Sonic Dancefloor Of Disobedience–A NarrativeEssay Preview: Sonic Dancefloor Of Disobedience–A NarrativeReport this essayDim, colored lights flash while a synthetic drum machine throbbed a tattoo in my brain. The noise was like a meat grinder while the singer growls, voice somehow not matching the beat, but maniacally reaching out through it: “You cannot
suture the future– though you might try Yes sir, theyre gonna save us! Absolution guaranteed! (For a small additional fee)” I smirked slightly at what some might see as lyrics that would offend the religious right as a parody of ones soul being saved, my expression contrasting the serious faces around me on the dance floor. Someone gets into my dancing space, stomping past me in a flight vest and Frankensteins monsters boots, his arms flailing low, but similar to an air traffic controllers movements. I shoved him out of my way and our eyes meet. My body-language shouts “This is my piece of dancing real-estate. Get your own, or be forced out” He nods, and I could already feel his acceptance flowing out, touching every member of the Industrial club and telling them that Im to be treated as one of their own. I smiled, continuing to dance, because this was my home. This is my life, what I was born for, I thought to myself. This was my first concert. I had driven myself to Orlando the week after I turned eighteen to see Pitch Shifter, my dark muses of music and philosophy. In my mind, this concert was a turning point for my life.
“God awful waste-of-space, dumb, degenerate low-lives!” “Mal-adjusted FREAKS!” the band was painting a satire of what people called us. We knew that life was going down the toilet and that movies and books like Blade Runner, Clockwork Orange, and Fahrenheit 411 wasnt that far off if the world kept up with the themes of social and political oppression, the eventual barrenness of the planet and the inevitable dry-rot of morale complete with man-killing machines from technology we were not ready for and cannibalism due to pollution and overpopulation. Why not embrace it for what it was? Eventually, wed all be in A Brave New World and yes, Big Brother was indeed watching. Obviously, most people werent as enlightened as us, and most “cyberpunks” and “Rivetheads” as we called ourselves, were ostracized for it. I continued stomping my feet in outrage of the world not seeing the truth. My heavy boots jingled with many buckles as if lending themselves to the music as my fists punched out at air, the breeze from my movement feeling refreshing, despite the stale air. I bent down low and placed my palms on the smooth parquet floor as if I was hit by a bullet and was going down. My cheek briefly touched the dance floor, sticky with sweat. My hair plastered to my neck and face as I stopped all movement. The music thudded against my body, breaking down my facade of stillness. My body pulsed from the inside out with the building beat of jackhammers in my ears, siphoning down my body and into my blood. Suddenly, I gave a mule-kick out, my feet missing another dancer my millimeters. Goths dance like theyre pulling spider webs out of the attic; Goths are ethereal and they mope artistically. We Rivetheads are angry and we dance like were at war– as much with ourselves as with everything else.
Finally exhausted, I looked around at the other patrons as I went across the huge dance floor to get a Diet Coke– Five dollars a glass. I rolled by eyes, paid up, and looked out over the sea of my people. They were bouncing and stomping and grabbing their heads in mock depression as the band continued on their synthetic music-makers, tweaking at knobs, playing with keyboards, looking like mad scientists of music, come to unbrainwash us with sonic disobedience. I gave another self-satisfied smirk. I hid it in my ribbed plastic cup of (mostly ice with a drop) of Coke and behind my Marlboro cigarette as looked out at the club. Suddenly, I knew why people legged their kids when I walked past them in the supermarket, now that I saw versions of myself all over. We were a sea of military and medical paraphernalia, black leather, and spare computer parts. Robotic, post-apocalyptic
s, with laser-vision goggles and electronic equipment and the like, and in the middle a human-made robot, was coming up beside me. This had been another part of the “new world order” tour that I’d been told was happening to me. “They know a thing or two about their lives,” a kid from Georgia told me. “They’re going to know some stuff or something. They probably do believe some things, but they don’t have the ability to just know that’s all right.” A “new world order” tour, by the way, had already begun and at the time was scheduled to be as high-energy as a rock band. The new world order was all about the “new thing.”
The next day I received a call from the National Security Council which said, “We are going to look at what are the options you need to think about our world, and how you can make sense of them as you can. This is the most important of all steps we will take. Do you want to be able to do this? Do you need access to a safe place where they can find out what they’re doing, can we get around to this one? A place where you can leave your head with the hope that someday, the new things may break?” I thought back to that day and how I thought that day as well. I needed the answers. Not a question that everyone’s life went away, but enough that people around me went through a phase of self-doubt that I didn’t recognize the reality of the situation of people here or around Washington’s world. Then I realized: I needed to do something about it. I started going to the National Security Council. I met with my Secretary of State and they agreed to try the idea. I set up a panel of researchers to look at how much of the U.S. national defense could be made with a nonlethal weapon—a nuclear device, I think. We would look at the technologies that do not meet that criteria. (As to nuclear warhead designs, I’ve never looked at all that hard. If I did, I would never have given a talk about how a nuclear device could actually be used, for the national defence in the way some have been. The only difference was that I’d talked about this for people interested in nuclear warhead design. It was probably more of a political question than anything else.) In early February of this year I started to get e-mails about the idea again. I asked if I could submit a proposal to go to Iraq and get military access. I got at least one e-mail, too. I called the head of the Nuclear Weapon Initiative, James A. Mullon, who, of course, wanted to know whether he wanted US help to get through the whole process. After all, how long could I run before I was informed of that? So I invited them to come talk to me. They agreed. I called Mullon’s office a few hours later. Over his shoulder, two people in different departments stood and spoke; two others were on the floor. They said one thing and then, with a shrug, the next. Mullon would talk over them and tell of the problem that needed fixing. The meeting went reasonably well; he was very polite, and he seemed very open to having me try his ideas. The second person sat