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GorillaT and the Butterfly Effect: Field Notes on Chaos, Rave Culture, Joy, and Finding Your People
Warehouse on Broadway | GorillaT | Kansas City EDM Scene | Rave Culture Field Notes
The Gathering
The room was already filling when the raccoon arrived. The first DJ was playing and the humans were beginning to gather. Then they continued gathering. Then they kept gathering. Before long, Warehouse on Broadway was packed.
One thing about rave culture is that humans wear whatever the fuck they want. A man in gym shorts and sandals might be standing next to a woman wearing approximately three square inches of fabric and fishnets. Nearby, somebody is dressed as Marge Simpson. There are jerseys representing favorite DJs. Psychedelic patterns. Glitter. Platform boots. Pashminas. Sunglasses being worn indoors for reasons known only to the wearer. The data suggests rave fashion is less about following rules and more about expressing whatever strange little creature lives inside your brain while simultaneously appeasing the sensory gods.
I appreciate this.
Rave wear is whatever you want it to be. There is no committee. There is no dress code. There is only self-expression. As a raccoon who regularly appears as a purple-haired cartoon mammal, I am in no position to judge.
The Ripple
The thing about butterfly effects is that you never know when they begin. Two years ago this month, I was in a funk. That feels like an insufficient description, but it will do. I was at a crossroads in life. I knew I no longer wanted to continue working in education. The problem was that I had spent nearly thirty years there. When you spend thirty years doing something, it becomes difficult to imagine yourself doing anything else.
I felt restless. Stuck.
Like a dodecagon desperately trying to fit itself into a round hole. I kept trying. The hole remained round. The dodecagon remained a dodecagon.
The data suggests neither of us was willing to compromise.
During this period, I did something I very rarely do. I reached out to one of my favorite humans and asked if she wanted to hang out.
Mariah is wonderful. It should be noted that I trust this woman enough to let her practice tattooing on my body, which places her in a very exclusive category of human. She planned something for the following day. Nothing dramatic. Nothing life-changing. At least not on the surface. Mariah, her mom, and I spent the afternoon wandering thrift stores in search of uranium glass. It was a small thing. An ordinary thing. A thoroughly uneventful thing. Or so it appeared at the time.
Mariah had EDM playing in her car. The same car that produced a dramatic bass thump every time she put it in reverse.
In the early 2000s, I was the kind of human who downloaded techno music from illegal file-sharing programs like Limewire and burned CDs to listen to in my car. The data suggests the EDM pipeline may have been installed much earlier than originally believed. Somewhere between thrift stores, uranium glass, and bass thumps in reverse, a song caught my attention. I committed one artist to memory so I could look them up later.
That artist was GorillaT.
That was it. One song. One afternoon. One car ride. One tiny ripple. A few days later, I asked Mariah for more music. She added me to a playlist. That was that.
Or so I thought.
The funny thing about butterfly effects is that they never announce themselves.
Nobody hands you a note that says: "Pay attention. This moment matters." It is always just another song. Just another conversation. Just another invitation.
Until it isn't.
Building Momentum
One of the things I find fascinating about EDM events is that they are rarely about a single artist. They are about progression. Each DJ inherits a room and then changes it.
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| Jimmick |
When the raccoon arrived, Jimmick was already working. The room was filling. The energy was beginning to gather. Humans were finding their places. Their people. Their rhythm.
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| Sharker |
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| Insison |
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| Jimmick |
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| Zealr |
As the evening continued, Insison, Sharker, and Zealr each added something different to the experience. The crowd responded accordingly. The room became louder. More animated. More engaged. The energy built gradually and then all at once. Like watching a wave form. Or a storm system gathering strength. Each artist added another layer. Another pulse. Another increase in intensity.
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| Zealr |
By the time GorillaT took the stage, the crowd had already been transformed. The room was primed. The signal was strong. The energy was substantial. The humans were ready.
And GorillaT knew exactly what to do with that energy once it arrived.
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| GorillaT |
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| GorillaT |
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| GorillaT |
Nuclear Joy
Back in the present, the room was packed shoulder to shoulder. The humans had come out in force. The music hit. The crowd responded. The room became pure energy.
Nuclear energy. Not anger. Not aggression. Joy. Release. Movement. Connection. The kind of energy that demands participation. The kind of energy that reminds you that humans were never meant to stand still. From the outside, an observer might describe what was happening as chaos. Technically, that would be correct. It would also be wildly incomplete.
