14 DAY TRIAL // "We have everything you need? Come on in and buy it all!" Not only the commercial for a supermarket could sound like this, but also one for a "Saturday night out in Bucharest".
"Thank God I have what to choose from", you say to yourself, while reading the magazines telling you what's going on around. You have at least the theoretical possibility of choosing between many alternatives. "That's a good thing", you say to yourself. No matter what kind of music I'd feel like listening to, or what kind of people I'd like to meet, if I look at these colorful magazines, I realize I can do anything I want. Formally speaking, I have access to all the "diversity in the world", and I can start my "journey through the night" by being proud of the European capital I live in.
The holes in the roads, the roads themselves, the shattered old center, the dogs on the streets, all these "common places of criticism" disappear because they are "swallowed by darkness" now. It will be a lovely evening! There are lights everywhere, exclusively for good things, the bad ones remaining shadowed. So, let's go!
After these optimistic thoughts (let's not go to "naive" yet?), Saturday April 8th, I started my night out with the "Metal Nights Festival" organized at Old School (ex-Preoteasa), already at its 3rd edition. So, there is a "dark event" taking place in Preoteasa, or a "made-for-rockers" one, or a "made-for-Satanists" one. The description depends a lot on your age, or on the dioptrics of the "horse-glasses" you are wearing.
There were four bands playing at the festival. Three were from Romania and "Opera IX" from Italy. For not having dressed in black and for having cut my hair a while ago, from the moment I entered, I felt like an outsider for the "community of long-haired, chain-wearing and black-dressed people". This was not a problem, as I expected it to be like this. At least no one seemed upset for my non-conformism to the standards of the community I was visiting.
I reached Preoteasa right before Negura Bunget's appearance, the peak of the evening. "Come on bro! Let's go back there, so that we can go wild!"?. and I smiled, because these guys really looked as if they felt they wanted to go wild, besides having "secondary reasons" like, for example, the wish to be noticed by the girl over there. They seemed to be sincere in their wish to be seen by all members of the "rockers community", and the purpose was to reach a certain social status within this community.
The concert began and I really liked it, but this has to do with other kind of comments, that I shall not make here. All hands were above the heads, showing the classic gesture of the two fingers looking like horns. The heads started to rotate rhythmically, the beer bottles started to break, everything was drowned either in sweat, or in spilled alcohol. And everybody seemed to enjoy themselves! Of course, a rocker is allowed by his/her own status to be happy, and needn't show a "dark, doomed face" as sign of awareness of the tragic and cruel world we live in.
The Italians from Opera IX, followed right after Negura Bunget. Again going wild, again sweating, again the shy glimpse at your neighbors, to check if they go wild too, or simply look critically at yourself and grade your own way of going wild. After this, the festival ended - delirious public and so long 'til next year!
There was nothing left to do, so I started my walk towards the Kristal Glam Club. Hector Romero was going to come and perform a mix and this was the event of the week. So I arrived in Kristal, very scared that I wouldn't have enough space, even to breathe. Absolutely false! Around 3 a.m. there was plenty of space to breathe, dance or do whatever in Kristal. It's big enough! The music? sounded all right, but not extraordinary. The people? seemed to be fine, but again not extraordinary. The whole atmosphere was under the sign of mediocrity, with all the negative valorization the word contains in itself. And when you say about a great house event that it's "so and so", this is definitely not a good thing. In here, people seemed as willing to go wild as the others, just that they were among the ones who had learnt before that it's not good to let the others see this. They too wanted to be seen and admired and envied, just that for different reasons and a bit less open. "Looking-at-your-table-neighbor" is as usual in Kristal, as it is in Preoteasa, just that in Kristal there is more need for brilliance. As a matter of fact, even the rhinestone tops or the glass-high-heeled shoes glow a lot more than the black skeleton T-shirts or the heavy boots. And the atmosphere should be adequate to the outfit, isn't it?
If I smiled in Old School, thinking melancholically about my high school years and about some kind of adolescent-like behavior, in Kristal I started to be sad. I was wondering? how many were actually feeling good in there? (Of course, what I have in mind, when speaking about "feeling good", is a natural feeling, and not some kind of "substance-added" one). And how many of them would want nothing more than going home? Just that? neah! There's no way you could do this! Everybody's going to laugh out loud if they see you going home at 3 a.m.! Yes, and maybe next Saturday the nice gentlemen over here will no longer invite you at their table. Well, forget it! I can hold on and maybe this Romero will fall asleep at some moment?
This is what Kristal people's faces let me guess about what was going on with them. And this is also the starting point for my sadness.
As a conclusion, I went home! It was quiet and relaxing there and I didn't even have to think that X should notice my new boots, or that Y should admire my way of sipping the Redbull with the straw. My vital space is here again!
So? what's left after a clubbing night in the city? Well? people are not as different as they might seem. And the fantastic diversity that could make you blind at first, turns out to be nothing more than variations round a given theme. (With degree differences, of course.)
The rockers from Preoteasa seemed, nevertheless, more authentic and sincere in their wish to go wild. And happier, even though a rocker looks good if he's dark and depressed. "The house people" from Kristal were sad, regardless their "promoted happiness". Ironically or not, paradoxically or not, but this is the upshot of a night out.
Next Saturday, I shall stay in, to see whether or not my "beloved vital space" is on a par with the things remarked through the crowded Bucharest night.
