(2678 words)
Yesterday, on 2026-02-07, i went to a Machine Girl concert in Köln.
This was mostly a split-second decision: all my friends happen to be going to the concert, and someone offered me a free ticket the day before. So i decided that, even tho i don't like music (especially when sober), even tho i don't like this band, or even their genre, why not, I might as well go.
This would have been my first concert, but i did have some previous experience with rave-y dance-y music-y places. So let's start with some context!
If you're reading this blogpost, there's a high chance that you already know what congress is, and have probably been there. That's just what my internet circle of friends is like.
But, for the uninitiated, the Chaos Communication Congress is an annual hacker event in germany. It's very big (15k people), chaotic, loud, tiring, exciting, overwhelming, sporadic, bright, shining, sparkly, complex, convoluted, stimulating, disconnected, entangled, and stressful. It is everything everywhere all at once! I have a lot of thoughts about it that i might write down at a later time...
Anyway, what not all of you might know, is that, in addition to the toilet rave,
there was an official little rave in the club bellow the Radisson Hotel.
The entrance there was kinda hidden, you needed to go outside the main venue, follow the purple brick road for like 100m in the cold, and go queue into a tiny unassuming basement door.
There are a few notable things about that experience:
So, throughout this rave, i basically had two modes of operation: looking at the lights or listening to the music. I couldn't do both at once. Not enough brain capacity. Listening to the music, and trying to dance to it, would take up all my attention, so i couldn't appreciate the lights anymore.
I didn't know how to dance at the time...
...this is such a frustrating question!
If you, as some kind of autistic person, ask that of people who know how to dance, you're not gonna get a good answer.
They'll tell you to:
All of this advice is unhelpful. It assumes, in some way, that you already know how to dance. That everybody knows how to dance from the moment they were born.
Another thing that complicates matters, is that there are two separate skills commonly referred to as "dancing": there is formal dancing, the kind you do in a ballroom, and there is informal dancing, the kind you do in a rave.
The first one is rather strict. It involves many rigid rules. Movements you have to memorize. Stuff like that. But we're not interested in formal dancing at all. It doesn't interest us. When we ask the question, this is not what we mean at all.
In my many years of actually trying to dance, i have made the following realizations, and i hope they might be useful to you.
Anyway. I think we've gotten sidetracked enough. Let's talk about the actual concert!
So,,, this was my first time going to any kind of concert.
I didn't wanna go initially, because i expected for concerts to be a thing i would not like. You know, because it's loud, crowded, sweaty, flashing, and exhausting. All things my autisms usually doesn't like. And i don't even like music.
I kinda got peer-pressured into coming. I didn't wanna miss out on socializing time with all of my friends at once, some of which live very far away and are hard to hand out with.
I had basically no expectations going into this. There was no investment on my part. I didn't plan this, i didn't pay for it, i didn't even really want to go. If something were to go wrong, i could've just left in the middle, and it wouldn't've felt like a loss.
It was smaller than expected. Just a cloakroom, some toilets, a bar, and the main stage area, which was a room about 10x30 meters in size.
There was a decently long queue, but it moved fast enough. The tickers aren't bound to a name, they just stamp you wrist with a little skeleton fish, and don't check the contents of your bag at all.
Nothing is free. Everything costs 3€. The earplugs (they were good non-disposable ones, hidden as part of the merch), the water, the drinks. The only free thing are the toilets. Even tho i didn't pay for the ticket, i ended up spending about as much on drinks for me and my friends.
The cloakroom charges separately for the backpack and the jacket. It's probably a bad idea to bring a backpack. Need a purse small enough to dance with, or pants with very deep pockets.
And now we can smoothly transition to the topic of...
There are a lot of considerations that come into play here, none that i was aware of beforehand.
I went with a regular pants + funny tshirt combo. Very simple. Not attention grabbing at all, but comfortable. Despite all the jumping and dancing i did, it never got in the way.
Other people had way cooler outfits tho. Some were showing off their boobs, some wore fishnets, some had glowing or fluorescent jewelry. One of my friends had LED earrings and another had loads of kandi bracelets. They were easy to find in a crowd.
All my approaches to making fun outfits sorta fail in this area. For an outfit to be comfortable, it needs to have:
I kinda wanna buy a purse for this reason, so that i don't need to bring my backpack everywhere. But i'm not sure how annoying it would be for it to bounce around.
On the marketing materials and google search results it says that the concert starts at 19:00. That's not quite true. 19:00 is when the doors open, and the queue starts moving forward.
At 20:00, a different band plays the opening act. The pre-show. In our case, it was Kap Bambino. I actually liked their songs better, than the ones played by Machine Girl.