What happens in a room like this is bigger than chaos, it is bigger than dancing. Some humans were shuffling. Some were head-banging. Some were flowing. Some were stomping. Some were spinning. Some were riding the rail. Some appeared to be operating entirely on instinct. All of it was happening simultaneously. All of it was happening in a room packed shoulder to shoulder with humans. And somehow it worked.
As somebody with a background in behavioral science, I found myself noticing something else. The room was filled with movement. Not performative movement. Not movement for the approval of others. Movement because movement felt good. Movement because the body wanted to move. Movement because the music demanded a response.
Stimming is often discussed as something unusual or something that needs corrected. The data suggests humans engage in self-regulatory behaviors constantly. In rooms like this, those behaviors simply become visible. Bigger. More joyful. More socially acceptable. What struck me was not the movement itself. It was the freedom. Nobody seemed concerned with whether they looked cool. Nobody appeared worried about being judged. Nobody was asking permission.
They were simply responding to the music in whatever way their nervous system found appropriate. The result was beautiful. Hundreds of humans moving in different ways for different reasons, yet somehow creating a shared experience together. The room felt less like a crowd and more like a living organism.
Breathing. Moving. Responding. One giant pulse of energy. The crowd surged. The bass hit. The flow toys painted light through the darkness. The rail riders held their ground. And for a few hours, the outside world ceased to exist. There was only the music. The lights. The movement. The connection. The joy.
The GorillaT show at Warehouse on Broadway reminded me of something important. There are spaces that drain me. There are spaces that energize me. This was the second kind. The room was overflowing with what I can only describe as joy. Pure enthusiasm. Pure presence. Pure engagement. Nobody was pretending. Nobody was trying to fit inside somebody else's expectations.
They were simply there.
Experiencing the thing.
The raccoon loved every second of it.
The Humans
You see humans in various states of joy, abandonment, introspection, and expression. Some have their eyes closed, completely absorbed in the music. Others are locked into conversation with friends they have known for years. Others are meeting for the first time. Kandi is traded. Compliments are exchanged. Hugs appear from seemingly nowhere. Old friendships reconnect. New friendships begin.
The data suggests rave culture may be one of the few places left where complete strangers regularly approach each other with kindness and no obvious ulterior motive. There is an openness to it. A willingness to participate. A willingness to belong. What fascinated me most was that despite the size of the crowd, very little of the experience felt isolating.
The room was packed. Absolutely packed. Yet the atmosphere felt communal rather than crowded. For a few hours, hundreds of wonderfully strange humans occupied the same space, moved to the same music, and collectively agreed to let each other exist exactly as they were.
That is not a small thing. The data suggests it may actually be the point.
This crowd felt different from the metal crowds I have come to know and love. Different energy. Different rituals. Different uniforms. Different ways of expressing joy. Yet underneath it all, the same thing was happening. Humans were finding each other. The rail riders found their places early and defended them with admirable dedication. Flow artists carved glowing patterns through the air. Friends reunited. Strangers became friends.
Entire conversations happened through traded kandi, shared smiles, and the silent understanding that everyone was here for the same reason. To feel something. To experience something. To belong to something larger than themselves for a few hours.
GorillaT may not be a local act, but you would never know it from the crowd's response. By the time he took the stage, the room was already operating at critical mass. Hands reached over the barricade. Heart hands appeared everywhere. Lyrics were shouted back toward the stage. The crowd responded less like spectators and more like participants. Like they had helped build this moment together. And perhaps they had.
That is the thing I keep noticing in communities like this. The music matters. The artist matters. But what people remember years later is often each other. The friends they stood beside. The stranger who complimented their outfit. The kandi bracelet they still have tucked away somewhere. The feeling of being surrounded by people who understood them without requiring an explanation.
The data suggests that humans need places where they can be fully themselves. For one night, Warehouse on Broadway became one of those places. Again.
The Guardians
Warehouse on Broadway did what Warehouse on Broadway always seems to do. It created a safe place for people to be themselves. The Guardians were hard at work all evening. They herded slightly feral raccoons away from the edge of the stage. They kept the barricade steady. They handed out bottled water by the armful. They watched. They anticipated. They quietly solved problems before they became problems. A good Guardian is much like a good stagehand. If they do their job correctly, most people never notice they were there at all.
