Category Archives: Hedonism

The 2008 financial crisis nearly pummelled the global economy into oblivion. In the US, the federal government stepped in to stop the bleeding. The Obama administration brought the financial sector back from the brink with massive stimulus packages. After narrowly avoiding a second great depression, you would think that the government would put some checks and balances on ruthless corporations. Thats why the flagrant capitalistic hedonism depicted in WeWork feels so jarring.

Director Jed Rothsteins latest documentary, WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, examines the rise and fall of a company called WeWork (think of it as Uber but for office space). Fuelled by its charismatic leader, WeWork transformed from a promising start-up to a venture capital unicorn with a jaw-dropping $47 billion valuation. But the story doesnt end there. WeWorks questionable business practices and misleading accounting inflated its worth, making it only a matter of time until the bubble burst. And did it ever burst, leading to a colossal corporate flameout.

Most of the doc focuses on WeWorks leader Adam Neumann. Neumann comes off as clever, charming and full of energy. His bold and colourful personality would make him the life of any party and you get the sense that hes not happy unless hes the centre of attention. While Neumann seems quippy and laidback, I kept picking up on a manipulative used-car salesman vibe. Maybe his charismatic prowess doesnt translate on-screen, but I never felt the appeal of his were going to change the world schtick. Its telling that Neumann, a guy who loves the spotlight, refused to appear in the doc.

WeWork was never a revolutionary conceptits a real estate company at its coreand yet Neumann recruited his devoted followers by pitching them a revolutionary movement. He sold a vision of the company that was about more than furthering folks careers. WeWork strived to reshape the workforce according to its leaders vision.

The doc works best when it examines the companys mystique and why it attracted so many enthusiastic young people. Rothstein interviews lawyers, financial reporters, and former WeWork staff to help us understand Neumanns rockstar appeal.

First off, WeWork mislead employees about how much equity they had in the company. People wanted to invest in it because they expected to get rich off stock options when WeWork went public. People thought they were getting in on the ground floor of the next Facebook or Google.

Getting rich inspires people to do some wild things. However, it doesnt explain peoples fervent devotion to this company and its branching endeavours. WeLive, for example, offered onsite living quarters billed as co-living spaces where folks rubbed elbows with fellow entrepreneurs 24-7. WeWork also sent employees to mandatory three-day retreats and made sure they attended seminars by shackling them with tracking bracelets. Neumanns gift for telling everyone what they want to hear helped the company thrive amidst a series of poor decisions.

The 2008 financial crisis left people in desperate need of hope. Big business is fuelled by self-interest, and lawmakers showed no interest in reigning in corporate America. For those outside the financial sector, earning high wages became less important than repairing unchecked capitalisms economic, environmental, and social damage. For a brief time, tech companies seemed like the best way to turn things around fast.

Its easy to lie to someone when you tell them what they want to hear. WeWork took a message of hope and change and slapped it on top of a real estate scheme and called it revolutionary. The promise of joining a revolution was like catnip for those entering the workforce soon after the 2008 financial disaster. People desperately wanted to feel like they were driving change and building a better tomorrow. WeWork looked like the best way to make it happen.

The doc covers a lot of ground recounting WeWorks meteoric rise. My main gripe is that the film glosses over a few critical areas. This meaty story would work well chopped up into a docuseriesRothstein could spend an entire episode on the companys side projects or the employees minted as CWEOs.

Filmmakers always want to leave their audience wanting more. In the case of a documentary, the film must answer the viewers biggest questions. Although WeWork kept me entertained, it left me with a few too many questions afterwards. The 105-minute doc doesnt provide the deepest dive into this financial calamity but it does serve as an excellent starting point to entice you down the WeWork fiasco rabbit hole.

SXSW ran from March 1620, 2021. For more SXSW coverage, click here.

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SXSW 2021: WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn Review - ThatShelf.com

Taken from the duos debut collaborative release, the exquisitely titled Requiem For A Sesh.

Ambient jungle iconoclast THUGWIDOW has joined forces with sound design extraordinaire Bruised Skies for Requiem For A Sesh, their spectacularly titled debut collaborative project and a starry-eyed ode to the session. Melding THUGWIDOWs elegant jungle variations with Bruised Skies penchant for intricate sound design and immersive ambience, Requiem For A Sesh unwinds like a fever dream at an after party, approximating the sounds you might hear in your head as you finally attempt to sleep after a particularly heavy night.

