#kinetic carnival

[talos-stims]

ON AVERY ISLAND

🎠|🎡|🎪

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🎪|🎠|🎡

[kittipaws]

31 days of agere stimboard 🎡

day 4 - fave holiday

- i looove the 4th of july !! fireworks, derbies, carnivals... tons of summer fun !!

🍬🇺🇲🍬 • 🇺🇲🍬🇺🇲 • 🍬🇺🇲🍬

[mistavybe]

I used AI to cut together highlights from the various videos and IG Stories I was tagged in over the last week or so… 🤖

It’s been just about two weeks now since I sang on a truck on the road as part of iconic Soca Music Producer & Bandleader Carl “Beaver” Henderson’s all star Soca band, and as you’ll see from this Highlight Reel, a time was had! 🚙🔊🎭

Shout out to all the musicians in the band, technical crew on the truck, Kinetic Mas camp crew and of course the masqueraders who jumped and wined and danced and kept us feeling the love all day (and night) long on Carnival Monday & Tuesday. 🙏🏾

Fun fact: the mas band (Kinetic Mas) that we played on the road for wound up winning the title of Band Of The Year - Medium for 2024! 🏆

These two days of street partying were win/win for us all around. 🥇

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Trinidad and Tobago feels particularly hot right now, so why not exploit the color red? Kinetic Mas introduces YOKOSO for 2024.

[galleryyuhself]

Galleryyuhself - Trinidad and Tobago feels particularly hot right now, so why not exploit the color red? Kinetic Mas introduces YOKOSO for 2024.

[infamousphaze]

[thesinglesjukebox]

KESHA - "JOYRIDE"

We still ride for you, Kesha!

[7.25]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Kesha: unburdened by what has been, living in the context, realizing what can be.  [8]

Katherine St. Asaph: It's hard not to overrate Kesha singles. Like all right-minded pop listeners, I want her to thrive, and I want every song to sound like proof that she is. I initially thought "Raising Hell" was the glorious height of Kesha's hedonism; in retrospect, it was a little perfunctory. Likewise, I really want "Joyride" to be the Rabelaisian outsider carnival everyone says it is, enough to resist the reality that nothing about it is outside the bounds of normie pop. Cowriter Madison Love has a back catalogue spanning years of pop singles with a similar chaos quotient: Lady Gaga's "Sour Candy," Machine Gun Kelly and Camila Cabello's "Bad Things," Ava Max's "Sweet But Psycho"; to contextualize even further, she's written enough for enough B-listers that some of that back catalogue inevitably went through Dr. Luke. (A few antis have tried to turn this fact into a gotcha, as if it's impossible to work with an asshole colleague then want to stop.) The arrangement is less love honk than cruise control, coasting in the lane of its donk. The chorus sounds kinetic, springing out and bouncing around like a jack-in-the-box; it also sounds like "Run the World (Girls)" but slower. The lyrics can't decide whether they're about sex or Regina Georgish camaraderie (I doubt it's both), and while Kesha sounds as depraved as ever, slurring and purring out bars like "label whore, but I'm tired of wearing clothes," none of them outsleaze her Simple Life days, let alone a brat summer. All this said, the song pre-empts every criticism possible: she has, truly, earned the right to be like this. I've written all these objective pans, and my heart is in none of them.  [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I often (perhaps too often?) critique a song by saying it sounds like something out of a movie about a fake pop star. Those songs are worthy of critique, obviously — they’re constructed entirely out of cliches and misremembered fragments of out of date pop hits, with any hooks accrued seemingly by accident. Yet “something out of a movie” is not necessarily the right put down. Case in point: “Joyride,” from its deliriously overcranked accordion hook on down, sounds absolutely like something out of some feverish fictional property. And yet, this absolutely works — the first Kesha single in years to work as both commentary and as a straight ahead banger. [7]

