body, stranger, and the verdict machine
week of april 18, 2026
i. body, berlin, and the primal
in berlin for a few days. now at the dolomites, watching green meadow, sunk in iceberg-melted weather.
saw a lot of nudity in the past few days. berghain, museums, galleries. the marina abramovic show opened the second day i arrived. inspired by erotic rituals and folk myths of the balkans, she builds a polyphonic hymn to life force: raw, archaic, overwhelming. exploring female energy, shame, desire, and the relationship between body and history. women massaging their bare breasts to awaken the earth. baring themselves under open sky to ward off storms. eroticism not as allure but as primal force, a language beyond shame, morality, and control.
shame of the body exists until monotheism takes over. that's the thesis, more or less. and walking through berghain later, i felt it differently than i have before. i used to read nudity there as sexuality. now it feels more like a symbol.
anti-system. anti-authoritarian. freedom as a physical fact.
why do we shame? why do we hide? why do we want to possess something so badly, or maintain a certain image? maybe that's not our primal instinct. maybe it got installed
ii. people, strangers, and an angel shark
berlin gave me people this trip. old friends, new friends, and a category that doesn't have a name yet.
at hor, the staff were genuinely kind, the kind of kind that doesn't perform itself. my reverb box wasn't cooperating, she is an artist themselves, had it sorted in three minutes flat while the clock was running. that's the thing about people who actually care about artists and community
met new people at kwia. good energy, the kind of room where conversations start mid-sentence and somehow make sense.
then berghain, where the dancefloor is its own breathing organism. at some point a stranger handed me their ice cream and i just ate it. no conversation. no context. completely normal. nearby, an old man in a wheelchair held court in the middle of the floor while a couple made out right in front of him, totally unbothered. it just keeps going and you either keep up or you don't.
second day, we ended up at hostel ella, a place that lives in the shadow of berghain so completely that the standard greeting is "did you get in last weekend?".
we sat in the hostel bar, which had decorated its ceiling with miniature cows and sheep toys, a flying angel shark suspended mid-air, and a washing machine stacked into the corner of the bar for reasons no one explained or questioned. the bar owner and the waiter were in a low-grade argument because they could not agree on what we paid. the math was contested. we waited. the angel shark watched over all of it.
at some point you stop needing things to make sense and just let the ceiling have its moment.
iii. the dm, the boycott, and the verdict machine
after finishing my hor set, someone i respect sent a dm asking me to pull my hor set. they sent links, context, the whole thing. polite but loaded.
i'd just finished reading a reddit thread on the same situation. a jewish berlin resident breaking down why the hor boycott, in their view, had crossed from solidarity into something uglier. long post. lots of research. the comments were a mix of exhaustion, nuance, and the usual binary firing squad.
what struck me wasn't really the hor debate itself. it was how fast a messy, contested situation gets flattened into a single ask: are you with us or not?
the internet doesn't hold complexity. it needs a side. it needs a ratio. it needs you on record.
the techno scene used to be one of the few spaces that resisted that. underground by design. no press releases, no official positions, just music and the people who showed up. that's not entirely gone, but it's eroding fast. now platforms are boycott targets. sets are political endorsements. showing up somewhere means something.
i'm not saying politics don't belong in music. they always have. but there's a difference between an artist making a genuine statement and a community running an accountability machine that doesn't allow for "i don't know yet" or "it's more complicated than that."
the person who messaged me wasn't being malicious. they believed what they were saying. but the ask itself, pull your set, take a side, do it publicly, that's the internet talking. not a conversation. a verdict.
i didn't react. not because i don't care. because i'm not going to perform a position i haven't actually arrived at.
some things take more than a dm or internet action to figure out.
in berlin for a few days. now at the dolomites, watching green meadow, sunk in iceberg-melted weather.