The duo describe the EPs closer, Thrashing, Scared, Alone, as a love letter to 90s rave culture that we were too young to be a part of, including the track as a digital-only conclusion to the release. Razor-sharp breaks, gut-wrenching bass and pupil-dilating synth lines redefine rave nostalgia for claustrophobic London basements and sweaty smoking area euphoria. At once evocative and hauntological, Thrashing, Scared, Alone conjures a world in which the devoted hedonism of 90s ravers is reconfigured as a strategy for moving through the psychic pressure of a city in lockdown.

The tracks video is a tribute to the parties both producers would attend during their time spent living in south London, capturing both the frenetic energy of an intimate dance floor and the surreal perspectives of a post-rave landscape, contrasting stroboscopic footage of ecstatic dancers with the all too familiar grey light of dawn illuminating the green fields, electricity pylons, industrial chimneys and railway arches, images that are inextricably linked to the DNA of the UK rave scene.

Thrashing, Scared, Alone is taken from Requiem For A Sesh, which is out now on Astral Black. For more information about THUGWIDOW you can check out his SoundCloud and follow him on Instagram. For more information about Bruised Skies, you can check out his SoundCloud and follow him on Instagram.

Credits: Directors Karo Rutkowska & Ezekiel Typography Taavi Kelle

Watch next: Eomac & Sal Stapleton conclude audiovisual dance triptych with Trinity

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THUGWIDOW and Bruised Skies pay tribute to south London raves - FACT

1DO you fancy helping out the Beatson Cancer charity and having a lot of fun. The charity are hosting a live virtual escape room, taking the trend for escape rooms online during these trying times. This year, as well as you having the option to try and escape at your own pace, there will also be an option to take part live and set a time against other teams, getting clues if required. Grab some mates and some beers and do some good. April 2 at 1pm and April 4 at 8pm. For all the details and to book, head over to http://www.facebook.com/events/1072594796572161

2 SCOTLANDS food is a political issue and a fascinating one at that. Want to know a bit more?Covid-19 has emphasised the inequity in our food system and action is required to ensure that when we rebuild from the pandemic we support a food system centred on the wellbeing of people and the planet. Brian Taylor, former Political Editor of BBC Scotland is going to chair online hustings and party spokespersons will outline their plans and their partys policies for addressing the challenges facing Scotlands food system. The event will cover four key themes related to our food system: Climate & Nature, Jobs, Health, and Poverty. Live online 5.30 - 7.30pm on March 30. Join in and put your questions about the food system to the candidates. A free event. For tickets head to http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scottish-food-hustings-tickets-141961944999

3THE past year has been incredibly challenging for women across Scotland. The Scottish Womens Convention aims to gather together these womens voices to help shape the way policy is approached by decision-makers as we move forward and emerge from the current situation. The group hope to cover the unique experiences of women throughout Scotland, how they have been impacted and what needs to be done in future.

This is a live zoom event and tickets are available via Eventbrite. This Tuesday starting at 6pm.

4 YOUNG women need mentors. Its still very much a mans world despite our fabulous feminist FM here in Scotland. The Young Womens movement is holding an online event to explore the value, power, implementation and urgent need for female mentors in business, politics, activism, education and more. Wednesday at 5:30pm. For more info go to http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-power-of-female-mentors-tickets

5 THE Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Festival Into The New is back and, this year, online. A stoater of a show is available tonight, Mothers Milk. In a space cluttered with discarded costumes and glasses of milk, a single female body dresses, undresses, drinks and dances again and again in a choreographic attempt to embody the lineage of women that brought her into being. Fascinating and poignant. Head over to http://www.rcs.ac.uk/festivals/event/mothers-milk/. Tonight at 8pm

6 GLASGOW short film festival comes around again and they are showing a genius of a short flick. Evoking the sweaty, physical intimacy of a messy night out, Bangers & Mosh offers viewers some much needed visceral thrills, dragging us from an astonishingly pitch-perfect recreation of a 1991 illegal warehouse rave to the nihilistic hedonism of Bogota. Head to http://www.glasgowshort.org/shows/bangers-mosh. All films available to stream for the whole of the festival pay what you can is the order of the day.

7 ALSO showing at the Glasgow short film festival is Barbed Wire Love Hush-a-bye-baby. This flick surrounds the times of the troubles on the island of Ireland and tells tales from those who stayed, those who left and those who passed through. Available to stream all week at http://www.gsff.filmchief.com/hub

Link:

Seven good ideas for seven days, from theatre to food hustings - The National

Life in the 21st century can easily be mistaken for a movie script, but it is the lived reality for billions of people not only in Africa but across the whole world. It is now a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world where all basic values of human decency are now sacrificed at the altar of money. It is increasingly becoming difficult to trust a fellow human being, because of the uncertainty of what they will do to you simply because of money.

