Even in your book, you show that there were some different, very different, kinds of politics in early German electronic music. There\u2019s a feeling that dance music can be a sort of big tent, even progressive, in a way, and I think that\u2019s something that a lot of people miss when they think about it\u2014though, I completely understand why people might miss it. I\u2019d like to hear what you think about why dance music endures as a type of music that unites people\u2014beyond, you know, drugs. And I\u2019m wondering what you think about all this in conjunction with what you said about the spaces and how they make people feel and the relationship to drugs and how those experiences translate to the outside club environment.<\/p>\n
Cagney: I wanted to contribute towards changing the narrative around what the club experience is. Because it isn\u2019t just about hedonism and it\u2019s not just about mindless thumping beats. It\u2019s about self-expression. It\u2019s about community building, it\u2019s about innovation, and optimism. We\u2019ve gotten so habituated in this neoliberal phase of pessimism around our future. There was a lot to be said about the kind of blue-sky thinking of the rave movement when it hit Ireland in the nineties. Kelly\u2019s in Portrush was a bridging place for communities during The Troubles. Kelly\u2019s was rave in the countryside in Ireland, rave and entrepreneurship. I see rave in Ireland as of a moment with World Cup \u201994 and Sinead O’Connor and Jack Charlton and our coming out of the long economic slump. A more optimistic era.<\/p>\n
You mentioned liberation in terms of freeing people up from conflict, breaking down boundaries\u2014that was really the case in post-\u201989 Berlin. They say it was on the dance floor that reunification first happened, culturally, because on the dance floor you couldn\u2019t hear somebody\u2019s accent: you didn\u2019t know whether they were from West or East. It didn\u2019t matter. I like that a lot about the dance floor, that it\u2019s a nonverbal, non-semantic space. It frees you up from semantics, which means identity and representational thinking, and it can free you up from yourself as well.<\/p>\n
The one thing I was told about how you could distinguish back then between someone from East Berlin and someone from West Berlin, a former club owner who I asked told me, just look at the person\u2019s shoes. If they were from East Berlin, they had good sturdy footwear. If they were from West Berlin, they\u2019d be wearing a pair of shitty trainers.<\/p>\n
Rail: So, West Berliners were wearing something fashionable, but East Berliners had the built to last gear?<\/p>\n
Cagney: Yeah. I still buy clothes in Army surplus stores here in Berlin because they last. Even the t-shirts last way longer than fast fashion.<\/p>\n
Rail: I wanted to ask you about the response the electronic music community, the clubs, and even Germany has had to what\u2019s going on in Gaza. I was talking earlier about how dance music is often kind of a big tent politically and for a variety of reasons often brings communities together. What I know of the scenes in cities like New York and Berlin, there\u2019s often a leftwing, inclusive ethos to a lot of the parties. How has it been witnessing a community like this ignoring, or, to put it as generously as possible, staying totally silent about what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
Cagney: That\u2019s the thing I come back to, the silence. That\u2019s been one of the most difficult things for someone living in Berlin during the genocide. People who I know and love and have partied around, people who present as queer, people who present as alternative, people with tattoos, people with piercings, liberal white Germans, people who march for Black Lives Matter, people who have modular synths, people who take drugs, people who go to Berghain\u2014seeing them say nothing about the Gaza genocide whatsoever. Being around them and experiencing their silence left me disillusioned. Never more so than a year and a half into the genocide, during the weekend of the Internationalist Queer Pride (IQP) parade.<\/p>\n
In Berlin there\u2019s a main pride parade, which is the mainstream one and it\u2019s got big corporate floats and all the rest. Then there\u2019s a counter demonstration and it\u2019s grassroots queers\u2014queers of color, anti-colonial queers. It\u2019s the people who make the club scene happen, the people who threw the first brick at Stonewall. Pride weekend was the last weekend of July and I was going to Berghain that weekend to see a friend play. The motto on the Berghain wristband that weekend was \u201cNever be silent again!\u201d\u2014\u201cNie weider stille!\u201d Which was the motto of the corporate pride parade. And already seeing that, never be silent again, coming from Berghain during the genocide, about which it hadn\u2019t said a word, rubbed me up the wrong way. But at the International Queer Pride parade, the police went in and beat people up in the parade in the most brutal way\u2014police brutality against queers. When I was at Berghain the day after that happened, and there was a wristband saying \u201cnever be silent again,\u201d and meanwhile Berghain is being totally silent about it. My friend\u2019s group Decius was amazing. One for the books, as they say. But apart from that, all I could feel was the silence. I felt like, what are we doing here? What are we really doing here? Distracting ourselves?<\/p>\n
