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Rating: It's a very good time, after almost ten years of unemployment, occasional under-the-table jobs, paying bills with blood, and radiators off at minus three degrees, for a year now, I've been back to work.
On one hand, the pleasant comfort of a steady paycheck at the end of the month, on the other, crazy shifts of 30 days in a row, never less than twelve hours, "sixteen would be better, thanks, we knew you could handle it," friends wondering if it’s work or heroin keeping us apart, seven hundred square meters to manage, sets to build, stages to dismantle, and so on. A good year, full of sweaty smiles.
June first is a good day: for the Republic Day, my shift gives me a break, great luck. December twenty-fifth misfortune won, December thirty-first too, last August fifteenth the same, this year's I've already seen and it doesn't look promising, Easter I spent in front of a circular saw... the other day I got lucky. Thank you, God, today I hate you a bit less.
Departure is set by Doppiaggi, eight thirty under my house. I'd just have time to drop off my shoes and backpack, put on a pair of long jeans, change my shirt, and wait for the intercom to buzz.
And it buzzes.
I stick a vial full of roasted trichomes in my pocket, a couple of long rolling papers slip into my wallet, four turns to the lock, stairs descended four at a time, and by nine, I'm in the car. It takes 20 seconds from when Doppiaggi buzzes me to when I buckle up, he's always very punctual... which, in reality, has allowed me to dedicate to the porcelain of my toilet a dump laden with all the efforts and stress of the last twenty days. Consecutive, dumps.
In the car, we roll and chat. Lots of chatting, only two rolls. One will be enough.
Trichomes work like this: 1) find out for yourself if you're interested. 2) Among the many ways to extract them, we did it like this: set of sieves from the thickest to the finest, a bunch of magic in the sieves. The sieves soak in the sink with ice ice ice and a trickle of water. Blend everything (but not the sieves). Sift what you get, and in the finest sieve remain the trichomes. You can now take these and re-mix them with the rest of the magic, then cook it all. In Holland they do it this way, and they call it "Iceolator." We preferred not to mix them with the weakened magic, toasted them a bit in the oven, and put the remaining brown powder in vials.
If we get stopped, we have in our pocket two joints that look like four pears. Not the best way to carry around three-lensed glasses, but the result is guaranteed, and the chemists to be honored tonight ask us to dive deep into that space of consciousness they will gift us once we reach the parking lot.
Even if, once we get there, it's useless to deny, everything sounds a bit strange. Lots of cars, but not that many. From the hangar at the end, lights come out, but it seems there's little people. Damn, I thought I wouldn't even make it under that tent structure, and in ten minutes I'm fifteen meters from the stage. Ten minutes because we had to divert towards the consumerism stalls. My brass T-shirt (then I'll link it, and you'll all envy me) although beautiful suffers a bit from the thermal excursion between marshland and little mountain. And if when leaving the house I feared my anti-mosquito jeans would make me sweat my balls for the entire evening, now at the gates of the Chemical Brothers I instead fear waking up tomorrow, on the only day off from here to who knows when, with the need to stick a thermometer up my ass.
Forty euros for a sweatshirt. From the event. Really ugly. I spend two and buy Vaseline for tomorrow morning.
Under the stage, there are few people, I don't think it even reaches halfway to a thousand, above the stage an enormous altar, behind which the two chemical brothers officiate. Behind them, a cathedral of screens and lights.
The magic lights up, and to bring it to life required much patience: a year of harvests, scissors, vacuum sealers, scales, and toil. But it’s worth it. I tried it two or three months ago and it makes you thank Shiva for at least four hours. After that, you realize you don't even know who Shiva is, and you feel a bit bad because for four hours you don't really know what you've done. Then you realize you're still high, and you don't care. For another two hours.
Doppiaggi is thankful for this special magic, almost hash-like, since grass makes him paranoid "They gave me some cut with LSD once!" ...yeah, because they cut twenty euros with hundred-dollar bills, sure. I know another who had it cut with amphetamines... which makes me wonder, am I the only fool who has to pay for the drugs...? then I realize I’m the only one who, when things go bad, has the druggie’s conscience and admits it with an open heart. Since then, it passes, and you can start again, right? oh no, you had a bad trip with LSD, yeah.
Anyway, I’m happy, he’s happy, the DJ set is hard.