This has always been the marking feature of human life since time immemorial. Human beings have always been unpredictable and inspired in their actions by the imperative to survive. This explains the old age adage survival of the fittest. But in the contemporary, there has been an aggravation of this, due to the consumerism/hedonism that has enveloped the whole world and from which no single human being can live free.

This is expected, given the spirited efforts of the West over the years to put the whole world under a capitalist order, telling everyone that there is no alternative (Margaret Thatchers famous words when she championed neoliberal capitalism in the 80s). The world has been compelled to accept that existence can only make sense if put within the confines of the vicissitudes of capitalism.

It is fallacious to believe that capitalist systems without adequate checks and balances can build societies immune to dysfunction, as is the prevalent case in the contemporary. Being a rigidly individualistic system, capitalism saps the soul out of human beings such that it becomes an antithesis to think about the next persons welfare or to generally care about the public interest. The unfettered narcissism stemming from a desire to arrive at individual success means a person will stop at nothing to get those riches.

All of this has had a hugely detrimental effect on the collective spirit of Ubuntu as per African contexts. This is particularly felt in the urban areas and has gradually crept in the rural area (mainly because of rural-urban migration and the materialist motivations towards urban success). That humanity aspect of I am because we are is now a thing losing its relevance day by day, year by year, decade by decade. The postcolonial African society, both in the urban and rural contexts, has become a contradiction in itself.

Crime is just one example that may explain the selfishness pervasive in postcolonial society because the capitalist values embraced by those in power have created an unequal society where those disempowered will do anything to secure their survival. As well as realizing their materialist desires within the framework of a capitalist society. It makes African cities uninhabitable. Trust levels among citizens get to an all-time low. High crime levels in African cities are by-products of inequality, something which African leaders have turned a blind eye to as they vaingloriously pursue neoliberal policies.

Public service provision is at an all-time low again in African cities as these are outsourced to the private sector. The latter is only concerned with extracting profits from services that should be free health, education, water, power, transport systems, land, and housing. Free in the sense that these public services are the prerogative of the state because the state is the primary guarantor of life before all is said and done. But this is something that has become lost on the African leaders and their citizens. The net effect is a society where people will do anything to get access to these services. And that is unsustainable, creating unlivable conditions of existence a degraded kind of existence.

We can still do better to create livable African cities where life is not unnecessarily expensive, and where moral decadence becomes a thing of the past. Collectively, the African peoples can steer inclusive development which does not exclude the rural peasantry. Kinder conditions of existence can still be created in African contexts.

Read more here:

How African Cities Are Now Inhabitable Due to Excessive Capitalism - The African Exponent

Illustration: by Luci Pina

Psychedelics are hardly strangers to party dance floors, but it wasnt until earlier in this pandemic, when L.A. lifted its first lockdown, that I was invited to my first shroom party. The garden soire, billed as a safe space for community healing, was hosted by a couple from L.A.s underground music scene in their backyard. Hand-drawn tea bags stuffed with shrooms sat on tables next to joints rolled with rose petals. As stylish guests, many young and queer people of color, sat socially distanced on picnic blankets, sipping shroom teas and nibbling olive bread against a glowing sunset, a deep sense of serenity settled over the scene. I wondered: Is this the future?

COVID-19 has cleared the arena for Americas druggiest era, as the twin wrecking balls of economic devastation and psychic trauma leave a crater of suffering and drugs come to fill the void. Welcome to the dissociation generation, baby! In this dawning new age, doctors prescribe party drugs, politicians push weed legalization as historic budget deficits loom, and everyone is tripping balls in the name of self-care. Maybe snorting your therapy sounded silly until the pandemic pushed our sanity to the brink; in quarantine, 13.3 percent of American adults started using substances or ramped up existing habits. My friends in New York have picked up ketamine like a cozy new hobby akin to knitting.

Yet as Americas War on Drugs wanes, its legacy remains, as people of color sit behind bars on drug convictions while white executives reap the gains. In fact, the racial gap for pot arrests is climbing up in California even as the number of arrests drop. Further, the abject social conditions that breed drug abuse mental illness, homelessness, and uh, the overwhelming alienation of late-stage capitalism are also metastasizing at the same moment states are loosening restrictions, meaning the end of prohibition is flying in the face of skyrocketing overdoses and addiction. So a paradox arises: Can drugs be both a symptom of, and solution to, our collective misery?