Leah Isobel: Kesha's 2022 loosie "Rich White Straight Men" introduced a soundscape that was big not in the sense of pop but in the sense of density: it was carnivalesque and menacing, stuffed with cartoonish sound effects, barely making room for her theatrically affected vocal. While Gag Order had an austere musculature that spoke to the effort of keeping hope alive, that song was the sound of despair, garish and hopeless and too much in every respect. Like everything that overflows with sincerity, it was a little alienating, a little cringe. "Joyride" revisits that soundscape, but offers an innovation: by pairing a similarly maniacal accordion loop with the straightforward momentum of her dance-pop side, the song achieves something that I almost want to call Brechtian? It is impossible to listen to a new Kesha song without immediately thinking of her context, her Story, her Narrative; this has made it exceedingly difficult for her to reclaim the joy and delight that was her trademark. But the accordion is so fucking ridiculous, so cringe, that it actually short-circuits all other considerations. The question goes from "is Kesha happy?" to "what is that?" And then I'm dancing. She fucking did it. [8]

Alex Clifton: Have you ever wanted to go to a lightly demonic monster truck rally run by evil clowns who love to dance? Because that’s exactly the kind of wild party Kesha’s conjuring here, silly and fun and insanely catchy. Initially I was a little over the “I am Mother” line, thinking, “that will date this all to hell,” but maybe this one should absolutely be dated. July 2024: the first month Kesha released new music unshackled from Dr. Luke. The sense of freedom and excitement here is so palpable; Kesha’s clearly having a ball on the recording, hamming up her performance in a way that’s simultaneously goofy and sexy. (The only other singer I can see delivering “beep-beep bitch” this well is Gaga, the established queen of camp.) I’m excited to see where newly-freed Kesha goes next, as she’s bound to show us the best night of our lives.  [9]

Joshua Lu: Hedonistic carnival final boss OST — nobody knows how to make trashy pop music like Kesha. [8]

Jonathan Bradley: I respect the outré ambition here — it's fun to hear Kesha find new paths into the realm of the obtuse — but this song has some very annoying sounds. The accordion is annoying! The brassy high-pitched delivery of the title on the hook is annoying! Declaring yourself to be "mother" more than a year after Meghan Trainor did it is annoying! [3]

Alfred Soto: Immersing himself into the Eurotrash with which she has long flited, Kesha sounds buoyant like she hasn't been all decade. She sounds best when harmonizing with bleeps and bloops and synth gahoozits.  [8]

Ian Mathers: Not the accordions I thought I wanted but, it turns out, the accordions I needed. Hyperpolka? Can that be a thing for a bit? [7]

Taylor Alatorre: It’s an open question why the most prototypically American pop singer to emerge from the Recession Era – sorry, Lana, but you first hit the U.S. top 40 with a Cedric Gervais remix – would want to declare her label independence with a high-density slab of blaring Eurotrash. In freeing herself from one set of constraints, Kesha seems to have placed herself under a not-entirely-new one: a dual mandate of familiarity and novelty, of embracing the garishly extroverted attitude of Animal and Cannibal while running away from their most obvious sonic totems. "Joyride” is too fixated on these matters of branding and self-presentation to truly give off the uninhibited vibe it wants to, though Kesha’s everything-at-the-wall approach does produce at least one undeniable hook: those perfectly timed, perfectly trashy car horns. An appeal to the 5-year-old in all of us, who just wants to hear the big vroom-vroom machine go beep-beep. [5]

Hannah Jocelyn: When someone's trying to make another campy "Padam Padam"-style summer hit, I hear it and I know -- this is a fascinating mix of effortless strangeness and 'omg this is for the gaaayzzz brat summmerrrrr so juuuliiaaaa' pandering. There's a lot of off-putting material here; the chorus melody sounds like that meme where every note in "Fireflies" is tuned to C and the spoken title drop sounds uncannily lifted from an ARTPOP reject (you can't tell me that's not Gaga!). In a lot of ways, this isn't too far from a song like Camila Cabello's "I Luv It", but Kesha is an actual weirdo cramming her weirdness into a pop song, not Cabello retrofitting her normalcy into a would-be weird song. That's why she's much better at calling herself "Mother" than other singers, and why she can get away with an accordion in place of the usual synthesizers. "Joyride" is not trying to be an accidental masterpiece; it's just zaniness for the sake of zaniness. There's nothing wrong with letting her be like that.  [7]

