Doppelgangers

from an old link zine:

doppelgangers 

when i was a kid i was really struck by this newspaper story about a guy who was found drowned in a quarry lake somewhere in south wales. he was positively identified by his family and about to be buried when 'he' turned up again, alive and well and wondering what the fuss was about. 'his' family must have been overjoyed to find out 'he' had simply gone off travelling for a while to sort out his head.

meanwhile the police must have been a bit frustrated to have to reopen a case they thought they had closed. apparently this man and the dead man bore a stunning resemblance, even down to a shared birthmark on their respective legs. obviously it's quite rare that we hear about such blatant cases of mistaken identity, but what if they don't happen so often not because people don't look the same but more because there are rules governing whereabouts the doppelgangers can go and most of the time they prevent them meeting up? it's possible but then of course you start to wonder who makes the rules. and does he/she have a doppelganger too?

definitely i see types of similarity - for instance a girl in a record shop with the same length hair, the same glasses and the same backwards tilt to the head which she adopts when looking at something as an irish girl i met in another country. are people really so different? are we really unique? or are we just a bundle of behaviour patterns grabbed from the collective unconscious and as with language we can unconsciously turn on or off various factors. with so many parameters to choose from that most of the time waht results is a real unique individual?

certainly the patterns can be traced. certainly fashion and society shape the way we look, whether we allow it consciously or not. well, my childish mind decided that everyone has a doppelganger living somewhere on the other side of the globe. although you must bear in mind that around this time, i was also trying to pull fully grown oak trees down with my plastic tractor, still it's a theory which cannot be denied. the sticking point was skin colour actually, i just couldn't decide whether doppelgangers were racially the same, they do have to be really, since for example one racial division is body build and i never resolved that one satisfactorily. and also another problem comes back to me now, namely whether the two doppelgangers would be born and maybe even die at the same time or not. the welsh quarry man could be a counterexample or the exception which proves the rule. i dunno.

anyway, this squat party in eindhoven i went to recently also got me thinking about this topic in a different way, for it is weird to see how things such as dress sense and face composition move in circles. i see this a bit having been to lots of tekno parties in the netherlands, the czech republic and england. if you look at the people it's strange to see how across arbitrary boundaries like nationality and location, things such as a look or a posture can be the same.

i guess you will only understand what i am droning on about if i give some examples. actually to start with the very building gave me deja vu, since it was a massive distribution centre, the type where one side of the building has loading bays which trucks back up to and inside there were huge empty rooms and tiny prefab office spaces, just like a distribution centre where i went to a few parties in london (tottenham hale). then the people reminded me of other people in various ways. in attitude, in action, in look, in gesture. maybe the drugs help, the same chemicals twisting faces in the same way over europe and driving evolution in new interesting ways.

base users do certainly develop this weird sort of reptilian tan. we can say for sure some sort of europe wide tekno fashion underclass is developing, i guess as tribes do. tekno sits in a grand line of cultual movements. the kids are always revolting. since the hippies anyway. so are we talking about some form of universal tekno resistance? in a sense yes, this is a brotherhood of sorts which can be nice to be a part of (things like meeting a french truck in eastern europe and bonding instantly because we are listening to the same mixtape) but then from another point of view tribalism is fake, it's a lowest common denominator movement, where people are afraid to be different and celebrate diversity. i guess that's the negative side of of all tribes. there is a uniform, there are facial piercings, bomber jackets, combat pants, mighty hooded tops, dark clothes and caps at jaunty angles which become more and more ridiculous as the night wears on.

but it does go deeper than that too. how come the gurl who looks like a drugged up czech punk i know, in the sense of having the same weird dreads, long grey german army jacket and big boots, also acts like her, drifting around the dance floor mashed up and encouraging men to molest her by bumping into them with the same far-away look in her eyes? isn't that a bit too weird? why do those speaker freakers hanging out by the stacks just like their tribal brothers in the czech republic manage to have high cheekbones and haircuts which actually make them look czech? yes, part of this is me bending my head on drugs and seeing links where the links exist because humans do resemble each other but i expect there is a bit more going on here. i'm thinking in terms of memes and affects: this notion current in the theory of ideas that ideas are virus-like; thoughtpatterns exist as electro-magnetic radiation; the brain is a transmitter and the signals it produces can be picked up by other receivers; and taking drugs probably helps this process either by making us more sensitive or anaesthetising us to it.

hooray for tekno parties, they're fun to go to and give you weird thoughts. and i don't have very much more to say than that.

except that we started off discussing doppelgangers and next time you are at a tekno party you should keep an eye out for your's.

The Party

 

first published in Link

thousands upon thousands of bubbles float through the room, colliding, 

popping on the heads of extravagantly decorated dancers, gusting gently 

above them in the breeze but the men and women coiling around each other 

in time to the rhythmic thump of the beat are too preoccupied to notice 

 

some have their eyes shut others smile you take another glance around and 

the mirrored walls only serve to magnify the decadence someone brushes 

against your thigh, when you turn they are gone, you feel a breath on 

your neck, now she is whispering into your ear words you can scarcely make 

out wait did she say there is nitrous oxide in the air conditioning? 

certainly the atmosphere is heavy, pregnant with expectation, pungent with 

incense, devil weed, jasmine, other odours whose names hang insistently on 

the tip of your tongue, just out of reach 

suddenly in the corner of the room, there is a commotion animal yells of 

pleasure or of pain, possibly both

peacock feathers are waving above the heads of the crowd and more bubbles 

cascade down from the ceiling 

you push towards where the noise is loudest sweaty bodies press against you 

and light hands sweep across your back

the music is quicker now, the relentless drumming augmented with a tinkling 

melody drilling its way into your brain

a brief silence, then the thump starts again, faster than ever

dancers catch themselves standing still, shake their heads with a glimmer of

a smile rotating their hips in outrageous gyrations, arms waving

 

up ahead is a mass of limbs, it's getting difficult to pass 

reluctantly you can feel your inhibitions being shed you start to press 

a little back against these lithe athletic bodies

on the left is a massive speaker, towering above you, twice your height, 

pumping out the irresistibly funky beat out of the corner of your eye, 

just for a second, you see it oozing the moo before your brain can begin 

to process what that means, two elves have attached themselves to your 

legs and begin to pump them up and down you want to fight but it seems so 

much easier to give up, give in, then you think of the cardinal's warning 

and with a wrench wipe the smile of your face. 

the elves know they are beaten 

for now  

a trapeze artiste in a dazzling emerald jumpsuit swings down from nowhere and 

whisks you off over the dancefloor the people below reach up and you trail 

your fingers over their outstretched palms 

free 

you cannot help but smile, the music is inside you now orders seem from another 

world one that is dead and forgotten here is life, energy, dance, movement 

swinging across the room you notice the mood man standing over to one one side, 

innocuous, wires coming out of his head his face is crinkled with concentration 

sweat beads on his brow and glistens in the strobelight 

a small frown and imperceptibly the music starts to change, its getting louder,

an addictive squiggle worming up from the mix, what's so wrong with a dance anyway? 

a tribal tom tom beat thuds to your stomach you throb with the music

like a reflex

the crowd bobs rhythmically, a sea of heads connected by invisible nets

 

fishing for what?