The Orphic Navel Of the World

I was going to try it, but I saw the huge line-up in front of the “Berghain” nightclub in Berlin. And then of course I am 70 years old and the bouncers would not have let me in.
I really wanted to try it, because Berghain is the doyen of Berlin’s famous/notorious techno clubs.
This is how the experience was described to me: when one enters the cavernous hall that was formerly the power plant of Berlin’s Ostbahnhof railway station, it is always a shock and the techno music is cataclysmic. This cathedral of ecstasy, lit by blinding search and strobe lights, is transfigured into something vague and vast. There is a warren of bars, darkened alcoves for rest and lust, and in the middle from a lofty pulpit the charismatic DJ commands the writhing masses below.
One author has written, “Berghain opens its own space/time continuum”. One comes and goes to other discos, but here one stays. The rest of the world vanishes. In Berghain one is ‘out of area’.
Reading and writing these sentences, I am reminded of bacchic/orphic cults of antiquity, but this is modern about art and lust. It is about the arousal current crop of the children of our own civilization, the skillful manipulation of the reflexes of the brain stem with sound and light. And it is said to work magic.
But recently, the aesthetes and ‘Schoengeister’ have fastened on Berlin nightlife. Books are being written and the rusty industrial structures and symbol-laden no-man’s-lands are now the stuff of cultural and cultured discourse. The message sent by the cultural establishment is that techno is the glue cementing the weekly celebrations of Berlin’s idle and susceptible youth, offering the miraculous experiences of inclusiveness on and of the shedding of social roles, even a complete change of identities.
Now the more daring of the older hip professionals and the rasher cadres of the older bourgeoisie are advancing on the on what was used to a dirty and lust-driven refuge of the ‘others’. Ecstasy becomes art and the caves of forbidden or at least risky gratification are becoming a theme park of milder thrills. But globalization is unstoppable and soon bus tours will visit ‘the best club in the world’. Berghain is on the way of becoming another Moulin Rouge.
At least, that’s what I was told.