Perhaps the skeleton key lies in a paradigm prioritizing healing over hedonism. Drugs like LSD and MDMA have long histories withpsychotherapy and were used to treat everything from alcoholism to marital problems (MDMA until 1985 when it became classified as a drug without current medical use, and LSD until Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970). Now, psychedelic therapy is roaring back: Oregons legal psilocybin therapy clinics will open in 2023 the same year the FDA is expected to approve MDMA for therapeutic use, according to MAPS, the organization backing the clinical trials. Soon, maybe youll visit your local psychedelic clinic for post-COVID trauma and grab a ketamine lollipop on your way out. Or book a stay at a ketamine resort in Colorado or weed hotel in Arizona for your next family trip (Mom would really love that).

Meanwhile, as tripping turns chic, the underground psychedelic scene is going luxe. Over the last few months, Ive seen dozens of illicit shroom and acid brands in California package their products with stylish labels, embossed fonts, and pastel millennial colorways. Dealers hawk trendy shroom strains over Signal (right now, its a particularly potent variety called Penis Envy), and microdosing brands host chat rooms on Clubhouse. DMT vapes are the new status symbols (Juuling is so over), and gold-flaked shroom chocolates are paired with champagne. Competitors differentiate themselves by offering curation and convenience. Think: tasteful cans of nootropic-enhanced cocktails for the Cali Sober set, and spore-to-door delivery kits for growing shrooms at home. The other day, a company in Peru even sent my friend in Los Angeles a vacuum-sealed bag of mail-order ayahuasca.

So many questions remain for the post-COVID drug bonanza: Who is going to get access to these therapeutic substances and who will be allowed to administer them? Clearly, our future providers will hail from Silicon Valley and Big Pharma, as VC-backed biomedical companies race to reap the psychedelic landscape and mark their territories with patents. Sci-fi devices like shroom nasal sprays and wearable ketamine patches glimmer in the near horizon, but the hoops for FDA approval are high, so dont get too excited: These devices may ultimately be nothing more than biomedical pipe dreams. Even if a psychedelic clinic opens in your neighborhood, will treatment be covered by insurance or remain prohibitively expensive to most? Underlying these unknowns are more fundamental questions: Should all drugs be decriminalized or are psychedelics an exception? Are drugs and the pursuit of pleasure an unalienable right or a privilege for a few?

A few weeks after the shroom party, I wondered if my drug prognostications had been incomplete. A guy I was flirting with at an outdoor strip club confessed he was addicted to fentanyl, a synthetic opiate 50 times stronger than heroin. While fentanyl users tend to either inject or smoke it out of a pipe, he dropped the white rocks into a glass dab rig, then lit a blowtorch to vaporize the sweet-smelling stuff for the most potent possible hit. His high-tech opiate addiction butted against my sunny optimism toward the psychedelic-therapy renaissance. I thought: This feels like the future too.

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Welcome to the Dissociation Generation - The Cut

It looks like summer is finally starting to look up

The news that everyone has been waiting for has finally been announced the Enchanted Garden Ball will take place on July 17th at Shobrooke Park Country House.

Celebrating its 10 year anniversary, this year it seems as if we are in for a real treat. If you dont know what EGB is, well. Think thousands of students dressed up to the max going on fairground rides, dancing in various tents, trying food from one of the food trucks, getting drunk and you should get the idea. In 2019 they even had an open air theatre screening the Champions League final!

As last years EGB was cancelled due to Covid-19, according to the events Facebook page, this years event will be making up for lost time, treating you to even more divine delights with a helping of hedonism, a dash of decadence and supreme surprises

Make sure to set a reminder because tickets go on sale at 6pm on March 26th, with prices starting at 49 for the entrance ticket. But this year, as an extra surprise, you can camp at EGB. Tickets are 55 for both entrance and camping, or you can pay 12 to upgrade your existing ticket. These tickets include early access to the grounds and, of course, a quick walk back to the campsite to avoid the long coach journey home.

Tickets from last years EGB will be automatically transferred to this years event. But dont worry, if you can no longer attend the event, you can apply for a refund up to March 28th.

So, if you dont have tickets, be ready this Friday as they are always snapped up like hot cakes.

To make sure you dont miss out on any EGB updates, click here

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It's confirmed: EGB set to take place on July 17th - The Tab

In early March, a viral campaign from the menswear company Suitsupply provided a brief, harrowing glimpse into our post-pandemic future and the advertisements that might usher us into it. The featured models were entangled in a web of tanned limbs, touching aggressively and tongue-kissing sloppily. Everyone was scantily clad except for the campaigns lead man, dressed in a tailored suit. The new normal, the Suitsupply advertisement teased, would be sexy, sweaty, and sensual.