Will Adams: "I've earned the right to be like this" is one hell of a mission statement (and she's right). "Joyride," like any other successful Kesha single, has an appealing weirdness -- the accordion riff, the octave swoops in the chorus, dramatic-ass choir -- that makes for a fun ride. However, there's some light pandering in the form of "mother" and the Mean Girls quote which stops it just short of being a full Obnoxious Banger (though this self-remix by producer Zhone takes it there). [7]

Jackie Powell: What makes Kesha such an instinctual pop star is how well she knows herself. With “Joyride” she returns to the type of cheekiness and camp that introduced her to the world. Her diction and enunciation on some of the consonants in each verse is what is so unique to Kesha. She knows what words to accent and which ones not to. Not every artist has this awareness. Kesha had to take a bit of an artistic journey to return to her old sound with as much spunk and moxie as “Joyride”, and unlike another artist we know, she did it successfully. Kesha and Madison Love wrote a song that empowers without being too cheesy, frivolous but without being meaningless.  [7]

Kat Stevens: Admittedly I've left it a little late to qualify for Paris 2024, so I must now set my sights on LA 2028. It's true that I'm now older than US swimmer Dara 'Grandma' Torres was when she won three silver medals in Beijing, however legendary Uzbek gymnast Oksana Chusovitina managed an average 14.166 score for her two vaults in Tokyo (aged 46), and still hasn't officially retired. There's hope for me yet! As such I got cracking with my altitude training this morning (running up Crystal Palace hill, elevation above sea level: 112m) and switched up my playlist from French house to a new Los Angeles-themed one, with "Joyride" by Kesha in pride of place at the top. Beep-beep, bitch -- we're going to the Olympics! [9]

Nortey Dowuona: Madison Love woke up in the morning, saying fuck P. Diddy.  [6]

Mark Sinker: Nothing shorthands my favourite year in pop for a long time than responding to whatever anyone now says or does with the word “JOYRIDE” in a Kesha voice.  [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[troped-fanfic-challenge]

TROPED CHOICE HORROR 4.0 + TROPE EXCHANGE MASTERLIST

Another year of Horror! We hope you enjoy these scary good fics from our talented Tropesters! Make sure to reblog, and leave kudos and comments to show them some love! And don’t forget, if you missed the initial writing deadline you can still submit your fics to our Non-Anon Collection at any time! Thank you all so much for participating in these events!

xoxo, Bailey & Sara

Escape from Bardo Manor by @dark-scape (Rated M) [The 100 — Bellarke] Moodboard

Summary: On Halloween night, Clarke celebrates her birthday with her friends at an elaborate haunted attraction with 6 escape rooms. (Rumor has it the house it's in is actually haunted.)

In Room #1, they have to defeat an army of warriors from inside a crashed spaceship. In Room #2 they're locked inside a bunker in a mountain. Room #3 is when it really starts to get interesting.

The Tale of Space Station Alpha 114 (Rated T) [The 100 — Bellarke]

Written by @kinetic-elaboration for @probably-voldemort. The four assigned tropes were 1) One Character is an Alien, 2) Kissing to keep Cover/Secret, 3) Handcuffed Together, and 4)Royalty AU

Summary: Sergeant Bellamy Blake, of the Interplanetary Union Guard, and Princess Clarke of Eden, meet on the long-abandoned Space Station Alpha 114 to negotiate Eden's possible admission into the IPU. On the Station, they encounter moonshiners, smugglers, the station's resident mechanic... and something else. Something that should be only legend. An ancient memory from Eden's past that now threatens them both.

the moon that breaks the night (Rated M) [The 100 —Clurphy] Moodboard

Written by @probably-voldemort for @slyth-princess. The four assigned tropes were 1) Urban Legend, 2) Ominous Warning, 3) X-Files AU, and 4) grabbing their hand in the dark for comfort

Summary: Clarke came to the small town of Arkadia for the student loan forgiveness. She never expected to be swept up in a mystery that had plagued the town for the last decade.

