Sure les pavés, la plage // On the pavement, the beach

The lights were already on at Dada, and outside too the night was over. We made the most out of the last 5 or 10 minutes of music and dance before the annoyed barkeeper would close the club. I turned around and saw a girl with pink dreadlocks under a big hat smiling widely at me, so I smiled back at her. Her eyes became wide when they fell on my arm full of festival wrist bands; she grabbed it and exclaimed out loud: “Oooo giiiirl that’s so amazing! You gotta come to Dragonburn!” The next morning I sat dead tired in my Chinese classes when the girl with the pink dreadlocks came to my mind again. As to not fall asleep on my table, I decided to google what this mysterious Dragonburn was about. A music festival? A gathering of artists? Or just another utterly boring and commercial event?

As I scrolled over the website of Dragonburn, I immediately knew that was it. That was what I had been waiting for ever since I came to Shanghai: the small creek of alternative freedom and creative minds running beside the mainstream. It was what I had searched for in vain – so far.

I cycled back home in a breakneck speed, suddenly fearing the tickets to this event, my salvation, might sell out just today, in this very moment. I logged in, pressed “buy ticket” and passed out next to my laptop. When I woke up a few hours later it was already dark outside, and in my mail account was a message with my ticket for Dragonburn 2019. It was only 26 days left until the start of the event.

What followed, was overwhelming, confusing, unsettling, and then just utterly beautiful.

So I was going to Dragonburn, and needed a camp. The girl with the pink dreadlocks – she turned out to go by the name Jellykones - called me to tell me about some friends that were doing “Camp Cacophonia”. Entry fee: a 1000kuai + your reason. Phew.

I knew that at this point it was all in or nothin’, so I threw all my resolutions to make savings overboard and jumped into the camp. On a round table of a cheap Dongbei restaurant chain, I was inaugurated into the Cacophony Society. I was given a new name – Crimson - and I was intimidated. The Cacophonists talked a lot, they talked fast and referred to things I did not understand. Wasn’t I an intruder? Had I made the wrong decision? Who was Slieve Donnard? Was this really what I had been waiting for? I had to pull out. It was too late.

13 days until the start of the Burn, and I stand on a field in Anji next to a half-built temple the purpose of which I don’t understand yet. What I do understand is that it’s pissing on us out of a grey sky and the damn temple just won’t stand. This is early arrival. Yesterday the sun has burned us red and today the sky gifts us wet feet and raindrops dripping from my hair down my back. On the bus back to Shanghai, Coco says to me: “Are you always this quiet?”, and I feel awkwardly exposed. On the back row behind me people talk and talk. I am quiet. I am fine. I am Crimson now, and Crimson is a member.

For much too long I thought the Cacophony Society had high expectations about my contributions, about the Cacophonist inside of me, until I realized they were only radical in their acceptance of who I was. I was a member, and my membership was justified by the very person that I was.

Cautiously, I tapped into a new identity: Crimson, Tipsy Crimson.

It is the morning of the last day at the Burn. I sit on a footbridge by the water and watch as dragons scream at me from the sky. When I turn around, the trees shape into a women’s face rocking back and forth. I stroke over my crimson pants and see a peaceful duck swimming by. I’m so cute, and so happy, I think. This is so beautiful. The stars and the moon slowly fade; the sky turns pale blue as I trudge back up the hill to the camp. I walk past Ed, the four foot tall plaster rooster, who greets me with a silent Cacaw! and walk into a group of campmates and friends talking, joking, fooling around. Everyone is buzzing with energy and vigor. I hear Bok say to me “Crimson, you’re an amazing person” and I smile so wide all over my face. I have finally arrived. There it is. Under our big tent I crawl into a sleeping bag and close my eyes, calm and confident.

Being part of the Cacophony Society is a radical experience that did not stop after the Burn. I had finally come to a place that held unexpected friendship, all-encompassing warmth, and a pinch – no, a ladle full – of challenging weirdness for me. Without noticing it, I slipped into the Cacophonian experience - an experiment, radical in its temporality, that blew up my thinking about friendship, social norms and identity.

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We have spent the night picnicking on railroad tracks somewhere in northern Shanghai, and as the morning rises grey and heavy from its night bed, I fall asleep in Freddy’s lap. My back sinks into the tracks, soft rain and the distant mumble of a conversation drizzle down on me. A man with a rainbow-colored umbrella walks past, sticking out from the grey sky, even greyer buildings, and the rusty tracks.

Chaaaaange faces! We sit in front of a family mart with beers. Someone puts a shred of white paper in Sebs hand. Meanwhile, Jelly is filming as a huge-ass truck arrives that we ordered to cart the group of us and our two bicycles back downtown to Seb’s place. Of course, the driver doesn’t let us inside. We give him 100kuai and joke, “this is probably the weirdest 100 kuai the truck driver has ever made.”, and then we order taxis to Seb’s. His apartment is entirely made of wood. I sit on a wooden chair with a beer in my hand and I look at a wooden shelf and then at Fin and Freddy on the couch and I’m so tired and so happy and outside it’s fucking POURING. The sky releases insane amounts of water on the city as I lay down on bed next to Jelly like a kid next to its mother. I hear thunder, laughter, murmur, damp and far away… As I wake up, everyone is still out and about, talking, drinking, dressing up. Time to get on the bikes again. The Cacophony Society is a gentle, but radical in its attempts to push through to the other side. It’s a walk to a place we don’t know ourselves yet, on a road that forms as we walk it. The Cacophony Society makes Shanghai a playground, a rabbit hole of endless opportunities for urban exploration.

It is 3AM in the morning. At this time of the night, Shanghai knows only two colors: dark grey and standby orange. Mango and I fight each other with umbrellas which have become totally superfluous in the face of the typhoon that goes down over the city. Above us on run the Metro tracks towards Zhongshan Park. What was that sound? Is that live music? I heard it too. We follow the sound and I swear it was there I just heard it but it disappears as we try to get closer.

I close my eyes.

The streets roar like a river crashing down a mountain slope. Mango is talking about something that I don’t understand. My mouth tastes bitter. Mango’s gone. Above me I hear trees rustling and the first metro of the day rattling into the station, beneath me I see car lights flickering over the water on the road. All the typhoon has left is puddles 4 inches deep on the streets. The wind draws fine waves into the water and plucks giant leaves twice the size of my hand from the trees. It’s a long walk home, but the rain has stopped. I bury my hands in my pockets and follow the leaves that swirl on the water down the road. Sous les pavés: la plage? (Under the pavement: the beach?)

Not for us. The beach is above the pavement, right in front of our eyes. And we can make it anything we want.The city is ours for a moment. We capture a rooftop, a Family Mart, a bus, the Bund, Wuding Road, someone’s living room, just for a moment. We come to you in the disguise of annoyance, weirdness, hedonism, with loud voices and you stop, you get out your phone ready to record what you see thinking "what the hell are these 老外(laowai) doing here," you think of yourself as a spectator, but you are not. You share this moment with us, you stand on the same pavement as we do. And you may already be a member.

I am a member. I am Crimson.