How Music Changed My Life: Steven

December 9, 2013

Photo by: Christophe Tedjasukmana

Burning out is hard, and I think... burning out in New York City is one of the hardest burns. A little over two years ago in March of- 2011, I was working as a fashion photographer in NYC (it doesn't pay, and the culture is what you see on TV)-- and in that one month, I reached my stress limit, my computer hard drive died, my strobe lights fried, I dropped my camera lens and it cracked, and my roommates decided they wanted to move out of Brooklyn into Manhattan by the end of the month so I had to find a new home. 

Everything that could go wrong probably did go wrong, and I decided I needed a break. A friend suggested I come visit in Berlin, so I packed by bags and booked the max 90-day trip and flew to a place I'd never been before. The only goal I had for the city was to experience it as the opposite of New York. I didn't even have a place to stay, and Craigslist was not the right place to be looking unless I wanted a scam (since duh, Germans don't use craigslist). I lucked out by connecting with a photographer, and moved into the neighborhood of Friedrichshain, 2 blocks from BERGHAIN.. which I would soon learn was the minimal techno temple of the gods.

Thus begun my first ever summer of dancing every weekend from 4am to 10pm.

I'd never heard of minimal techno, and I was coming from a land of overproduced top 40 music balanced by the indie hipster band movement. A friend of a friend put me on his guest list for the Easter weekend party, and my new roommate went there so much everyone knew him by face and name. My big questions were what was this place and music? No words, no choreographed dance steps, monotonous, hard, hammering it's rhythm into you, no mirrors, no sense of time. What was I supposed to do? 

Over the course of the summer, weekends of minimal techno became the most cleansing, purifying and therapeutic solution I could have ever asked for. I met a large community of people that shared a love of music, and my roommate introduced me to the music of a wide array of DJs... via Chris Liebing's CLR and Ostgut-Ton. I was so fried and so burnt, and this taught me to let go and get lost in the music. The music saved me and gave me a new refreshed outlook I brought back to New York and will never forget. Now forever loyal to minimal techno always.