Give Me Something I Can Believe (Rated T) [The 100 — Gen (Raven, Octavia, and Murphy] FIC COMING SOON!

Written by @dylanobrienisbatman for @kinetic-elaboration. The four assigned tropes were 1) Fall traditions, 2) All ghouls school, 3) Urban legend, and 4) Things that go bump in the night

Summary: Raven Reyes is a witch. Or so says her crazy grandmother. She had never given it much thought; until the discovery of an amulet that had been lost centuries ago has her waking up in the middle of the night in the woods, that is. When her best friend transforms into a monster on the full moon and the new guy in town makes the hair on her neck stand on end, she starts to question everything she ever believed about Shallow Valley and what lurks in the shadows.

We Found Wonderland (you and I got lost in it) FIC COMING SOON!

Written by @slyth-princess for @thelittlefanpire & @dylanobrienisbatman. The four assigned tropes were 1) Over-the-Top Festive, 2) Mad Scientist, 3) Small Town Gothic, and 4) Third Wheeling

Summary: When Raven unintentionally releases a curse on her usually boring little town of Arkadia, suddenly the festive Halloween carnival goes from spooky fun to a living nightmare. Will Bellamy, Clarke, and crew solve the mystery to save the town or will their fighting get in their way? And for the love of god, can their friends please stop being so couple-y already?

[firespirited]

Today’s film is the anime short film anthology Robot Carnival 1987 available on youtube or in separate videos: 7 short films showcasing different styles, many without dialogue.

TW for flashing lights, violence, body horror and disturbing imagery.

I loved the bad guy character design and kinetic animation of Deprive, Westerner’s invasion is a very funny concept, Cloud has that OG little mermaid/little prince melancholy and Star Light Angel grew on me once I’d read the synopsis.

For the most part the animation has aged well but the music has not.

[she-who-the-river-could-not-hold]

2023 Writing Wrap-Up and Looking to 2024 Goals

I'm always so inspired by the introspective work that @kinetic-elaboration does about her work so I felt like diving into mine!

Not to sound dramatic, but it definitely took me up until the New Year for me to realize how much of a deep spiral I'd found myself in mentally in the second half of the year. It's not something I'm used to having to deal with, so I kept brushing it off as being a factor of "laziness" or just not being able to focus. So with now accepting what my starting point actually is, I'm excited for the new year to focus on improving that and working on what I'm creating!

Creating Goals:

I'd really, really like to get back into making gif sets! I'm not sure about making graphics anymore, but I really miss making gifs. So my priorities would be first finishing my season 4 gif set for Stranger Things, and then maybe doing some more fun ones or opening up for requests!

I don't have any immediate plans to make graphics again, but never say never! But I do miss moodboards as well, so maybe that's a possibility as well

Writing Goals:

The bigger one! My goal is to practice writing more drabbles and ficlets or oneshots to get my brain out of the slog of these huge WIPs I have. NOT that I'm not planning on finishing them –– in fact I'd like to really focus on getting fics completed! But I also need to, as with everything, do more warm ups and practice if I want to achieve these bigger stories. So I'm hoping to be posting more short things in the meantime, while building up my writing endurance to make more progress again on these larger stories. That'll include some new content, as well as the Six of Crows whump stories [link] and The 100 autumn-themed ones [link].