saw a lot of nudity in the past few days. berghain, museums, galleries. the marina abramovic show opened the second day i arrived. inspired by erotic rituals and folk myths of the balkans, she builds a polyphonic hymn to life force: raw, archaic, overwhelming. exploring female energy, shame, desire, and the relationship between body and history. women massaging their bare breasts to awaken the earth. baring themselves under open sky to ward off storms. eroticism not as allure but as primal force, a language beyond shame, morality, and control.
shame of the body exists until monotheism takes over. that's the thesis, more or less. and walking through berghain later, i felt it differently than i have before. i used to read nudity there as sexuality. now it feels more like a symbol.
anti-system. anti-authoritarian. freedom as a physical fact.
why do we shame? why do we hide? why do we want to possess something so badly, or maintain a certain image? maybe that's not our primal instinct. maybe it got installed
ii. people, strangers, and an angel shark
berlin gave me people this trip. old friends, new friends, and a category that doesn't have a name yet.
at hor, the staff were genuinely kind, the kind of kind that doesn't perform itself. my reverb box wasn't cooperating, she is an artist themselves, had it sorted in three minutes flat while the clock was running. that's the thing about people who actually care about artists and community
met new people at kwia. good energy, the kind of room where conversations start mid-sentence and somehow make sense.
then berghain, where the dancefloor is its own breathing organism. at some point a stranger handed me their ice cream and i just ate it. no conversation. no context. completely normal. nearby, an old man in a wheelchair held court in the middle of the floor while a couple made out right in front of him, totally unbothered. it just keeps going and you either keep up or you don't.
second day, we ended up at hostel ella, a place that lives in the shadow of berghain so completely that the standard greeting is "did you get in last weekend?".
we sat in the hostel bar, which had decorated its ceiling with miniature cows and sheep toys, a flying angel shark suspended mid-air, and a washing machine stacked into the corner of the bar for reasons no one explained or questioned. the bar owner and the waiter were in a low-grade argument because they could not agree on what we paid. the math was contested. we waited. the angel shark watched over all of it.
at some point you stop needing things to make sense and just let the ceiling have its moment.
iii. the dm, the boycott, and the verdict machine
after finishing my hor set, someone i respect sent a dm asking me to pull my hor set. they sent links, context, the whole thing. polite but loaded.
i'd just finished reading a reddit thread on the same situation. a jewish berlin resident breaking down why the hor boycott, in their view, had crossed from solidarity into something uglier. long post. lots of research. the comments were a mix of exhaustion, nuance, and the usual binary firing squad.
what struck me wasn't really the hor debate itself. it was how fast a messy, contested situation gets flattened into a single ask: are you with us or not?
the internet doesn't hold complexity. it needs a side. it needs a ratio. it needs you on record.
the techno scene used to be one of the few spaces that resisted that. underground by design. no press releases, no official positions, just music and the people who showed up. that's not entirely gone, but it's eroding fast. now platforms are boycott targets. sets are political endorsements. showing up somewhere means something.
i'm not saying politics don't belong in music. they always have. but there's a difference between an artist making a genuine statement and a community running an accountability machine that doesn't allow for "i don't know yet" or "it's more complicated than that."
the person who messaged me wasn't being malicious. they believed what they were saying. but the ask itself, pull your set, take a side, do it publicly, that's the internet talking. not a conversation. a verdict.
i didn't react. not because i don't care. because i'm not going to perform a position i haven't actually arrived at.
some things take more than a dm or internet action to figure out.
and here are the definitions i found:
MOVEMENT: movement tends to be generative. it builds something: identity, infrastructure, new norms, institutions. it has a positive vision of what it wants to exist. civil rights wasn't just "stop segregation" it was a whole reimagining of civic life.
BOYCOTT: boycott is a pressure tactic. it's a tool, not a destination. it works best when it's one instrument inside a larger movement with clear demands and a legible endpoint. the montgomery bus boycott worked because it had an ask (desegregate the buses), a community with shared stakes, and legal strategy running in parallel. it wasn't just "we're out." it was "we're out until x."