I had flirted with it that past summer back in 2011, but it didn't quite click yet.
I needed a year of processing the initial overwhelmingness of the new environment and a whole new type of human being I had never quite met before or thought existed in actuality. My mind told me that first summer that these people seemed... crazy... but... oddly likeable in some way I couldn't quite grasp at the time. I processed it through the winter time and then the next spring it hit me:
The video.
The video that called me more than anything ever had. A stunning sensation to say the least.
I put it up on facebook, not sure whether for reaching out to somebody or to just share that new aspect I had discovered about myself, but that seemed completely beside the point. I had found something major, I knew that much. And guess what? An old friend three social circles over from my school times responded: "You going there this summer? I've been thinking about going actually. How about we go together and see if it's anything like it?"
And so we did.
And everything changed forever <3
I will never forget first arriving at the gates and that uncomfortable, bumpy start with all these people who I swore were looking right through me - down to my bone, seemingly picking up on all my secrets and mindfucks. I felt uncomfortable for the first 24 hours on the festival grounds. People stopped when I was about to walk past them to where our camp was. "Any urgent appointments my friend?"
And he would just smile at me, not really expecting an answer.
I didn't even get the question at the time, compulsively trying to remember whether we had ever met before. That's how far I was shoved into my head. Regular conditioned mode of existence that I had never recognized as such until that summer.
Then I dared to actually stop when the next dude walked towards me, slowing down, with his big ass smile on his face. We both stopped, he nodded at me, I nodded at him, we kept walking. Done. It felt good.
"I think I kinda get it?!"
The opening night was mostly an alien scene I could neither comprehend nor felt particularly strong about. Too much information input, too little room to place it anywhere within my preconceived categories of the mind. For a moment the gnawing sensation of unknowing and... I wanna say regret crept in. Maybe I had been wrong coming here...
But I had my friend there with me, and when we opened the bottle of wine that first night back at our camp that the lovely Italian crew shared with us we had just met as our to-be neighbors for the week it felt... warm. Like family. It was all GOOD after all! I relaxed. "Dude, I think I actually GET it now?" And they all agreed.
It was a new experience for all in our small circle - all being first timers. Greenhorns. Immature but bent on discovery. What was this place? What did it all mean?
The wine knocked us hard. And one after the other signed off to bed with a hug, we'd catch up tomorrow figuring out where we were and what our presence here was good for.
The Valley
Never in my life will I forget the moment I came around that corner in the valley that fateful morning, sun burning down on me in all its glory - feeling relaxed from a good night's sleep after the long voyage to Hungary the two days prior that felt as elusive as a dream now. But everything was different than the night before. Now it felt right down here. The air was burning, and I don't mean temperature-wise. That I had gotten used to rather quickly. It was more of an electric sensation. Charged. Pleasant. ALIVE.
More people passed me, beautiful girls who looked like Cherokee goddesses, feathers in their hair, one girl without a top smiling at me widely as she walked towards me, sweating slightly and carrying a half-smoked joint in her hand while talking to her friend on the side, looking me straight in the eye. Like a long-lost sister.
Dudes with all sorts of complexions, tattoos, and dreadlock structures on their heads looking me straight in the eye, not searching for any weakness or advantage over me - just seemingly saying "HI, I see you" - without a single word. Nor was any word needed. I felt welcome and he knew it somehow, looking ahead again with a hint of honorable satisfaction on his face for me having acknowledged my seeing him in turn.
You could hit play on this recent track I released for my psy project Floor Dynamics, getting a feel for the impressions while you keep reading <3
As I walked closer to that fateful corner a wave of excitement began to hit me. It must have been like the morning you finally wake up on that long-awaited Christmas day as a six-year old, only way more connected and WARM. I remembered I was walking barefoot on the pebbles – all worries far removed from my mind.
Another beautiful girl blasted me with her kirky smile and blew some soap bubbles right into my face as she giggled and twirled her hair. And then I...
THE BASS. WOAH!!! It had become louder but now I noticed it consciously. DUUUUUUUUUDE!!!!
I could feel it in all of my body now - I was getting closer. For a moment I thought for some fear-ridden undeterminable reason that I could not go on, at the same time realizing that voice to be dimming into utter irrelevance as my body kept walking all by itself, and more and more happy people came towards me, others walking beside me in the same direction I was - amped up with the most life-affirming spirit I had ever encountered. Big satisfaction painted on their faces.
Little scenes and conversations happening everywhere. I caught bits of it as I kept walking. "Yeah but money is not real you know, it's just an idea...", "but did you ever think reality is not what we think it..." "Dude, that is amazing! How did you even think of...".
And laughing. Everywhere. Lots of it. I couldn't help becoming at ease with myself and the people I was going to spend a whole week with.
I could see the last shop before that final corner now, feeling the majestic bass of IT on my bare feet. Whatever IT was. Holy DAMN! I already felt like I was leaving the confines of known territory. Was this really the Earth I knew? I wasn't sure anymore.