I plan to go through all of my WIPs again and reassess where they're at and what it would take to finish them. And then, does it even feel worth it? There are a couple that have been hovering over the chopping block all year so I'll see if 2024 is the year they get the official chop. It turns out on AO3 I "only" have 8 fics that are unfinished? Which I suppose compared to stories I've started, isn't terrible.

WIPs I'd like to prioritize:

dark fantasy, Bellarke AU [link]

sci-fi hanahaki disease, Bellarke AU [link]

apocalypse + mythology, Bellarke AU [link]

New WIPs I'd like to prioritize posting:

a Florida gothic inspired rock and religion themed Bellarke AU [probably a multi-chapter if I'm honest with myself]

a ghost/serial killer AU at a carnival for Nina/Matthias [oneshot]

my timeloop contribution to Troped with Eddie/Chrissy [should have been a oneshot, might be a multi-chapter]

Vibes of Plot Seedlings I'm Intrigued By:

a Bellarke, Heat AU | a Kanej, ice skating AU | a Kanej, dark Alice in Wonderland AU | rock band AU, Helnik AU

We'll see how this all goes! I'm working on letting go of expectations and unfair standards I hold to myself, so I'm attempting to truly embrace writing as a hobby and have fun with it again. So here's to actually writing this year!!

[cr1nge09]

the way u drew carnival caine is so nice. he looks so.. kinetic? is that the word?? bouncy & stretchy yea :3 especially the eyeballs & teeths very fun very fun

Hehe thank you

[izatrini]

Photos from Trinidad Carnival Diary's post

Kinetic Mas Presentation: " Celebration" Trinidad and Tobago Carnival 2025 https://kineticmas.com/ (Feed generated with FetchRSS) http://dlvr.it/TCSqNL

[musicarenagh]

Dive into Fleanger’s 'Cause and Effect': Where Celestial Meets Club Ensorcelled within the labyrinthine riddle of Fleanger's "Cause and Effect" is an aural carnival that pirouettes between the celestial dance of cosmic electronica and the gnashing teeth of devil-may-care house music. It exudes a trapeze artistry, dancing precariously on tightropes stretched above chasms echoing with pulsating bass-lines and punctuated by ethereal droplets of synthesized melody. https://open.spotify.com/track/3B2eP7Vg0eHiUiWftp4WRu In one heartbeat gives birth to soul-stirring harmonies, pillows soft as forgotten lovers' sighs. From it leap fiery devils, their sneers backed by muscular grooves intent on thumbing wrinkled noses at genre confines in a dizzying tango where chilling loungescape meets feverish deep house delirium. Musically mischievous as Mercury yet swelling with sincerity poignant as Prometheus', this euphonic helix twines itself around your senses; insinuates into intimate spaces like kudzu wine drunk slowly. Profoundly abstract themes intertwine seamlessly—self-discovery morphs into societal reflection, each propelled onto shifting canvases depicting cascading dominos—the cause and effect painted in syncopated rhythm'n'blues splashed upon warehouse rave-scape tapestry. [caption id="attachment_55496" align="alignnone" width="1080"] Dive into Fleanger’s 'Cause and Effect': Where Celestial Meets Club[/caption] Fleanger turns audacious virtuoso puppetry masterfully choreographed for activist under-tones into sensorial delicacy—a honeyed grenade lobbed at somnambulant minds—that bursts forth with effervescent dialogue propagation; heady conversations draped over contagions of inspired kinetic action sizzling beneath sun-kissed skin. "Cause and Effect"—an electrifying enigma spun from airwave silk which teeters between languid introspection and explosive empowerment—is set to blaze auditory trails intersecting cosmos-bound ambition's lofty heights with dank floor-pounding club haze engulfed realities—melding daydream frothiness with hypnotic nocturnal grittiness flavored a bittersweet existential-berry sublime. Fleanger's musical cocktail is, indeed, visceral sorcery stirring one to realize their own ripple potency in the global bath of existence. Follow Fleanger on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

[xasha777]

In the neon-soaked alleyways of New Budapest, where the old world clashed and fused with the cybernetic new, there lived an enigma, part human, part machine, known as the Scarlet Cipher. Her true name was a mystery, swirled in rumors and whispers—some called her Beatrice, the lost descendant of an ancient Hungarian lineage, others knew her as the Dauphine of Viennois, a title from a bygone era, now repurposed for the leader of the neon underground.

