We’re Never Really Alone
September 9, 2025
Writer: Jordan Mayer-Brownfeld
Edited by: Jaz Seiden
I was standing somewhere in the middle of the crowd, close enough for the bass to be felt thumping through the heels of my boots, but far enough back for the lights to be caught flickering above the haze of smoke. The set hadn’t started, but the air had already changed. An energy of breaths being held all at once, a shared anticipation pulling us together. Moments of togetherness followed— a water bottle was passed to me without asking. I watched a stranger lean on another stranger’s shoulder, as if they had known each other a lifetime. No names. No small talk. Rather, a thousand different lives suspended in the same moment, waiting for the drop we all already knew to be coming. And for a second, it wasn’t as strange that all of us strangers had gathered here. I didn’t know the names of the people around me. I didn’t need to. We had been drawn to this place by the same thing and that was enough.
We didn’t come from the same cities. We didn’t grow up listening to the same music or wearing the same shoes. We didn’t carry the same love or the same grief. Some people came in groups, loud and laughing with their sunglasses still on even though the sun had dipped under the landscape hours ago. Others came alone, quieter. They let the music speak for them. Some people had been doing this for years. For others, it was their first time. Their first taste of moving without thinking, feeling completely uncontained. Everyone brought something different to the crowd. A story. A reason. None of it had to be said out loud. The crowd didn’t ask for introductions. It just made room. For dancing, for breathing, for feeling.
There’s no set rules for being in this kind of space, but somehow, you just know. As soon as you buy your ticket, an unconditional agreement is set in place. Don’t shove, help someone if they need it, trade a bracelet, make room. It’s not perfect, nor does it pretend to be, but there’s an unspoken code. A mutual understanding that we’re all here for the same thing. For something bigger than whatever background we come from. You don’t have to move the same way to move together, just as you don’t have to speak the same language to understand.
It's the small things that stick. The girl’s hand on my arm when the crowd pushed forward, the stranger guiding me through the blur of bodies, the one who pressed their water into my hand when I needed it most. No one is keeping score nor doing it for attention. It’s simply what you do in a space like this. The music might be what pulls you in, but it’s these moments– the quick, human gestures, that makes you feel like you’re part of something so much bigger. Something bigger than the line up or the setlist, something better than being alone.
And even after the stage went dark and the crowd began to thin, the feeling of the night lingered. The way thousands of people can fall into the same rhythm without a single word. How a beat can stretch across every difference and tie you together anyway. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, who you love, what you’ve lost, or what you’re still looking for. The music doesn’t want your history, it wants you here. It asks you to listen. To feel. To stay in the moment. And in return, it gives you something rare. A space where joy doesn’t hesitate, kindness doesn’t ask, and connection doesn’t come with conditions.
Maybe that’s why we keep coming back. Not just for the drops or the lasers, but for the proof that for a few hours under the lights, strangers can be something else. Not friends, not family, but something just as real. A reminder that we’re never really alone.