Space Dance: Julia Holter's Loud City Song
“the physical demands of thrusting in zero gravity”
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Two ships circle ever closer to each other in the expanse, awash in swirls of incandescent gas and radio signals. Periodically rippling tiny bursts of flame jet from stabilizing thrusters, soft horn blasts, bringing them closer together. Lining them up just so, tiny jet of fire. There is no real orientation in space, everything floats in every direction, there is no ceiling that is not a floor, you are always right-side-up-side-down. All movements are a thousand times more precise and a thousand times more meaningless. The intent of the ships is to dock together. Tiny jet of fire. Perhaps base engines this time, perhaps the ones outside the bridge. Eventually they will meet, tubes will extend like arms in a cosmic embrace, eventually the crews of the ships themselves might be able to cross from one to the other.
I believe the future of humankind exists in space. I also believe we are scared of the future.
I refuse to believe, however, that we are scared of space. Probably because of the movie Alien. Much like I refuse to not swim in the ocean even though I have seen Jaws. Much like how I will still talk to a girl with oversized headphones even after watching Garden State.
Instead I think we fear space mostly because it seems like once we get there we will not be able to have sex. And sure, when you think about it, sealed spacesuits, hostile vacuum environment, the physical demands of thrusting in zero gravity, sex is probably very difficult to make possible in space. Russia knows this. I think it safe to say NASA scuttled its operations for similar reasons.
But here's the thing, as we become ever more connected to our machines, is it not possible to view concepts of sex as maybe different, more like the information sharing computers already do for us daily. Like the internet is one spacy brain orgy of signals and light. Like a flash drive is a quickie. Like how ships docking in zero gravity could be seen as the delicate art of slipping it in.
Julia Holter's Loud City Song is supposedly tied to Earth but each lush exhale of synthesizer is like a thousand robot arms securing their hold on each other while swirling through a quasar. Sounds pulse and shift like faces flushed and beaded in sweat. But there is never any actual water. There is never any blood. Just machines, just metal machines. Soft pliant space-tempered metal. Slowly and precisely working their way towards each other. Delicate and beautiful, a wholly new way of making love. A new way of sharing the most intimate of non-personal experiences. A future mating ritual. Space dance. Heat without air. Warmth without bodies. All the radio signals whispering to each other, directions without orientation, 'a little bit more thrust and we've got it.' Tiny jet of fire. Tiny jet of fire.
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