There’s no proper way of putting into words the way you feel when you finally go to Detroit. It’s a moment you can’t have back, and yet also an emotion you have every time you’re there. It’s like the repetition of Techno when heard in the dark warehouse.
You have to travel far and into the darkness to find it. You have to believe in it enough to ignore all the warnings signs and simply jump. You have to jump into Detroit like you have to jump into Techno. But once you do, you won’t want to climb back out.
I didn’t go to Detroit until I was an old man. Well, I shouldn’t say old, just older. Much older than when I first started listening to techno, and I suppose in rave years you could say I was slowly becoming a fossil.
Although not yet. First, I’d have to earn my Dinosaur status, and my two weekends in Detroit would help that perhaps more than any two trips in my life.
When I first heard about Movement Music Festival in Detroit it wasn’t called Movement at all. It was called DEMF. Detroit Electronic Music Festival. It was kind of just a rumor there for a bit.
Every year, in the heart of Detroit, they’d gather for a free festival to play techno all weekend long. Everybody knew about it even though so few of us had ever gone. Before anybody wanted to go to EDC, and even before Ultra got so big, we knew DEMF was out there somewhere. Waiting for us to come find it one day.
I didn’t finally find it until I was in my thirties. Married with three kids, and far past my prime, I knew this was going to be my one shot to go. So I went.
Many people ask me how I manage to balance everything and still travel, and I simply tell them the same thing. Just go get it. Don’t ask anybody for permission. Don’t wait for the right time. Don’t worry about all that other stuff. Don’t be one of those people. Just go get that shit. And when you get it. Get it again.
It’s a metaphor for life, I suppose. But I just see it like, you’ve got to one day decide if you’re gonna be that person you dreamed you’d be. Of course, make sure your bills are paid, and your children are fed and safe, and that your affairs are in order, but also be willing to go the distances others won’t. Prove to them that it can be done and show the only thing stopping them is fear. They are afraid.
I was afraid too, though. I can’t deny. Looked for any reason to back out. Any reason to not go, and yet before I knew it, the tickets were bought, the hotel was reserved, and we were on our way.
That first year was a struggle, I’ll admit, and it had so much to do with the fact that the very weekend before we were at another festival on the other side of the country. EDC. And not just EDC. Camp EDC. First time they ever had it and they absolutely had their growing pains, but so did we.
We went for the wedding of two friends who aren’t our friends anymore, and although it hurts to know that I’m also thankful we were a part of it. I gained confidence in knowing my love and I could face the things we had to that weekend and we stayed strong, together. It wasn’t the weekend we expected, but also one we chose to be a part of. It was our choice to be there.
And I’m glad we were there for them. Glad we had that chance to be part of it. We’ve walked into hotel rooms filled with the shadiest of people, and we’ve done it to save our friends, and still they stayed. They chose that over us, and we’ve got to be okay with that. We had to leave them behind before we caught our flight to Detroit. Before we were changed forever.
It was hot that first weekend. We went out expecting the cold of the Midwest and maybe some rain, and yet we got there to clear skies and heavy heat similar to what we felt in the deserts of Nevada, if you can believe that. But this was different. We weren’t going out to the Motor Speedway to hide away from the world, we were going into the city. The living, breathing, bumpin city.
I could feel the life of Detroit the minute I stepped down from the plane. It was like feeling the history of it all at once. Motown, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, The Belleville Three, Jeff Mills, The White Stripes, even fuckin Eminem. Detroit has produced so many original and talented artists you’d be a fool not to see how important to American Culture it really is, and not just because of Techno. Everybody loves Detroit.
The Headliners for my first time there alone were the WU TANG CLAN. All of the surviving members were gathering to celebrate the anniversary of their classic album Enter the Wu Tang: 36 Chambers, and they were doing it for Detroit. I couldn’t believe it.
I have been a massive fan of the East Coast rapping crew since I was twelve years old, and I’m even wearing a Wu Tang shirt as I write these words now. When I bought my tickets the lineup had not been released yet, and still, I could have never expected they would be on the lineup. I was going for Techno, and maybe for House, but instead I found so much more. I found my home.