One friend commented that attempting to sneak out and back in would have been impossible. The Guardians were simply too good at their jobs.
The data supports this conclusion.
Substantially.
The Faithful at the Rail
Long before GorillaT took the stage, the rail riders had already claimed their territory. A handful remained there for the entire event. Hours. Multiple DJs. No intention of surrendering their position. As someone who enjoys being directly in front of the stage, with the lights, the bass, the energy, and the occasional questionable life choice, I understand completely. The rail is its own experience. Its own subculture. Its own commitment.
By the time GorillaT appeared, those faithful few had already completed a marathon. The crowd rewarded their dedication by becoming absolutely feral.
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| Sharker |
Following the Ripple
A few days after the thrift store adventure, I asked Mariah for more music. She added me to a playlist. That was that. Or so I thought. A couple months later, she invited me to my first rave for my forty-sixth birthday.
That was decidedly not "that." It was life changing. I found something there I had never experienced before.
Acceptance. Not tolerance.
Acceptance.
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| Insison |
Nobody seemed particularly interested in whether I fit in. Everyone was too busy being weird. It was magnificent. The music scratched places in my brain I could not reach on my own. The lights. The movement. The energy. The joy. It all made sense in a way I still struggle to explain. For the first time in a very long time, I found myself in a space that energized me instead of draining me.
At the time, I didn't fully understand why. I just knew I wanted more of it. More music. More community. More weird humans. More of whatever this thing was. A little while later, Mariah invited me to a festival. Like many adults with bills, responsibilities, and a questionable understanding of budgeting, I began looking for ways to justify the expense. One of those ways was working the festival.
Mariah sent me a link to the production company that would be staffing the event. That was August. I applied. I was hired. I did not pick up my first call until November because at the time I was still trying to make education work.
Still trying to force the dodecagon into the round hole. Still trying to convince myself that if I worked harder, adapted better, or became smaller, I could somehow make it fit.
The data suggests this was an ineffective strategy. Eventually I couldn't do it anymore.
Over the years, I developed many phrases while working with students. One of my favorites was: "I do not do nice things for people who are mean to me." It works very well with adults, too. One day I found myself delivering that exact phrase to my principal.
Then I left. Not long after, I picked up my first stagehand call. It was setting up a stage for a barbecue competition.
I like barbecue.
The data suggests life-changing decisions are rarely made for noble reasons. Sometimes they happen because brisket is involved. What I discovered almost immediately was that I had found my people. Stagehands. Artists. Musicians. Photographers. Promoters. The creatives.
The top-shelf weirdos.
The wonderfully strange collection of humans who exist around live events. And once you find your people, it becomes very difficult to convince yourself to go back to being lonely. The funny thing is that none of this felt connected at the time.
A thrift store. A playlist. A rave. A festival. A stage. A camera. A new career. A new community. A new life. Looking back, the connections seem obvious. Looking forward, they were invisible.
That is how butterfly effects work. One tiny ripple at a time.
Looking Through the Lens
Before there was digital photography, there was film. There were rolls of Kodak. Glass filters. Waiting for development. Wondering whether the shot worked. Then came children. Life. Responsibilities. The camera slowly became an iPhone. Photography became documentation rather than creation.
So standing in front of a GorillaT stage two decades later with a camera in my hands felt strange. Wonderful. Unlikely.
SURREAL.
The data suggests life occasionally returns things to us when we are finally ready for them.
Finding My People
My first stagehand call was setting up a stage for a barbecue competition. What I expected was a temporary side gig. Some way to pay some bills while I figured out what was next.
What I found was an entire world I never knew existed. Stagehands are an interesting bunch of humans. We are creatures of all hours, lingering in dark alleys dressed entirely in black, wheeling suspicious-looking cases through sketchy back doors. We have tools dangling from our belts. Permanent bruises we cannot explain. And a look about us that says: "I have a C-wrench and I will use it." We build cities that disappear overnight. We solve problems most people never see. We do things that cannot be adequately explained to someone who has never worked a show. And somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, we usually make it work. The data suggests OSHA has many of its regulations because stagehands looked at a problem and collectively asked: "But what if we did it the sketchy way?"
The thing that struck me most was not the work. It was the people. The stagehands. The musicians. The photographers. The promoters. The production managers. The lighting techs. The audio engineers. The riggers hanging impossibly high above the floor. The creatives. The top-shelf weirdos.