For my part, non-clubbing people would say, why are you still going there? Why don\u2019t you boycott Berghain and other German cultural venues when the clampdown\u2019s happening? When what happened to Oyoun was happening? When what happened to Jewish Voices for Peace was happening? I started going a lot less. When I did go, in some sense I felt like if I\u2019m writing about it, witnessing it, I\u2019m able to critically engage with it and critically write about it, maybe that\u2019s of value.<\/p>\n
Rail: I think so.<\/p>\n
Cagney: I\u2019ve come round to the idea that, instead of shouting at people online and just telling them they\u2019re wrong, it\u2019s better to try and have a conversation and be a bit lighter. I think that can be more effective because, I mean, everybody in Germany is brainwashed. Institutions of what Louis Althusser called the Ideological State Apparatuses, from kindergarten onwards, media and TV, are brainwashing people to the State narrative. To get them out of that, conversation can be more effective than shouting.<\/p>\n
Rail: It\u2019s bad here in America, but I\u2019ve been shocked by the scenes I\u2019ve seen from Germany and just the violence of the police towards protesters. I mean, I think everyone in Ireland probably saw that video of the Irish protester being punched. It was horrific. Not to diminish that in any way, but I\u2019ve seen even more shocking things happen, too.<\/p>\n
Cagney: It\u2019s predominantly brown people who are getting beaten up and predominantly white people looking the other way. There was the video of the activist Kitty O\u2019Brien, when she got two black eyes and she had her arm broken. I was having a discussion about that with a now ex-friend of mine, somebody who lives in Germany and who presents as very alternative. He said: I think the German police are doing an excellent job. So then you realize, okay, this is a racist person and I don\u2019t want to be friends with them. And this is somebody who I was friendly with for years. There\u2019s been a lot of that.<\/p>\n
Rail: Oof. That seems like a gap that can\u2019t be bridged.<\/p>\n
Cagney: Yeah, you put it well, a gap that can\u2019t be bridged. There are some people about whom you have to be optimistic that you might change their mind. But there are others with whom that gap can\u2019t be bridged.<\/p>\n
Rail: You mentioned it earlier on when you spoke about being on the twentieth floor of that building you lived in Plattenbau and asking yourself, how the fuck did I get here? In some sense the book is one long answer to that question. By the end of the book, you seem changed by your experience, and the timing of this coincides, roughly, with broader changes in Berlin relating to COVID-19, the housing crisis, and maybe even the music scene. I got a sense that you had come to a deeper understanding of your place in the scene.<\/p>\n
Cagney: The end of the journey thing is a literary trope, obviously, but it was genuine. Things did change. On a personal level I came to own how I\u2019m queer and I also realized I was autistic. And in a wider sense Berlin felt different. There were a lot of ways in which I felt Berlin was becoming like London. People at Berghain were talking to you about crypto. That\u2019s gentrification.<\/p>\n
In the book\u2019s opening chapter, David, my old friend, had said to me that Berghain is a place that reflects you back to yourself. Because it\u2019s this open space, it kind of makes you start to ask yourself questions about yourself. Going there repeatedly over years and recognizing why, partly because I was autistic, partly I wanted to be in queer spaces around queer people, combined then with reading and learning about techno\u2019s history, did actually put me in a place, now, where I\u2019ve got a different sense of myself and I\u2019m confident enough to have that.<\/p>\n
Sun Ra is the epigraph for the book. I find him inspiring. \u201cIt is important to liberate oneself from the obligation to be born, because this experience doesn\u2019t help us at all,\u201d he said. He often reminds me of Clarice Lispector. \u201cI can scarcely believe that I have limits,\u201d she writes, \u201cthat I am cut out and defined.\u201d There\u2019s a deeper truth there than any ethnographer could access, when they measure experience like a cartographer and then package it up in abstractions.<\/p>\n
I now own the sense that I don\u2019t belong regardless of which community it is, and I\u2019m confident now and empowered in that, as a techno person. I don\u2019t really feel like I am fully from this place or that I fit within whatever the narrative is that we\u2019re all supposed to be living inside, whether it\u2019s academic or social. I\u2019m the surplus. I do come from nowhere, as a nonbinary person and generally. I had a change in my sense of self for sure. How well I articulated it\u2014I think in some ways it\u2019s unorthodox, but I hope people can cut the writer some slack.<\/p>\n
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