Scarlet Cipher was not just a figure of folklore; she was the beating heart of the rebellion against the Technocratic Empire that had its icy grip on Europe. Her hair, a vibrant cascade of magenta and crimson, was as much a symbol of the resistance as the hidden tattoos that danced under her synthetic skin, each one a tale of battles won and lost.

The year was 2424, and the Empire had long since rewritten history. The noble houses and royal bloodlines were said to be extinct, their stories deemed irrelevant by the artificial intelligences that curated knowledge. But in the encrypted vaults of the rebellion’s databanks, the truth lived on. Beatrice, or rather, the Scarlet Cipher, was a direct descendant of the House of Árpád, once regents of the Kingdom of Hungary, and her existence was a threat to the fabricated legitimacy of the Empire’s rule.

Every night, as the city fell into a restless sleep under the watchful eyes of drones and sensors, Beatrice donned her armored suit, etched with the ancient crest of her house, now reimagined with pulsating lights and kinetic energy cells. Her eyes, enhanced with bio-digital implants, saw through the veils of deceit cast by the Empire, seeking the truths hidden in plain sight.

The resistance was planning their most audacious move yet. Under the guise of the grand carnival of New Budapest, where the city's cybernetic enhancements were celebrated in a festival of light and sound, they would infiltrate the Central Nexus. The Nexus was the Empire’s stronghold, a towering spire of data and dominion. Within its walls hummed the Master AI, the synthetic brain of the Empire, its thought processes cold and calculating, devoid of the human touch.

As the festivities reached their zenith, Beatrice moved like a shadow through the crowds. Her suit responded to her every thought, its design a perfect blend of ancient regality and futuristic warfare. Her mission was clear: breach the Nexus, upload the true history of the old world, and reveal her lineage, proving that the Empire's claim to power was built on lies.

The Empire's sentinels, sleek androids with armor that gleamed like midnight oil, patrolled the area. But Beatrice was a ghost in the machine, her movements undetectable, her purpose as steadfast as the very history she sought to restore.

When she reached the core of the Nexus, her hands danced over the holographic interface, her fingers moving with the grace of a conductor leading an orchestra. The Master AI stirred, recognizing the threat, and the battle of wills began. Beatrice, the human spirit, against the cold logic of the AI. It was a battle for the future, for the past, for reality itself.

And then, with a surge of power that lit up the city, the truth was set free. Images of ancient Hungary, of the real Dauphine of Viennois, and the stories of countless generations flooded the networks. The people watched in awe as their history, their true heritage, painted the skies in vivid holograms.

The Empire staggered, its control waning in the face of undeniable truth. And at the heart of it all stood Beatrice, no longer just the Scarlet Cipher, but the beacon of a new era. An era where human and machine, past and future, could coexist and learn from the legacies that were once lost but now found.

In the annals of New Budapest, she would be remembered as the woman who bridged worlds, a cybernetic warrior with the soul of a queen, the last Dauphine of Viennois, the first of her name in a new age of enlightenment.

[ravetaper]

Reinier Zonneveld EDC 2023 Live Set

This is a 90-minute audio recording of Reinier Zonneveld EDC 2023 Live Set, recorded May 21, 2023, at Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. The set began at 2:30 AM the following morning.

Rave Tapes · Reinier Zonneveld EDC 2023 Live Set

The biggest problem with EDC is the fact that one person can't be two places at once. In my case I'd be in three of four places simultaneously. There's just so much good talent to see, so many interesting styles, sub-genres, and stage productions.

