We Are All These Ravers Running Headlong Into a Tornado

In the face of danger, what kind of person do you become? What is the primordial instinct that comprises your character? Do you take life by the horns, cherishing its every curve, relishing every experience? More to the point, if you were at a rave in the Australian bush just jamming out to some trance music and a tornado developed in the middle of a field, would you run for cover or would you race the fuck into the eye of the tornado and dance even harder, as if no one were watching?

If you chose B., these Australian ravers (at last week’s Earthcore 2015, in Pyalong, Victoria) are compatible with your personality type. Beyond the obvious fact that they’re arguably raving harder than anyone has ever raved before, however, and the perhaps slightly deeper fact that they’re literally transcending this mortal coil and becoming one with the wind—there’s an even more profound implication to this glorious moment in rave culture.

The tornado represents nature. The ravers represent mortality. Life, depending on how you experience time, is just a slow and inevitable careening towards the very end, bittersweet though it may be, it is a surety. Their existential symbolism is unmistakably writ, their fervor nonetheless undiminished. We live, we learn. We love, we learn. We cry, we learn. We lose, we learn. We bleed, we learn. We scream, we learn. Wait until the dust settles. For that’s only as long as we have on this godforsaken blue-green earth.