The Winchester “Mystery” House is a nonsensically maze-like mansion in San Jose, California. The mansion’s owner, Sarah Winchester — widow of William Wirt Winchester and heir to the firearm magnate’s fortune — had construction workers constantly building elaborate extensions in an attempt to appease the ghosts of all those killed by a Winchester rifle. From the mansion’s construction in 1864 until the widow’s passing in 1922, there was the steady beat of a hammer — an endless rhythm in endless rooms attempting to stave off guilt and grief, its place cemented in the persistent-pulse pantheon. When death is so close, the beat must go on.

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Anyway, I recently found myself on a five-day EDM festival cruise. Before spending four nights on the Norwegian Epic — a 4,000-person-capacity behemoth where the twelfth Holy Ship electronic music festival was held — I watched promotional videos of barely covered butts connected to brilliant smiles, designer sunglasses, and flamboyantly beshorted male groins. After showing said videos to my mom, she looked at me with such pity that you’d think I was the one with cancer. Having gone directly from my ailing mother’s bedside to — God help me — Florida, I was the sole Elmo-esque body type in a literal ocean of young and toned ravers moving their hips to the sounds of A-trak, Zeds Dead, and DJ Seinfeld.

Strictly speaking, these weren’t "my people," but they seemed sweet. The way the crowd interacted with each other reminded me of kids reuniting on the first day of summer camp, the beads and rituals of which I remember fondly. (I didn’t engage with the guy dressed as a large, inflated penis.) There would eventually be over a dozen arrests for drug possession preceding both legs of Holy Ship. On the second leg, one of the sniffer dogs overdosed on MDMA ("We wish K-9 Jake a speedy and complete recovery," the festival's reps said in a statement). Holy Ship has a “zero tolerance” drug policy, but an attendee later assured me later that security was “mostly concerned with weight.” (Meaning the security was concerned with actual dealers more than the four non-prescription Adderall pills I nervously hid in my deodorant so I could hang with the youth.) I shudder to think what twelve straight hours of drinking would result in without the stabilizing influence of pot and ecstasy. It would be like London after midnight.

