:Green Dragon

Subject: Green Dragon

10/02/14

I met Tim at "Exit 2" of the "Xinyi Anhe" station on Saturday to go to dinner and then eventually make our way to Korner for a 5 hour DJ set. After dinner and some beer consumption at around 11:00 PM, we decided to walk instead of ride a taxi, and ended up traversing through NTU. Dispersed throughout the sprawling campus was over twenty groups of Taiwanese students seated in circle-formations, usually surrounding candles (their only light source) or incomprehensible signs with painted-on Chinese characters. Low mumbles of Mandarin could be heard from each circle as Tim and I passed, and towards the end of our walk, as whatever ceremony or ritual the students were enacting climaxed, they all began clapping.

We arrived at the club early and, while waiting for Sam, smoked cigarettes near "Ketamine Corner”, a shadowy nook behind Korner where Tim claims to have “snorted a ton of K” (see picture below). Shortly after, Sam arrived. The plan was to descend into Korner where each of us would receive & ingest a “dragon” Ecstasy tablet of which had already been paid for. The receiving of the chemical depended on a nebulous tango between at least four different players, and it wasn't until one hour into the set, at around 1:00 AM, that Sam finally thrusted the small tablet into my mouth, and I, not even given a chance to see any Eastern serpent in its design, trustingly swallowed.

Lost Soul

Towards the beginning, the music untraceable house music - not distinctly good or bad, just a thick bass in order to promote body kinetics. Despite this, the attracted crowd was of a higher order than my last attendance. It wasn't until I found myself in close proximity to an energized female form that I felt the serotonin-spew of the MDMA. The bodies of mine and the female's began to seamlessly mesh into a state of pure synergy, catalyzed by a more tribal turn in the now thumping music. Almost equal to my height, she revealed herself to be a seventeen year old Brazilian named “Adriani", gifted with perfect, chestnut flesh and dawning a bejeweled “bindi” between her brows. Her clothing consisted of a cropped, blue & white striped tank-top with the phrase “Give Me Chocolate” inscribed above her breasts in a distinct “marker-felt” font. Beneath her fully exposed belly she wore denim short shorts. Both of our ectomorphic frames became one, and she, a dancing Dakini who must have been riding the same serpent as I, began kissing me passionately. Her lips were the most supple and palatable I have ever tasted, and our mouths & bodies moved in synchronous motion to the techno. My hair was completely drenched in bestial sweat and she would run her hands, illuminated by cobalt-blue finger lights, through my scalp and over my eyes, proceeding to tickle my face and chest. I would return the favor, scratching my fingers through her fibrous, black hair and down her electrified spinal cord while sucking her bindi in what felt like an attempt to absorb "protonic energy". In the midst of our dancing, her mystical entourage crowded the dance-floor and began releasing animal chants; howling, barking, and yelping beneath the rhythmic pulse of the club. They were oddities in Korner; plant-like people in the most unplant-like of environments. They were tricksters and magicians, spinners and jewelers. I imagined them deep in a forest, guzzling casks of viper-wine. One of the men, named “Vali”, with chest-length black hair, mounted the shoulders of another man. He entwined what looked like a bioluminescent snake through the air and across his body as the man below him trudged across the dance-floor. I witnessed Adriani’s sister, “Isabel", even taller and more beautiful than her sibling (but married to “Neo"), peacefully glide through the club with her forearms extended from her hips, palms up, a candle aflame on top of each palm. And who knows? Perhaps beneath those candles her skin brandished the soul of the pentagram.

Sam told me he spent the night wandering the dance-floor muttering gibberish to random people. I remember a few times he muttered to Adriani and I. He was convinced that one of the Vampires was standing in the back of the club, and kept insisting on it to Tim. Sadly, my involvement with Adriani lasted only as long as the music did. To take her home was uncalled for and not even my decision, I knew I was a heathen to her group, who disappeared like phantoms. By the time it was all finished her and I were completely depleted anyways, and I later found at home that my penis was humorously shriveled & numb, while my skin was bone-grey. The sex had already happened in the dancing. I had felt the surge of my spermatic cord, and the cellular interaction of gametes.

The Ecstasy high was ultra-clean and precise. My thoughts, although repetitious (I kept repeating the word “computer”) felt coherent, and when needing to speak, I felt none of the effects of inebriation. Rather, every emotional feeling (Brazilian involvement) and physical sensation (dancing) was completely enhanced. I was in a state of rapture, potentiated and accelerated not only by the flesh and nerves around me, but by all the surrounding technology. Everything felt pristinely “engineered”; pulsating visions of selenium cells blazed across my mind’s-eye while green laser-beams flashed across my face. Despite this, I am semi-convinced that the tablet also had caffeine, speed or meth in it. This is common if it is a tablet and not a capsule. Plus, I felt very “speedy” effects, especially towards the come-down. Although, this was not bad: it felt perfectly suitable and helpful for the environment I was in.

【黃嬉皮YellowHippy】

My second experience at Korner has me more convinced that it belongs in the genealogy of mythic Taipei clubs like Spin, Underworld, and TeXound. I remember thinking this while staring at the concrete floor, swamped in sweat. The club had been reconfigured my second time there, and another room with three tables in it had been uncaged. By the end of the night, heaps of limp, malnourished, drunken bodies had piled on top of the booths and each other. In the dim light it looked like a Baroque vision of Hell. Korner, not quite “underground", is still a burgeoning place full of archetypal characters, and perhaps it will persist...yet there is a brooding feeling that its essential destination is Golgotha, the Hill of Skulls.

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On Sunday, at around 12:00 AM, close to Korner, I smoked a joint with Tim, a few Taiwanese females, and the creators of a “zine” called "White Fungus" Ron & Mark, two brothers from New Zealand but live in Taichung (“Central Taiwan”). They hold exhibitions and events together, and are directly involved in the Asiatic noise scene, among other things. They have booked Merzbow at “The Wall” (Korner’s "sister-venue", same location) as part of a noise tour they did through Taipei, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Macau. They are also closely associated with local Taiwanese artists like Betty Apple. Hopefully I can find my way into something like this? I also discovered they are directly involved in the up-to-now-cryptic mountain party I’ll be attending this upcoming Saturday (where I hope to see Adriani again), called "Uncover Festival" taking place in a temple on “Tiger Mountain”. They put me on to some artistic “hot-spots” in Taiwan such as "The Cube”, "Mad L”, “VT Art Salon” and the “Taipei Contemporary Art Center”. We talked about Ron began speaking about the 2014 Taipei Biennial, (which I am excited for) and the theory lying behind its "Great Acceleration" theme. But the weed was weak, and only managed to retard my thoughts, causing me to loose any confidence and merely observe them as they talked. Despite this, I hope to have more interaction with the Brothers, and work my way into their noise-network.

Did not go to Korner that night (a show that I wish I had attended), but another event Tim was on the “guest list” for. It was a Dead-Zone, but we got in for free and received free drinks and shots. We left after one hour with a Taiwanese boy-girl duo that Tim knew and we all wandered drunkenly through the empty streets like ancient commoners.

With the consumption of more alcohol, I have become even more fascinated by the great “spoiled grain” and its flow from the alchemy and chemistry tomes of early Baghdad all the way to the makeshift hobo techniques of straining.

Li Bai died drunk attempting to embrace the moon in the Yangtze River.

Tim is a fox while drunk. Crafty and cunning. I expect him to remove his shirt and for the face of the Jackal to be seared onto his back.

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I have been ingesting a lot of UCC black coffee.

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Ketamine Corner

"Ketamine Corner"