Finding Kelly Fornia
— Lyrik Courtney
Today’s post will be brief—it is, in effect, no more than an ode to the dance floor, the locusting whirlwind of disco lights on bare skin, rendering everything impossible and immutable at once. In Berlin, I follow my friends to a punk concert in Kreuzberg, in search of a band called Finding Kelly Fornia; after a round of numerous cocktails and ambiguously-mixed drinks, the venue is as elusive as the band it houses—we stumble the streets holding hands like a ring of wet-eyed Maenads, and emerge from the trees to find the Tommy Weisbecker Haus shrouded in a ring of heavy smoke.
We find out about the show thanks to an invitation from its inconspicuous frontman, who works by day as an employee at the Ampelmann store on Potsdamer Platz. While I can’t help but wonder how antifascist one’s scene can really be when the only black people present are the foreigners invited specifically by the band, this moment of brief indecision—between one gin + tonic and the next—is quickly stifled by the even-greater impulse to dance ecstatically. As the world around me seems to grow smaller day-by-day, I find myself being increasingly grateful for every joyous alcove that I can make a home in, even if only for a brief instant, an hour or two. Where does the ease come from? If you had told me even a year ago that I would one day be dancing recklessly in a pit surrounded by white punks, I would be skeptical; I know now that my body is strong enough to rip Pentheus to shreds.