The raunchy images set off a frenzy of reactions online, but the campaigns success at generating discourse led to suggestions that horniness and hedonism might be embraced as brand marketing tactics with the new new normal in sight. Some experts think few companies will be as brash, and instead integrate slow and steady changes in tone when it comes to ads and social media campaigns. Dont be fooled, though. The summer of 2021 could possibly be the horniest of our lifetimes: Weve missed the anonymous comfort of dark, crowded spaces and the adrenaline-fueled messiness of a night out among strangers.

According to Sean Cassidy, president of the public relations firm DKC, a CEO of a major media company had told him that by September, some places will feel like a cross between the Roaring 20s and the Summer of Love. Most of us have lived the past year operating under an abundance of caution: Just last March, brands (even those we barely have relationships with) were flooding our inboxes with updates about the novel coronavirus, detailing all sorts of safety measures and contingency plans. They emphasized ideas of community and health, and explained how they were monitoring the developing situation. Voxs Rebecca Jennings pointed out how even the fashion brand Reformation, known for sending ridiculously random email subject lines, briefly tamped down its over-eager tone.

As the pandemic became less novel, so did brand messaging. Reformation and the thousands of brands we have parasocial relationships with have returned to their usual antics. This week, I received an email from nuuly, Urban Outfitters subscription clothing service, with an all-caps subject line: IN CASE OF FAMILY EVENTS. In case of which family events? My mom isnt even vaccinated yet! (In an earnings call on March 2, Urban Outfitters said it has seen increased interest in going-out clothes.)

The emails and messages we receive might only become more zealous or carefree. The tone of paid content will be increasingly optimistic with higher than normal doses of temptation sprinkled in, Cassidy said. The return to true normalcy is expected to be a slow burn, which leaves more room for error from a public relations standpoint. The timeline for the US to achieve herd immunity is still in flux, despite President Joe Bidens call to open vaccinations to all adults by May 1. There is no global end date to the pandemic. Plus, economic recovery isnt a guarantee: Economists dont expect unemployment rates to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels within 2021. Consumer spending is still being propped up artificially through the federal governments stimulus program, according to Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate.

The fractured nature of Americas recovery makes it incredibly difficult for brands to shape their messaging. Many might hesitate to emulate Suitsupplys unabashed horniness, especially since consumers have become more consciously critical, even derisive, toward brandspeak. In lockdown, we spent more time online, and encountered an oversaturation of ad content. And the various corporate solidarity statements and initiatives in the wake of the summers Black Lives Matter protests werent immune to public scrutiny.

I dont think were going to see a sudden switch from brands. Itll likely be more subtle and slow when it comes to brands adapting to some sort of opening in the future, said Jenny Gyllander, founder of Thingtesting, a review website for emerging direct-to-consumer brands. Its interesting to see the tone of voice changing. I think were seeing more optimism, humor, and bold visuals.

The sensuality of the Suitsupply ad, she added, doesnt hold universal appeal for everyones experiences in the wake of the pandemic. Some emerging brands have fully leaned into the domestic cozy aspect of quarantine, while emphasizing self-care and the importance of home. While Suitsupplys campaign went viral, its uncertain whether the uptick in online attention translated into significant sales, or communicated loyalty or care to customers.

Brand activity during the last year has been overwhelming, and its time for companies to shift their outreach, Gyllander said: In the coming months, I think many will lean towards a hybrid sort of messaging because our lives are not going to quickly return to normal. Most of us will still work from home. Restaurants will still do takeout.

Gyllander predicted certain themes like connection and hope might be more appealing for a wider segment of consumers. We can safely assume, however, that a subset of quirky brands will capitalize on the tempting thrills of vaccination season. Quarantine has led us social media managers of brands included to embrace being horny on main.

Consumers have generally been responsive to ads that showcase intimacy and socialization in a post-pandemic future, Business Insider reported. There has been a giant spike in the utilization of people in intimate photos in advertising, according to Pattern89, an artificial intelligence ad company. Still, advertisers are struggling to determine which messages are appropriate to lean into, given the many inequities heightened by the pandemic. Theres the added emotional toll and trauma of the coronavirus that cant be waved away, and itll take time for some to enjoy a renewed world where we are free to touch and talk with strangers.

It has been a horrible year, Cassidy said. A lot of consumers want permission to feel a little good, but optimism doesnt mean recklessness. I tell our clients to avoid any event, stunt, or message that remotely implies any condoning of unsafe, insensitive, or unethical activity under the guise of optimism.