And at 21:00, the main set starts and lasts for about 2 hours uninterrupted.
That is quite long.
I would recommend going outside for a break to take a breather/smoke.
Now we're getting into the consequences of not being a fan of the band...
The earplugs i had were very cheap and disposable. They muffled the sound too much. I couldn't really hear the music, only feel it reverberate in my chest. Only the base beat, and no lyrics.
This would've been fine, if i was a fan of the band. If i knew the songs that were playing. Then i should be able to hallucinate them in my head, and my brain would've had more clues for piecing together the lyrics.
The way i usually enjoy music it primarily thru Lyrics. Noises made with human mouths. They scratch my brain in funny ways. Autotuned. With sharp robotic claws. The scratchmarks are long and straight.
But here, at the concert, there are no lyrics. The music is too loud and dulled to hear them. But unlike at the congress rave, the music has layers. They're just inaccessible. It's so hard to listen to...
The lights are also hard to look at. They're not interesting and fun this time. They're just lights. We can stare at them, but it will just be staring. No awe, just dissociation.
The only choice is to dance...
Over the course of these 3 hours, i have learned how to dance! Yet, i cannot explain how. Or even why it was so fun.
There is a kind of flow state. It's hard to achieve. In that flow state, dancing does not feel awkward. Is this because i made no mistakes, and perfectly hit every beat of the music? Or is it just that i don't care anymore.
Anyway, you're coming with me! It's the only way to show this!!
Outside of the flow state, you think about the good and the bad parts. You dance while texting your best friend. But only the bad parts are easy to put into words. You know how to make it better the next time. Research the songs. Bring a water bottle. Some asthma meds.
Dancing while nothing else is going on is hard. It's like a joke. You spend 10 seconds telling it, and then you laugh, because it was funny. Dancing is funny. Illogical. There is no real reason for you to get picked up, punched; for you to jump up and down, to spin, to get pinned to walls.
You punch your friends. You step on someone's toes a couple times. You almost fall, trying to get high enough to get a look at the stage. Everything is fine, and no one is hurt. You're manic and your pain tolerance is high.
You run out of breath. The ventilation isn't as good as it should be. Your friend takes you outside. She offers you a smoke, but you are scared of nicotine. There are strangers smoking weed nearby. You're kinda jealous, but too scared to ask them.
You make out. You tell her all the theories you've been building up for the past hour. You tell her how you can't hallucinate the music. She calls you a hot schizotranny. You make out again.
You go back inside. It's much nicer now. Refreshed. No longer tired. There is now a bit more space to move around. You can now jump higher and faster, without crashing into anyone. The last few songs are the most fun. You know how to dance now. You don't get bored or distracted.
It's a very consent light environment. Things happen to you without much warning. Your friends punch you, pick you up, pin you to the wall, grope you, make out with you. And you're okay with this, because they are your friends. You love them.
And you touch your friends as well. They are wet and smelly. Visceral. This is what we came here for. For the sensory, the symbolic and the ever so slightly autistic.
Going to a concert feels like a drug trip, even if you haven't done any drugs. Time is dilated. Friday was 4 days ago, the concert ended at 23:00, and even tho it's 4:00 right now, and you're safe in bed back home, only 30 minutes have passed.
We gathered in a group of around 10 people. All looking for food. Nobody knew where the food was. Where to look for it. It was very chaotic. Nobody wanted to do planning, nobody wanted to be the leader. We all just talked about how we spent the night. Some were freezing in the cold, while others had built up so much internal heat, that it didn't matter.
Eventually the group slowly separated. Went their separate ways. We found a Burger King at hbf. It wasn't marked on google maps. Evil. We ordered vegan burgers, but somehow only got normal ones. The workers were tired and overwhelmed. I ate my burger in about 20 seconds. It's only fast food if you eat it fast.
Everyone said goodbye and took their separate trains. I went home, taking two friends along with me. They'll be staying overnight. We needed to walk for an hour more. I talked about drugs and sex and food.
At my place, we all got distracted reading the wiki page about ADHD. Eventually one of my friends just made food for us. It was good, tho she made a bunch of mistakes.
Falling asleep was hard. Flashes of light. Hallucinated handholding. Motion. Patterns. Shadow creatures. Spiders crawling all over your bed. Snoring in the distance. Cold.
The next day, you sleep until 19:00. Your body hurts a bit. There are some bruises on your arm. The fish is still stamped on your wrist. Getting out of bed hurts your abdominal muscles.
You go for a walk. Look at the stars. You try to write down a blogpost about how it all felt, but the memories are already fading. Tomorrow, everything will be normal again.