That’s the first thing you should know about Movement. You’re gonna go for Techno, and then find so much more. So much more that you’re just gonna keep going all weekend long. From this stage to that stage to the afterparty, to getting ready in the hotel, to the next day and the next day, and you just keep going. Constantly dancing, constantly moving, constantly evolving with the sounds that surround you.
EDC claims to be the gathering of all the rave tribes, and it is, but I saw more people dancing at Movement than I’ll ever see at EDC. For ECD people go to watch and marvel and wander in amazement. People go to Movement to dance. Everybody dances the entire time. And it never stops.
Even as you sleep, or eat, or try to put your makeup on. Or after its over and you’re at the airport or on the plane. You find yourself dancing over and over again to that rhythm you hear only in Detroit.
And it stays with you when you get home, and you go back to your life and your job and all the other things that drive you insane. The music stays. You just have to close your eyes and you’re there again. Like you never left. Like it never stopped. Because to us it never will.
It’s not just about the music, though, although its still the best weekend of music I’ve ever had. It’s about something so much more. It’s about believing in something the rest of the world doesn’t and it’s about hanging on to that no matter what.
Through all the changes, and sorrow, and loss. So much loss. You get to a point where you wonder if the music is the only thing you will never lose. You have those thoughts more times than you want to admit, and still you carry on. You keep going. And then you get there. One day you just find it, and you didn’t even know you were searching.
There was this moment in our first year, when we were sitting in the VIP, the first time we ever bought VIP in our lives, and it was well worth it. But we were sitting there alone, my love and I, seeing the world together, still, and we met this couple that were sitting next to us, and they just started talking to us because I suppose they could tell we needed friends. That old Friendly raver mentality never goes away. You know?
So, we start talking and they’re from Canada, while that’s at least where they live now, and they start telling us that every year they meet up with all their friends at Movement. And they tell us how they’re all spread out across the world at this point, and they all live their own lives, and they all come from somewhere different, and yet still, they know to always meet up in Detroit. I think they said they had been doing it for around 17 years. It was amazing to hear.
They even introduced us to a bunch of them. All of them waving and shaking our hands and welcoming us to Detroit. I remember telling them how amazing it was they still did that, and I wish I had that too. And I remember him saying
“Well now you have us too. Now you have Detroit.”
And I just cant explain how much it meant to me that he said that, but he knows. I wondered if I’d ever have that. Friends to travel with. Friends to see the world with. Is it asking for too much
Were they like us when it first started for them? We waved goodbye as we ran off to see some DJ we loved, and they were doing the same, and we told them we’d see them again, but I also know I don’t have to. Knowing they are there is enough for me.
“Even if I never have that, I’m so happy they do.” I said to my love as we walked alone. We walked it for Techno.
That weekend changed me so profoundly that I know the person I was got left behind back there. Still back at Hart Plaza now. Like a ghost. Waiting for the music to start up again. Waiting for the movement to begin.
The next year I returned, but it was different. We weren’t alone this time. In just a year, we had found our tribe. We found our friends. Or maybe the found us? Our own group of people from all around the world. All unique, all amazing, all so capable of inspiring me every day, and all in love with the music like we are.
We went to movement together, and we celebrated in the rain, and discussed who we wanted to see, and who we didn’t, and we planned for the afterparty, and fought a little bit, and sat at breakfast together without eating a thing, and we fell asleep talking, and we shared bumps, but most of all we danced.
We danced nonstop and we did it together. At the underground stage, the pyramid stage, the stargate, the one by the riverboat, and of course that main stage. At the Heart of the city. We danced like we would never have the chance to again.
And don’t even get me started on those afterparties.
I’m not going to Movement this year. I have to miss it. I have to prove to myself it can go on without me, and yet I know it will. It will be amazing, and beautiful, and filled with the people who dared to dream of nothing else but techno.
If you’re going, please, dance for us all that can’t make the pilgrimage this time. Dance like crazy. Dance with your friends. Or Security. Or the Dj’s themselves. Dance with strangers, cause you never know. They may be the tribe you were looking for.
Next Month is Movement. And though we won’t be there this time, my friends, and my family will be. The ones who will remember this one final thing that I will never let go.
We will always have Detroit.
Our Home.
Ourdancefloor.net 