Its possible the advertising industry could experience a boom, as it did in the aftermath of World War II. Brands then were selling the American future, one that encouraged people to overcome repressed desires and encourage enjoyment in consumption on a mass scale, according to Joseph Malherek, a historian of capitalism and American consumer culture.

Its tempting to draw historical parallels with the post-war period: Most Americans had sacrificed years of comfort and luxury to contribute to the war effort, and it was the job of advertisers to lure consumers to spend with the vision of a prosperous, automated future. Today, though, we can collectively roll our eyes at the performative sexuality and hedonism encouraged by the wildest ads, since we no longer need them to tell us how to live. We already are familiar with excess. Its only a matter of time before we can indulge again.

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Brands like Suitsupply are ready for the pandemic to end, but the ads might be coming too early - Vox.com

In fiction too the record is sparse. The novel One of Ours (1922), by Willa Cather, is the first and last depiction of the pandemic for almost a generation. In 2017, the writer Laura Spinne wrote: There is no cenotaph, no monument in London or Moscow, or Washington DC. The Spanish flu is remembered personally, not collectively. So why did this period of cultural history fail to manifest? And if this omission was deliberate, what was to blame?

Firstly, there was the rise of Modernism. From 1920 onwards, the idea of wiping the slate clean with a tabula rasa emerged with the Modernists. This was typified in Le Corbusier designs for a new Paris (Plan Voisin, 1925) in which he planned to destroy two square miles of historic Paris and replace it with modernist tower-blocks, his machines for living. Modernists, like the Bauhaus, the Soviet Constructivists, the Italian Futurists and the British Vorticists, depicted the pre-1918 years of war, plague, overcrowding and contamination as symbols of the imperialist structures they wanted to tear down.

Bauhaus furniture and architecture, such as that of Marcel Bruer (1902-1981), was even created in direct reaction against the pandemic. Bruers minimalist pieces were made of hygienic wood & tubular steelto facilitate cleaning. Out went the heavy, ornate Victorian furniture with its contamination by viruses, dust and the dated values of Empire, and instead a radically new utopian International Style was invented.

The Modernists, and the many Communists among them, consigned the memory of the 1918 pandemic to the pyre of progress.In literature, modernism took hold with Pound, Shaw, Stein, Wolfe, Joyce, Proust, HD and DH Lawrence, and they too swept away social values and language structures.

The second reason for the historical erasure of the 1918 pandemic was hedonism. This was the Roaring Twenties with its exuberant explosions of wealth and decadence. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said: The parties were bigger, the pace was faster...the buildings were higher, the morals were looser, and the liquor was cheaper. The Roaring Twenties was like a party with hangover amnesia, erasing the time that came before it.

But there was also the fact that the pandemic was eclipsed by the memorialisation of the First World War. In a 2014 paper, Elizabeth Outka, associate professor of English at the University of Richmond, in America, noted that the two tragedies of the First World War were entangled into a single tragedy. The flu dead, she claimed, were counted among the war dead, and infectious disease had been a leading cause of death among armed forces during the war.

Now, in 2021, there are calls for a reborn Modernism to wipe the historical slate clean once again. This is The Great Reset, proposed by the World Economic Forum, and voiced in unison by an alarming number of world leaders. Its creator, Klaus Shwabe, represents the recovery after Covid as a unique window of opportunity [for global leaders] to reflect, reimagine and reset our world with a utopian plan to create a greener, smarter, fairer world. All of this echoes the idealistic projects of Le Corbusier and the Communists from the Twenties with their universalist beliefs in blank slate solutions for all the world. Have we learned nothing?

So it has fallen to artists to save our memories. In terms of culture made so far that addresses the pandemic, there is the play Bubble a tender tale of love under lockdown, by James Graham. There is also Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knights film Locked Down, about a struggling marriage, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Anne Hathaway. It would be a great shame if this kind of cultural production ceased as soon as the pandemic is declared over.

The crisis has forced us to explore so much about ourselves; the horrors, but also the unexpected versatility of people inventing solutions together. There have been upheavals in work and in family structures in divorce, cohabitation and child rearing. The modern family has been forced (with support bubbles) into new formations. Generations have been either pushed together or further apart.

Then there are the vast changes in travel, in the meaning of national borders, the impact on places of worship; the questioning of the idea of globalisation and of a career. Ive seen formerly career-driven people give up their ambitions and commit to delivering food to old people. I know of millennial couples who were postponing having kids for economic reasons suddenly decide to try for a baby, because of Covid.