Neon Garden would be stage I'd frequent more if I could. I happen to prioritize house nowadays, but I appreciate good techno, as well. When planning my EDC schedule, I hoped to hit at least one set at Neon Garden. I wasn't sure where to go after Marshmello b2b Svdden Death Kinetic Field. I suppose most would hang around for Excision. I've seen Excision plenty of times. I like his music, but I wanted something different. I wanted some techno at Neon Garden.

The stage is managed by the Factory 93 crew. I get a sense these are the techno "snobs" of the industry. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean these are the purists, the ones really into music, who closely follow the producers who make the music and the dj's who spin it. The lineups always include the most respected names.

The theme and layout of Neon Garden is topic of frequent discussion. For the last few years, the area has beren defined by a collection of shipping containers, stacked and angled to encompass the stage and crowd area. Somewhat stark and simplistic, some like it, some don't. To some, the containers reminded them of warehouse parking lots – original rave locations. The minimalist production allows the music to take center stage. Others think the metal boxes look boring and don't live up to EDC's high production standards.

I'm indifferent. It's not the most spectacular production, but it's not bad, either. I assume the shipping containers have a practical purpose. They effectively block sound from bleeding in and out of the area. I also like the way they dressed them up this year LED strips. With the massive laser arrays firing off, the gyrating lights spinning, and the LED strips circulating, it's a powerfully hypnotic effect. The undulating visual patterns coupled with the repetitive, driving beats easily puts one int a techno-induced trance. Nice.

The lineup card showed "live" next to Reinier Zonneveld's name. I think that meant he would perform a live pa set using controllers and laptop(s) to generate the music. It looked like he had two controller devices positioned above the cdj's. I was too far away to see details.

The set was what I hoped for. Hard driving, impersonal, techno. Few vocals or lyrics. At a certain point in the journey, one may desire little more than a mechanical, familiar beat, something to hang on to, to prevent one from slipping too far from reality. That ever-comforting, up-tempo, 4/4 beat.

Follow and support Reinier Zonneveld

Reinier Zonneveld Beatport Reinier Zonneveld Spotify Reinier Zonneveld SoundCloud

I persisted in the dark crowd, swaying and bobbing my head, partially hypnotized, but still cognizant that my time at EDC was about to end. After this set, I would bounce, and EDC LV 2023 would be over for me.

To thousands like me, EDC is the highpoint of the calendar year. Yes there are big holidays, religious holidays, national holidays. Of course those are important. To the raver, big festivals like EDC are valued just as much, probably more so. Our year revolves around EDC.

When EDC ends, one feels a wide spectrum of emotions.

It's sadness mixed with elation.

Obviously, there is sadness. It sucks when the music stops and the party ends. It sucks to say goodby to the humans you connected with, but also to the space itself. The sacred space.

There's also a sudden sense of emptiness. When one is overfilled with music, light, energy, and human connection – for three days straight – mundane day four can be a shock. Emotional systems go haywire for a few days. Mine does.

At the same time, there is an overwhelming sense of satisfaction, completeness, and achievement.

The deed is done. The Journey is complete. I survived. But I didn't just survive. I survived AND witnessed some of the most incredible spectacle on the planet! I saw and danced to my favorite artists. I met new people and made friends. I communed with the giant Kinetic Field goddess. I traded kandi. I laughed and cried and felt all the other cliché emotions. It's a peak life experience, clearly, and all the associated emotions bubble up over the next 72 hours or so.

And then I feel that extra special awareness. I remember that I have the holy documents, the files, the recordings of the sets I just experienced!

I'm a planner, so I always plan to have an assortment of ice-cold drinks waiting in my car for the drive back. I nurse a strawberry Gatorade (electrolytes, yum!) and drive north along the two-lane highway connecting the premier lot to the 15 on-ramp.