Starting from Milan, I was doubtful; I would have preferred a concert. But here, with the third eye fixed on flashes and flickering films, I find myself thinking that if it’s true that normally the most difficult listening for me is usually the first, it's also true that in front of electronics, this axiom of mine reverses, and the first listening is capable of giving me the greatest pleasure. The thrill of novelty, for this genre that I've been listening to for twenty years now and whose meaning, constructive patterns, and basic rules, I still can't grasp, is fundamental. Often pretending, true, but if the piece I'll have the chance to hear it once and only once in my life, does it matter?
And so, far from reason, I convince myself that “better a DJ set than a concert, my dear” plus here there’s even space to breathe, to move. I can really see everything clearly here. Damn it.
After 15 minutes inside, the situation begins to get dense: the magic from my hands has ended up running through the pastures of my synapses, under the hangar the darkness is interrupted only by blues coming from the stage, behind the cloud of smoke that immerses the two DJs the cathedral screams faces in a loop. We’re around 200 beats per minute, for two minutes. Then out of pity, everything becomes white and illuminated, the brothers raise their hands and laugh. I look at Doppiaggi and say, "do you want to..." "and he says "Let's go!" because I already know he wants another cocktail, that he knows I know, that we both know he’s an alcoholic. That maybe only I know because I know I was one. I know I still am, I just don't practice anymore. now I justify him, he has bigger problems, for him, 2016 and 2017 weren’t good years.
He says he’s all satisfied with my real magic: ah, this is good. "light and intense and puts you at peace with the world" as he says it, he stumbles. "Shit, I didn’t realize we were going downhill, damn false flats." He didn’t notice it because that false flat is uphill. But I let him believe the magic was light, that the floor is downhill, and that he can have another cocktail without me getting the jitters at the thought of getting back in the car with him.
He'll have another 5 cocktails, and I continue to believe that quitting drinking is the best thing I've done for myself since I was born. And I fear I won't have a chance in my entire life to replicate another action so productive.
Five minutes of queue, even less. And paranoia hits. The real paranoia: Christ, how cold is it? Ten minutes of light during which I begin to foresee, think, and therefore fear that the mountain is winning, the city makes itself felt, and eight hundred scarce meters are enough to knock me down. But I come from one thousand and six, let's not kid around, and as the lights dim again we go back under the stage, among swaying biceps and thighs defying the laws of physics and common decency, releasing late-adolescent hopes in post-adolescents, adults, and some kids.
The remixes of the tracks continue, I hardly know two or three, but what comes out of the speakers would make even Stephen Hawking's wheelchair dance (that was terrible, but it gives the idea). The two cheerful Romans that Doppiaggi accompanied besides me wonder why I'm so uncommunicative, "you're too quiet, come on have a puff!" I'm not uncommunicative, I'm in my world, and my world you don't deserve: I smoke to feel good with myself, not to feel good with you. It's smoke, not alcohol. Don't break my balls and enjoy the show and learn to do things right. And get a decent pusher.
Another ninety minutes of footage and lights whipping common sense to the beat of the brothers and the DJ set ends. Midnight sharp on the notes of the only song from the brothers. The inevitable "Hey boy Hey girl."
And everything ends. Lights, people whistling, swearing, do another one do another one. And well, twenty minutes of encore requests. Two tracks both from the chemists. The first not one of my favorites I can’t even think of the title, the second Star Guitar. A track that doesn't make sense live like it doesn’t make sense on the record, instead, the video clip is one of the most psychedelic things I’ve done thanks to magic, but here we’re not at the cinema, we’re at the cathedral of electronic music, the video effects don’t hold up against that thing which maybe is the best thing that passed from MTV in two thousand one and ... Two thousand one... they were already out of shape in 2001, today Simons looks like a snotty broker and Rowlands is bald like a metalhead of his age...
I remain of the opinion that it's young music, made for the young, and that it works better for the young. They, however, are convinced that from whatever side you try to look at it, they are the Chemical Brothers. (Period).
And judging by how much the planks below our feet trembled throughout the evening, I think the music is more interested in listening to the chemical brothers' point of view rather than one who at past time keeps going to concerts to get wasted.
Tomorrow I sleep, the day after tomorrow back to twelve-hour shifts for life (my life). I can check the chemists off the "things to do" list and I think I never want to see them in the face again, I already feel old.
May Doppiaggi fare well. Or even better. If it's a good period for me it's a bath in the Acheron for him, yesterday this they didn't do, listen to it for him.
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