And these personal questions weve had to grapple with: what is it like to home school three kids? What is it like to slowly go bankrupt or to keep (an illegal) romantic affair alive during lockdown? How does it feel to lose someone and not get to say goodbye?

All of this should be the subject of our art and our fiction right now. We should not be wishing the next year away, killing time, using culture as escapism. We have a social and moral duty to leave a record of all these powerful changes for future generations. We cant leave a chasm in culture like the one that occurred around the pandemic of 1918. If we fail to learn from the past as the Spanish philosopher George Santayana once said then we are doomed to repeat it.

Ewan Morrisons How To Survive Everything - a novel about a teenage girl abducted by her pandemic-survivalist father - is published by Contraband.

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Only the arts can help us understand our lives in lockdown - Telegraph.co.uk

BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENESWeekly analysis and untold storiesWith SAMUEL STOLTON

Other Brussels behind the scenes stories:Reporting on Brussels away from BrusselsThe Privilege of the VaccinatedEuropes Wine DilemmaEurope is lyingDesperate for an injection

The future of the European Rave

It came as no surprise when the European Commission recently disclosed that it had not been keeping tabs on the spate of underground raves and illegal festivities occuring across the EU during the coronavirus pandemic.

BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES is a weekly newsletter which brings the untold stories about the characters driving the policies affecting our lives. Analysis not found anywhere else, The Brussels Times Samuel Stolton helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels behind the scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.

Former French Minister and now right-wing MEP Thierry Mariani lamented that secret parties had been taking place across France ever since the first lockdown most notably a recent case in Brittany on new years eve, attended by around 2500 people and drawing international crowds.

As such, Mariani had wanted to know what the Commission had been doing to follow up on such illegal gatherings, and whether EU polices forces had been coordinating on the most efficient ways to combat these assemblies.

In short, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said that such items come under the competence of EU national authorities, and that, as far as the Commissions knowledge extends, the issue had not yet been raised to relevant working parties in the Council of the EU.

This got me thinking: In what ways could the ideology of the rave, historically borne out of the strife of post-war economic hardship and the desire to break down cultural silos, evolve to meet the new social discontent wrought by a semi-captive experience, living under the spectre of a global pandemic?

It was the subcultures of post-world war II Britain that proved fertile ground for the emergence of the raver. A hangover of ennui from the War coupled with a foreboding cynicism for a nascent consumerism that was gaining a foothold across the Atlantic, had begun to attract the countrys subcultures to a place of common revel, where experimentation and hedonism was in ample supply a curative breaking of bread for Britains abandoned youth, in a world making itself anew.

After a brief affair with the mods in the 1960s, however, it wasnt until the 1980s that rave culture across Londons illegal warehouse party scene truly took hold as a counter-reaction to hyper-consumerism, which had started to cartelize musical tastes. Young people sought diversion and difference in musical expression free from dominant cultural norms. They had wanted to challenge the isolationary codes that had resigned musical preference to siloed demographics.

The rave was truly a broad church which appealed to the primal instincts of individuals to congregate in a judgment-free environment with people from all walks of life. Even in my own experience, I recall being somewhat taken aback by how this domain could be a place where previously disparate social classes and subcultures were able to come together in a form of degenerate harmony. My personal stomping grounds in the early post-millennial years in the garden of England the forests and fields of rural Kent, played host in the twilight hours to a contingent of goths, Indie kids, grungers, and wannabe jungle and drum-and-bass MCs.

The illegality of raves is an essential component to its authenticity. For whatever reason trespassing, drugs, public disturbance without the knowledge that the activity was in some fundamental way prohibited, there would have been a lack of sincerity and a large dose of hypocrisy for the denizens of the rave to stomach. For the raves populous, there drives through the veins an unbridled yearning to rebel against authority.

A similar force has struck many of Europes disenfranchised youth over the past year. Resigned to their own homes and denied any wider human contact, their existence has been reduced to predominantly cerebral landscapes, with little in the way of social interaction other than that playing across the vacuous terrains of social media. In the current context, with the restrictions that we now have, it has become so much easier to dissent the rewards of freedom expand coterminously under new and more prohibitive regions of law and order.

So, during the pandemic reports of twilight parties on Lisbon beaches, clandestine gatherings in Berlin parks, and revelries in English motorway underpasses, were, frankly, to be expected. Lets not forget that even Belgiums very own Prince Joachim couldnt resist attending an illegal gathering in Spain to which he came in for a 10,000 fine.

