Energy Levels

Boom bang a bang, doof thud schwaaah… quite the noisy morning, is this. Smiling going on everywhere, and only 7.49am showing on the counter. The doors open to a factory-sized room, beats flood out and light floods in, bouncing off a mass motion of colourful Lycra.

Jim turned back to me, his face triumphant; this was clearly his tribe. ‘Feel that energy!’

‘I thought we’d agreed not to use the word “energy”…?’ I said, mock sour.

‘Sorry. Ha! Yes! You and that! Howzabout “buzzy”? “Pulse-y”?’ Jim smiled and started throwing frenzied shapes.

The atmosphere was overwhelming in a way that was hard to fathom. The familiar rendered unfamiliar. A breakfast nightclub, a sober madness. Bits of songs I knew, remixed for added brightness and clarity. My hair was still damp from the shower.

‘So Ellie… is the one over there in the tutu and top hat?’ I asked.

‘Esta – her name’s Esthermoon but she shortens it to Esta – amazing ener- spirit…’

‘I really don’t want to seem all difficult about it…’

Jim and I marked a pause in the early morning frugging to pick our espressos up from the tiny coffee stand at the back of the hall. Shower. Coffee. Rave. A slight smile I can’t suppress is finding the very idea of being here amusing, much as I want to fight it.

‘I know – you uptight Guardian types!’ Jim is already high on the social buzz, the espresso is just a finishing move. His gaze smilingly passes on to two passing glittery 20-somethings who are glugging back fruited water before returning to the fray.

‘I am here,’ I point out, ‘raving with you. We two, together, raving. At 7.56am.’

I am shouting a little to be heard over the PA, but a glittering smile from just over there achieves the inner silence you sometimes know you need. The goal is to let go. Knock back the coffee and jump off the side of the self.

Fragments of Stevie Wonder borne aloft under euphoric new wings are pounding out of the speakers. However new it is, dance music always seems to trade on a shared nostalgia. Seemingly, some parallel version of the Nineties is happening again all around you. It’s not so much that time means you lose faith in fun, it’s just that the confusion of having history remixed means you’re not sure which you is supposed to be enjoying themselves. I begin to think I should probably definitely stop thinking so much and keep dancing.

That shell that you keep painting new things on, the mask that tapes so comfortably into place, that finds value in everything but money – these little defences are gone the moment you start moving. If you can just tamp down your brain from throwing together inner monologues about the inherent dishonesty of appeals to shamanic tradition. Because if you let yourself taste the edges of this, they’re good. Sugary, bouncy castle; whizzy, good.

Another unfolding London surprise, another little break found in the fence. If sticking around has been about anything, it’s been the attempt to somehow renew yourself in the mirrors held up by 8.5 million neighbours. Cheaper than psychotherapy and a good deal less complicated; just try to catch a glimpse of who you are in what you do.

And yet here you are, choking on your own wisdom and the gritty coffee. The sheer joy of these people. Waves of exultation sweep across the room as the stab chords of an early Noughties dance hit you vaguely recognise start to work their magic. ‘Tonight’s the Night’? ‘At Nite’? ‘Feel My Nite’? Ironically it’s only 8.11am, but look at Jim – he’s having the time of his life, a blur of diagonals in front of a girl who might have been Miss Romania. Sure beats project managing a canal-side factory in Hull.

A girl in bright red ballet clothes is excelling at hoop gymnastics to generalised whooping from the 800-plus dancers. You find yourself mesmerised – even by the standards of a city hellbent on showing off, this is leading-edge stuff.

All these years, the morning has largely remained the preserve of carbohydrates, caffeine and the raw stimulation of information. News and fumbling, every day a chaotic curtain-raiser at best.

But sans booze and plus music, you find your body and mind are going on something of a ‘getting to re-know you’ session. How old would 20-year-old you have expected to be before reading about ‘mindful disco’? So, stillness in the grey matter, and lissom limbs hoping to gain compliments for vivacity. It shouldn’t be possible and they won’t believe you in the office, but then you work from home.