The moment I came around that corner, I swear it was the moment it all changed for me. A climax of my life reduced to a single instant. I could see the mothership now in the distance of the valley. And the sound was everywhere. It hit me in all its clarity and force, making my body move and nod my head as other people were walking next to me, half-dancing themselves – same mission. We smiled at each other. Dude what IS THIS PLACE?
It felt like a gradual teleport. The term "planet hopping" came to mind long before I even understood what I was listening to. It sounded like hopping planets. Like bouncing on the surface of some interstellar entity onto the next, with a whole crew of people on the same mission. People around me cheering, dancing, hyping the moment, passing it onto the others without agenda. Like a love virus. The sound took me into some alien world that instant, I heard insects in the air, I heard structure. I could have sworn for a moment I saw a city in the sky. I had to remind myself that I was sober still, but the shift of something in me had never been so apparent. None of these sensations were creepy – they were just... long forgotten... alien. But somehow oddly relatable. They were... all I had been ever looking for.
My mind still trying to catch up with the situation, and my... soul taking over my body, smiling at my poor little confused mind as my body kept walking toward the mothership. On the way there I swear I met so many people I didn't think existed in actual life. Authentic, caring, selfless.
I saw myself starting to bounce to the beat fully now – not caring about what anyone would think of me "dancing". Everybody was doing his thing but we all moved. Giving form to the crisp sound in the air, which was heavy and yet clear as the mediterranean sea on a summer day.
Like a PA, finetuned and aimed at us directly from God's home cloud! Funny, "I thought I was an athei..."
And in that moment I saw a guy walking towards me, looking straight at me shaking his head, with a big hearty laugh on his face.
Whaaat?! Did he just...?
My rational mind gave up at that point. This was all too unlikely to be understood.
And so I was welcomed in when I reached the mothership, having two girls run towards me, giving me kisses on both my cheeks and hugging me. Never met them before. Then they kept running towards the bar. "Anybody's welcome here" I realized. Anybody. All of us needed to leave those conditioned worries behind before we could get to work with one another on this new level of human existence in community. And explore. And just be, in that connecting vibe through that divine soundtrack I had never experienced before.
I found... myself. I felt so utterly connected to the airwaves and the people around me - I started to cry. I did not remember ever being this happy in my life, which seemed absurd to me, but my heart didn't care. THESE PEOPLE. THIS PLACE. FINALLY! I had aRRIVED!
And they all agreed. It was like the most unlikely upward spiral of emotion and non-coercion among human beings ever. All of us CHOSE to take part.
I learned quickly that week that everybody has mindfucks, that we are humans and bear our crosses as best we can. And that those crosses don't really exist. I learned that my journey as a musician finally had purpose again. THIS is what I would be doing from now on, I knew that on the second day with certainty - no more band-marriage BS stories at home. I loved Psychedelic Trance, I just never knew that I would. Or that it existed.
And the people here... they were LIVING a compassion and empathy society ALREADY, in 2012 while I had been running around doing futile activism pissing people off for their own good that they didn't want to see all these past years. Cooperation mode of existence had obviously long passed the point of "theoretical", and I had to stop myself from judging my 'late' coming to this place. It was all happening, right in front of my eyes.
It was perfect, that week on those festival grounds. The amazing strangers I met who felt closer than family after the first day... the scenes of 3-year olds dancing in the puddle with their dreadlock daddy and their goddess mom... the 70 year old grey-haired man with a pipe in his mouth and a grin on his face saluting the sun... the dogs chasing each other on the sheep meadow next to the floor... Life here flourished more than the hobbits in their fucking shire, only that this place... was actually REAL. Not a movie. All these visuals and vibes engrained themselves so heavily into my soul that I am crying just remembering it now in depth. So THAT's what people mean when they say "it resonates with me". I see!
These people were adults, but they had access to their playful nature like an innocent child.
I was shaking, I cried happy tears countless hours more, I laughed so much I had cramps and laughed about those, I met friends for life that year. And they would do anything for me and I for them, even after years of not seeing each other. All of this had a quality of humanity I never deemed possible to manifest in my lifetime before.
Once I got home, I would be doing THIS from now on. Whatever IT was. I figured making this music would be my best angle to approach it becoming the center of my life.
After a glorious week the festival ended with what people have dubbed as a divine favor – a direct pointing of conscious energy from the cosmos, in the form of a double rainbow appearing over the mainfloor-mothership on the last day right when the break started. Which blasted all the rest of my previously atheistic convictions of a random universe to shreds. It had become too unlikely.
Here's my video capture from that day, once I understood why everybody was cheering. They were cheering for the double rainbow. And nature. And life. I was so slow to catch on to these things back then ;)
In connection with the wonderous LSD ride I had two days prior I felt... reborn. It had too much weight not to carry on that mission of exploration after I got home. And so I did.
I would decide to be re-learning how to make music from the ground up, this time electronically with new tools and challenges. And that journey is still ongoing to this day. It has produced countless aha moments in me, it got me miles closer to who I really am, realizing the profound illusion of separateness from my environment through experience, sensation and memory of that week.
In all my years I have never heard it put better into words than by Goa Gil, a grandmaster of Psychedelic Trance. You could play this vid to get an alternative glimpse of what we are doing on the floor, and why.