This week the Commission also unveiled its plans to roll out a Digital Green Pass effectively a voluntary certificate that would allow the vaccinated and those tested negative for the coronavirus to travel across borders without hindrance. For its part, the Spanish party haven of Ibiza is eagerly waiting in the wings for this initiative to get off the ground.

In the meantime, half-hearted attempts to stage virtual raves just dont cut the mustard there lacks the fundamental communal coercion that throbs throughout the rave model. In a weird way, such virtual raves where each participant logs into a live feed with a synthetic nightclub background, only serve to exasperate further our profound isolation from one another running in direct contrast to the principles of the rave dynamic.

Of course, I dont condone in any way such illegalities, but I do hope that the coronavirus does not change the essential components of the rave. Perhaps thats the point of it all: The rave shouldnt in any way evolve but should remain tightly woven into its primal tapestries. Lets hope the rave, for now, remains as it is, until we are once again let loose on the forests, nightclubs, and abandoned buildings of Europe.

BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES is a weekly newsletter which brings the untold stories about the characters driving the policies affecting our lives. Analysis not found anywhere else, The Brussels Times Samuel Stolton helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels behind the scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.

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The future of the European Rave BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES Weekly analysis and untold stories With - The Brussels Times

Daniel Whitlock, St. Cloud Published 8:12 a.m. CT March 19, 2021

Most colleges will have spring break sometime between March 9 and April 21.An annual migration of young women, resplendent like colorful butterflies with dazzling white orthodontic smiles, will migrate to the white sands of Florida and Texas. They will be followed, in pursuit, by young wannabe he-men with straight white teeth, well-groomed hair, over-built pecs and arms and booming voices. The rites of spring!

Undoubtedly the COVID-19 virus will hitchhike its way to the busy beaches of the South and is preparing to have its own unbridled hedonism, during and after spring break.

In this gravid environment, the virus is laying plans to develop variants of itself, in effect giving itself a genetic promotion so that it can spread easier and kill more people.

Daniel J. Whitlock(Photo: Submitted photo)

The virus never sleeps and will be an unplanned companion at spring break.Its always working, planning and taking whatever opportunity it can.Spring break, with its partying and invasive privilege, presents the ideal chance to invade, multiply and eventually spread itself to every community in the country, in a more dangerous mutated form, a variant." This environment is perfectly tuned, allowing this COVID-19 to take full advantage of a unique opportunity.

Fortunately for the revelers, their youth, absence of obesity, paucity of diseases like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease make them generally resistant to COVID-19 infection that results in serious hospitalization and death.Tens of thousands may become infected but will just suffer mild cold-like symptoms. Oh, to be young!

But the virus never sleeps.Its business is invading a persons cells, to steal the cells metabolic machinery and make copies of itself.When the cells of the lung die from this invasion, thousands of new baby COVID-19 viruses are released and expelled in breath, by vigorous young adultsin close contact.

Multiply this invasion of millions of individual cells with the thousands of viruses created in each cell. And then multiply that by the tens of thousands of beach revelers and you have a lot of virus running amok.

Because of the large number of viruses created, there is also the increased chance that a variant may be created. Viruses, and possibly a new variant, will be spread by celebrators, in bars, by kissing, shouting and being closer than the CDC suggests.Masks will not be a deterrent because most beach states are, irresponsibly, loosening their restrictions paving the way for the success of the virus. Spring break is nirvana for the virus.

The energetic young partiers on a beach are ripe to become super-spreaders of a new variant, to each other and to their communities once they return.They and the virus can generate variants and amplify the spread and aggressiveness of COVID-19.This is a potential disaster.

What Im describing is obviously a worst-case scenario. Its not highly probable but it is possible.And this is a legitimate warning.

However, we learn a lot from planning for the worst case, because it reveals weakness and vulnerabilities in a system vulnerabilities that may return to haunt us. For example, planning for a worst-case scenario in Texas, for a grid failure resulting from a snowstorm, might have saved many lives even though it was not a probable happening.

Plunging into a week of feeling good, especially in the context of yearlong lives of isolation, is understandable but dangerous.Spring break should make us all cautious, especially those of us with college and high school age kids who crave the southern beaches to let off steam.

The virus never sleeps or takes a break.Its always looking for an opportunity to improve its ability to spread and kill.

Daniel Whitlock retired from St. Cloud Hospital CentraCare after 16 years as its vice president for medical affairs. He has no current ties to CentraCare other than as a patient. He and his wife live in St. Cloud and have enduring ties to Quiet Oaks Hospice House.

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Your Turn: The virus won't take a spring break - SC Times