On the taming of the East London night and the nostalgia for chaos
This column reaches you via The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine from Shoreditch, where the night, which was once wild, has been thoroughly tamed, organised, and fitted with a card machine. My other dispatches from the domesticated East London night are at my page.
The Night That Was
There is a mythology of the East London night, the warehouse rave, the illegal party, the wild and chaotic and genuinely transgressive nightlife of a Shoreditch that no longer exists, the night that was dangerous and free and unlicensed, that happened in abandoned buildings and ended at dawn and answered to no one. This mythology is real, the night really was once wilder, and it haunts the present, the tamed and organised and thoroughly licensed night that has replaced it.
The warehouse rave is a pop-up now, an organised event in a licensed venue, with a cloakroom and a card machine and a clearly advertised closing time. The transgression has been organised, the chaos scheduled, the wildness fitted with the apparatus of legitimate business, the ticketing and the security and the licensing that the bodies overseeing the night economy, the likes of Hackney Council, require. The night that was free has become the night that is booked, the chaos that was spontaneous has become the event that is ticketed.
The Taming of the Night
This taming was, I should acknowledge, largely inevitable and not entirely regrettable. The wild night had its genuine dangers, its real risks, its actual harms, and the organised night is safer, more accessible, less likely to end in disaster. The cloakroom and the card machine and the closing time are the apparatus of a night economy that does not kill its participants, that operates within the law, that can be enjoyed without genuine peril. The taming brought real benefits, and the nostalgia for the chaos should not obscure them.
And yet something is lost in the taming, the genuine freedom of the wild night, the transgression that was real because the danger was real, the sense of a nightlife outside the system, unlicensed and uncontrolled. The organised night is safer and tamer and also, undeniably, less free, less wild, less genuinely transgressive, the chaos replaced by the event, the freedom by the ticket, the danger by the cloakroom. The night has been made safe, and in being made safe, has been made less.
The Nostalgia for Chaos
The nostalgia for the wild night is, I think, largely felt by people who never experienced it, who arrived after the taming, who know the wild night only as mythology and mourn a freedom they never had. I count myself among these nostalgists, mourning a chaos I never knew, romanticising a wildness I only heard about, longing for a transgressive night that was over before I arrived. The nostalgia is, in this sense, inherited rather than experienced, a longing for a freedom known only as legend.
This inherited nostalgia is a curious thing, a longing for the past of a place one arrived too late to know, a mourning for a wildness one experiences only as story. The newcomers to Shoreditch mourn the wild night they never knew, romanticise the chaos they never experienced, long for the freedom that was tamed before they arrived, inheriting a nostalgia for a past that was not theirs, a longing for a Shoreditch that existed before them.
The Night We Have
The night we actually have, the tamed and organised and ticketed night, is, for all the nostalgia, perfectly enjoyable, a good night out, safe and accessible and fun, the warehouse rave as pop-up event, the chaos as scheduled experience, the transgression as licensed entertainment. I enjoy it, this domesticated night, even as I mourn the wild night I never knew, participating fully in the organised nightlife while longing for the chaotic one, having a perfectly good time at the ticketed event while romanticising the illegal party I missed.
This doubleness, the enjoyment of the tamed night and the nostalgia for the wild one, is the condition of the Shoreditch nightlife participant, having a good time at the organised event while mourning the chaos that preceded it, enjoying the safety while longing for the danger, participating in the licensed night while romanticising the unlicensed one. We dance at the pop-up rave, with its cloakroom and its card machine, and we mourn the warehouse rave we never knew, and the two feelings coexist, the enjoyment and the nostalgia, the good time and the longing.
The Card Machine
The Closing Time
Nothing marks the taming of the East London night more clearly than the closing time, that firm and advertised hour at which the organised night ends, the music stops, the lights come up, and the participants are ushered out into the dawn or, more likely, the entirely reasonable hour of two. The wild night had no closing time, ended when it ended, ran until dawn or beyond, answered to no schedule. The tamed night closes on time, every time, the chaos fitted with a timetable, the freedom bounded by the licensing hours that the authorities require. I have made my peace with the closing time, as I have made my peace with the cloakroom and the card machine, accepting the bounded night as the price of the safe one. But there is a small sadness in it, the firm closing time, the organised end, the night that knows when it will finish, so different from the mythologised wild night that ran until it ran out, that ended in exhaustion or dawn rather than at the advertised hour. The closing time is sensible and safe and a little sad, the clearest sign that the night has been tamed, that the chaos has been scheduled, that the freedom has been fitted with a timetable and an hour at which it must, reasonably, end.
So I will continue to enjoy the tamed night, to dance at the ticketed events, to check my coat at the cloakroom and pay at the card machine and leave at the advertised closing time, having had a good and safe and organised time. And I will continue to mourn the wild night I never knew, to romanticise the chaos I only heard about, to long for the transgressive freedom that was tamed before I arrived. The warehouse rave is a pop-up now, with a cloakroom and a card machine, and it is fun, and it is safe, and it is less, and I will dance at it, and miss what came before, both at once, every weekend, in the domesticated East London night.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