Ever since I have released a few tracks once I could find the strength to let them go – wrestling with the demon of perfectionism-obsession over the years, a battle which I am now slowly starting to win - I feel closer to my real self. Because perfectionism is one of those taught idle ego concepts, nothing more.
Making this music became my long term commitment. Small steps, one at a time, until I would be able to create that masterpiece album one day and become the shaman of the hour, gently directing the minds of 30 thousand people to move out of their own way for a state of being to set in, in voluntary and unbounded communion. A celebration of life, freedom and cooperation among strangers who act according to their own compass, not according to anybody else's.
Coming back to these magic grounds the following years I was convinced it would only be a matter of time until an ACTUAL mothership from some other galaxy would land behind the large hill by the mainfloor, it seemed a no-brainer to me. If they were to land in modern times, it would be HERE. With the humans who took it upon themselves to leave all their contemporary conditioning at the door. And offer new ways of existence to their fellow men.
Until I got the curious sensation that WE were the aliens here ;) And we dug that idea endlessly.
It felt like a silent but earthshattering revolution of self-discovery, and all of us caried a part of that home with us after each summer, to make a real difference in our lives, just for knowing all the others we met also existed, along with all the memories nobody would ever take away from us again. A wild and natural ride of adventure and - at times – despair, all shared through a mutual field we were moving within, connected to each other through the same sound blasting the valley 24-7.
The sense of time of day - only to be gauged in approximates by the angle of the sun. The day of the week – irrelevant. All the time in the world to be here, now. And to just let go. To find each other, to help someone in need who wasn't able to let go all by himself despite his wanting to. To be there for one another. Voluntarism in practice. Not in theory.
This is how humans are supposed to live, we all knew it, and I still see it that way. But only for those who freely decide to be part of it, not for anybody else. Noone here is looking down on anyone else, not for personal preference, not for individual choice, religion nor worldview. None of that mattered on the floor. None of it. And if someone does look down on someone else, we all work through it as a collective without anyone making the rules for the others or punishing them for their civilized-society-hangups.
And to this day I still find there is nothing more propelling for my soul than to revisit that magic place, and to meet that family that feels closer to my heart than my 'actual' family, because of the experiences we shared that transcended all Earthly concepts and descriptions. But we knew what it was, we would just never be so immature to try to put that into words. Words are not the ultimate bridge. They can be a beat up raft, but not a bridge. A true bridge to oneself does not require form or syntax. It requires awareness and willingness to let go of superimposed modes of existence. To jump into the unknown. To allow the course of things to carry us where it may.
And to constantly tickle that part in me that wants to create coherent vibrations in sound with my knowledge and experience that have the capability of teleporting everyone present to "some place else" all united in spirit. Each in their own way and tempo. Dancing as they please. There is no "right" way to move to the music. Just ways.
I quickly decided that I would never put the "rent-paying" burden on that unfinished unpolished gem of my developing psytrance skills. It was too valuable to me to be corrupted by fake economic pressures mandated by some self-appointed gang of rulers. Those people were all insane – they seemed to need the floor more than anyone. I giggled at the thought ;)
The music and scene has changed everything for me, and so I leave you with but a faint impression of what we did that summer and how human beings can and already ARE interacting with each other, when there is noone mandating anything, and when the lowest common denominator does not orient itself on preconceived notions of some people in ties and their interests, but on the trust in the flow of things and being with strangers in courage and empathy.
To put that part of me as a "hobby" is almost doing it injustice. It is VERY close to my CORE. And so I vowed to continue on this journey, however long it may take and however many setbacks I would have to go through, just to never sacrifice my love for it on the altar of debt-ridden economics. I knew one day I would reach a level where it would carry me in all aspects – not just spiritual, but economical. Until then: Fuck off, fiat! You are NOT getting a piece of my love. You are not worth the treasure.
And so I have made tracks for my own psytrance project as well as for the Steemit beatbattle. This one won me first place for the round of "dancing themes". I felt that was utterly fitting to my mission and I feel really grateful for how far I have come already. Here, give it a listen and see if your body wants to move.
Family, I draw greatly from our time together for that dreaded half of the year marked by darkness, low temperatures and social isolation in a society of mind-controlled human "drones" who never had the privilege to experience what it means to be among aware human beings. I really hope they find their way. TV nation. I felt sad for the longest time for my fellow men who had completely forgotten who they are, and what they came here to do.
Until we meet again family, without you I would have lost my spirit long ago in this world of illusion trying to grind me up through an ambitious but hollow representation of a mind concept, faking itself to be all of us and the obligations decided long ago by men following an agenda to humanity's detriment. No more. I know what I am capable of now, after my priceless times in the valley and my breakthroughs in painting my mind with sound in color.
I want to leave you with this short clip from the official Ozora aftermovie. It captures a lot of its energetic essence.
So... until we meet again, in our beloved valley. With new stories to share, and mindfucks to overcome.
Cya in 5 minutes family.
I love ya!!!! <3
others by Ruben @ https://www.facebook.com/venturo.ruben
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