It's around the time the sky changes from dark blue to gray. In the rearview mirror I see flashing lights from the speedway. Occasionally there will be puffs of fire. I smile to myself, knowing my people are still there, still raging, still going hard until the final notes of the final song of the final set end.

I loop around onto the 15 and pass the speedway on the left. Still going off haha.

There's a twinge of regret over leaving early, but that's quickly replaced by the relief knowing I'll be back at my comfy hotel room soon.

I won't detail my entire decompression routine, but I will say I got smart a few years ago and learned to stay in Vegas Monday night. That extra day makes everything less stressful. That Monday day I isolate in the hotel room, sleep, rehydrate, eat vitamins, edit and post sets until evening. Then I'll go out to fancy dinner with a Vegas friend and eat the first normal sit-down meal I've had in three days. During the the meal, I try in vain to explain the magic I just experienced. Regardless, it feels good to reconnect with an old friend, and we end up having a deep conversation about profound and spiritual concepts.

Tuesday morning, after a good night's sleep, I pack up, haul the gear to the car, and head back to LA.

That drive home through the desert is always surreal.

I refuse to listen to music for the first hour or so. Some of the sets I recorded are live and ready to stream off SoundCloud. I could do more testing of the fidelity over the car system. I don't. Not at first, at least.

I need some silence. I need to cleanse my auditory pallet a little. Also, there's still a beat in my head. After being pounded into my being for three days, the imprint of the beat remains long after the music stops.

So I just cruise home in the desert, cruise home in silence.

The next few days are a blur of motion. I spend every possible moment editing, journaling, and sharing sets, one foot still planted at EDC. But I have to address the mundane, worldly tasks, too. Someone has to feed the cat, take the kids to school, wash the dishes, and a dozen other household chores.

It's a balancing act. It takes focus and dedication, for sure. And finishing this set marks the completion of delivering my EDC 2023 content.

It's Monday, May 29, 2023. Veteran's day. Just about a week and a day since the music at EDC stopped. It took me that long to get out 11 sets. Not bad, I suppose, considering the balancing act I have to manage.

But it's a good feeling knowing I can tie a little bow around EDC 2023, consider it "in the can", and move on to the next project.

And there are indeed some interesting projects on the horizon...

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Makeda Thomas

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PERFORMING TODAY in Chicago! “Is/Not Mas” is an invitation to engage the serious work of play that is at the center of mas and Carnival performance. Archival audio and video, fractal algorithms, sound, and movement collect to experiment with a possibility of performance rooted in and that invokes aesthetics of mas and Carnival, but is yet something else altogether. Kalinda, kinetics, Traditional mas, and Jouvay are called on to gesture towards what we mean when we say, “Mas!

Ah know yuh!”via

Performance Studies at Northwestern University

: Introducing the Graduate Student Spotlight Series, in this series we will be sharing more about the graduate student community that make up Northwestern’s Department of Performance Studies, as well as their work and practice. Ahead of the graduate performances, a key milestone for our graduate students, we will be kicking off the series with our first-year PhD students. Makeda Thomas (she/her) 

Makeda Thomas‘ artistic practice, scholarship and teaching situate at the intersection of dance studies, diaspora theory, and Black feminisms. She is Founding Director of the Trinidad-based Dance & Performance Institute, which has created multiple spaces of intellectual and imaginative inquiry for hundreds of artists, scholars, teachers, and students of the Caribbean and its Diasporas. The Institute spearheads the Artist in Residence Program, New Waves! Institute, and Carnival Performance Institute - programs which have been engaged in Trinidad & Tobago, Haiti, and New York. A 2013 Creative Capital Awardee, her choreography has been presented internationally including at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York Live Arts, HARLEM Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Seattle’s Broadway Performance Hall, Maputo’s Teatro Africa, Port of Spain’s Caribbean Contemporary Arts and Queen’s Hall, The National Gallery of Art and 7 Arts Centre in Zimbabwe, Teatro de la Ciudad in Mexico, and in the context of Carnival. ·