes it easier to give our attention to the present moment.
As we approach the house party we run into some friends and all linger outside the building trying to figure out how to get in. Someone pulls out their new high tech vape and ends up sharing it with everyone. Unlike the bars that we passed along the way, the privacy of the house party replaces exchange relations with communal relations. Drugs and people circulate freely. Like dreams, house parties suspend normalcy, making room for other forms of engagement. Humor, playfulness, and innuendos circulate more than reason. The difference becomes contagious, producing jokes and laughter that annoy the neighbors trying to sleep. After a few minutes of standing outside a group leaving the party lets us in.
Inside, the decor and people come together to form a series of short lived assemblages that create an atmosphere of variation and rapid change. Connections break as quickly as they form. After taking a shot a friend asks if I want to check out the basement. On our way I see a friend that seems to be trapped in a dull conversation and pull them out. Static situations make the party’s dynamism palpable.
In the basement a DJ plays to an empty room so we decide to check out the backyard and come back later. Unlike a bar, multiple rooms create a sense of being on a carousel. Circulating in and out of different rooms creates a sense of movement that can distort one’s sense of time allowing the future and the past collapse into the present.
In the backyard people stand in circles, talking and drinking. Alcohol, like sleep, also distorts the passage of time. Staring at my drunk friend I notice he seems a bit more confident and expressive than usual. In a way he seems more himself. This idea of more appears throughout the party. The consumption of more is a means of approaching our limits. If one allows themselves to experience their limit a new experience of the self emerges. A more confident self, a more expressive self. The house party is an object that allows one to experience a version of themselves not accessible during the day.
But as limits are reached, a return to normalcy pulls us towards it. Saying goodbye to a few friends I order a car and stumble out to the street that’ll take me back home.
