Thursday 18 August 2011

Age of Love / A Pagan Place



Several times, in nineteen ninety something......at 3am.....on LSD.......here:


What a song. What a crowd. What a place.....what a time.

I love that song. The empty spookiness. A chick with a fabulous foreign accent, and shw sings like an angel to the driving drum and bass. And that mad, super-extended siren whine..... I'd never heard anything like it. Along with LSD and XTC, a lot of genuinely brilliant people, and the setting of Llyn Brianne.....as pictured.....what a time.

I went to parties there, at Llyn Brianne: everyone was a friend of a friend, they had generators, DJs, dance music, fire and drugs. It was quite the deal. I remember meeting stragers at the fire in the dead of night, and they'd explain they had no idea where they were, having travelled all day, and driven all night. It gave me a strange delight to know how impressed they would be at daybreak, because everyone always is. There's something very evocative about the Welsh mountains. The Welsh landscape provides a very particular mood. For one thing, it feels "old", and on LSD out in the woods listening to music like this, I enjoyed imagining myself a primitive, with knowledge of nothing, just desire and a full heart. I'd climb trees, feeling like I was looking on unseen land, as if I had never seen a map. I felt like I was doing things all humans have done. Something very primitive. But more than that, the sound of that song in the hills of Wales, alongside a fire, and with the drugs......and the primitivism of it all....there was something else there too. All the things together brought out something else....something very dark. Not quite malevolent, but.....something. I feel sure that "something" I sensed deeply was what the pagans were on about. There's something in those hills. Wales is a pagan place.

4 comments:

The Salmon Family said...

Couldn't agree more, think I felt it that night too.

the_last_name_left said...

Really? I can't do the feeling justice with some words but.....it was really quite powerful and spooky. I'm an atheist and materialist and all that, and people criticise my lack of 'spirituality' (whatever that is). So it's quite disturbing to have a sense of something "other". [I guess the LSD/XTC doesn't help - haha]

I had a feeling there were perhaps demons about.....and I subsequently found Peter the Great to be a....errr...fan (?) of the god of drinking, intoxication - Bacchus.

Lord Wiki says Bacchus / Dionysus was:

"..the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy"
===

There's our suspect!!!

Man it was fucking spooky though, wasn't it? Bacchus or worse. Something. I have had similar feelings driving through the Black Mountains. There's something out there. Fucking mountain lions?

I remember that giant guy there at that one party, I sat on him thinking he was a log.

And the others in Snowdonia? Christ - one of the toughest nights of my life. haha. Gale-force party. Right on!

The Salmon Family said...

Not sure about toughest night of our lives, boyo. We were in the hands of the hedonists, and we loved it.

I remember being sat up a tree for some hours, literally feeling at one with it. Then for the last North Wales shindig, I thought I could walk on water. Go figure. Dark forces? Mysticism? Hmm, an overactive young imagination and strong pharms, perhaps?

I also haven't thanked you properly for dragging me half way Cader Idris, or Devils Kitchen whichever it was, having absolutely no idea where I was...literally.

Llandudno was a friendly place too......maybe Bacchus was the landlord of the pub we ran out of.

the_last_name_left said...

Oh, that first party up in Snowdonia really was a nightmare. I went up with Fig and some dealer...with Dianne....so we didn't have a vehicle to hide in. Tents were blown away...and we were stuck outside.....it was horrific. lol. And no fire. what an absolutely horrendous night!

I think that occasion helped me to determine I must never go anywhere I can't leave.

Y, I remember that walk, with eyes like those cartoon spirals? hehe. Was all getting a bit much by then, I guess.

That tune takes me right back to those parties.....as does most of that entire Trance series. Last one I did was about 98 I think, at Llyn Brianne. I saw Timbo and co during 2000/2001....when I was working last in Cardiff. I haven't heard from them since (I moved to Surrey again). Seems I pissed everyone off, somehow..... and they me. Oh well.