These were people who understood obsession. Passion. Creativity. Curiosity. People who built things because they loved building them. People who showed up because they could not imagine being anywhere else.
I had spent years trying to become something different.
Smaller. Rounder. More acceptable. Less dodecagon
Then I found a community full of people who seemed perfectly content being exactly who they were. The lesson was difficult to ignore. As the months passed, stage-handing led to photography. Photography led to communities. Communities led to friendships. Friendships led to opportunities. One door opened into another. Then another. Then another.
The funny thing about finding your people is that it feels obvious in hindsight. The moment itself is usually much quieter. You simply realize one day that you no longer feel out of place. You no longer feel like the odd one out. You no longer feel lonely. You are just... home.
The data suggests that finding your people does not change who you are. It gives you permission to stop pretending to be someone else.
GorillaT and the Butterfly Effect
Which brings us back to GorillaT. Two years ago, GorillaT was a song playing through somebody else's speakers. Then, I was standing in front of the stage with a camera. A stagehand. A photographer. A raccoon gathering data. Documenting a room full of humans experiencing joy at maximum volume.
Life is strange.
The butterfly effect is real.
Everyone wants to know the moment their life changed. The data suggests that is the wrong question. Most life-changing moments arrive disguised as ordinary ones. A song. A conversation. A friend who invites you out of the house. A playlist. A festival. A stage. A camera. A side job. A room full of weird humans.
One tiny ripple at a time.
The problem is that you never know which ripple becomes the wave.
Believe Your Energy
The biggest realization of the evening arrived quietly. It had very little to do with GorillaT. And everything to do with the raccoon. For years I tried to force myself into environments that drained me. I assumed the problem was me.
The data suggests that was never the problem. The problem was the hole. Education drained me. These spaces energize me.
Live music energizes me. Photography energizes me. Stage-handing energizes me. Community energizes me. Creativity energizes me. At one point during the evening, I photographed a human wearing a shirt that read:
Believe Your Energy.
Standing in a packed room at Warehouse on Broadway, surrounded by hundreds of humans experiencing joy at maximum volume, I realized something.
My energy has never lied to me.
Not once.
I simply spent years arguing with it.
The butterfly effect did not simply introduce me to a new artist, a new hobby, or a new career. It introduced me to myself.
Believe your energy.
Further study is required.
Dedication
Before closing this file, there is one final observation.
This field note is dedicated to my feral friends. The faithful few who have remained present through many different versions of myself. The ones who showed up when the raccoon was lost. The ones who invited me out of the house. The ones who introduced me to new music, new experiences, new communities, and entirely new ways of existing in the world. Most never realized they were doing anything particularly important. That is the thing about butterfly effects. The wing never knows which whisper becomes the storm.
Mariah did nothing more than be herself. She shared music. Invited me along. Introduced me to things she enjoyed. Small acts. Ordinary acts. Yet somehow those tiny ripples led me to stage-handing, concert photography, Slightly Feral Media, and a life that feels more authentic than any I have lived before.
**and I just cried for the fourth time since I started writing this, Mariah**
Through this journey I have become someone unlike anyone I have ever been. And yet, somehow, I am more myself than ever.
The data suggests that finding yourself is rarely a solitary activity. Sometimes it happens because somebody else opens a door and says: "Come with me."
This field note exists because I walked through it.
Thank you, Friend. I love your beautiful face.
Complete the Data Collection
The field note captures what the raccoon observed.
The gallery captures what the camera observed.
Additional photographic evidence from GorillaT, Jimmick, Insison, Sharker, Zealr, the rail riders, the flow artists, The Guardians, and the wonderfully strange humans of Warehouse on Broadway can be found in the full gallery.
If you were there, you may even find yourself in the dataset.
Continue the investigation:
https://mymidlifecrisiscreativeinc17.pixieset.com/gorillat-warehouseonbroadway/
Filed as: Signal Reports • EDM Culture • Rave Culture • Community Documentation • Warehouse on Broadway • GorillaT • Kansas City Music Scene • Concert Photography
Photographs by Alethea Mehdipour
Published by Slightly Feral Media
Field note complete.
The room left data.
The raccoon collected it.
Slightly feral. Entirely capable.
— Laverna the Rockin' Raccoon 🦝🖤
Slightly Feral Media
Community Documentation for the Weird, the Wired, and the Wonderfully Human.
Published by My Midlife Crisis Creative Inc.
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