Entering a narrow steel-reinforced door at 530
West 27th Street, my colleague and I were immediately confronted
by a dozen construction workers feverishly pounding away at
floors and walls. As the screeches and howls of their power
tools filled our ears while we stepped around vats of wet
cement, dodging electrical wires, it was difficult to envision
the scene we were told would take place in six weeks. But by the
time you are reading this, that ramshackle building site will
have become transformed with the tangibly charged energy of
artists, musicians, spiritual personalities, and thousands of
entertainment-hungry club goers. As part of a larger plan to
revolutionize the all-night dance party phenomenon known as
raves, by upgrading them to the spiritual realm, the
85,000-square-foot building is destined to become the second of
seven nightclubs that will be located at the “light
centers of the earth.” This multimillion-dollar endeavor
is fueled by an ambitious vision from what some might consider
an unlikely source.
Two years ago, restaurant entrepreneur, music industry
veteran, and general entertainment capitalist Robbie Wootton
began a journey that would eventually land him in the African
bush. There, he received what he describes as a
“calling” to open up seven “Spirit”
clubs around the world, whose mission it would be to “take
a role in encouraging people to evolve to a new plane of
consciousness.” When we went to see Robbie in New York,
Spirit Dublin was already up and running; after the opening of
Spirit New York in November, clubs in Cape Town, Athens, Sydney,
Shanghai, and Rio de Janeiro are to follow. As if falling into a
rabbit hole, we had stepped through that door right in the
middle of a process of creation that was making Robbie's vision
a literal, physical manifestation on the streets of New York.
Raves themselves are easier to define when one examines them
in contrast to the previous inhabitants of the club circuit. In
short: The eighties produced the narcissistic cocaine-snorting
materialists who themselves were the offspring of the awfully
phony, also cocaine-snorting, Disco generation. At least this is
how a raver would put it to you. In truth, narcissism,
drug-induced fun, and sexual overtones have never stopped
defining the club circuit no matter which subculture eventually
takes over. The real difference between raves and their close
ancestors lies in the belief, on the ravers' part, that
depth is an essential aspect of a rave experience.
Words like spirituality, oneness, love, and
community are part of the common vocabulary used to
describe the experience of dancing till 8am with thousands of
one's peers. These may not be inaccurate words to use but
unfortunately they are often spoken by a person on E, not a
spiritually awakened individual. Ecstasy and methamphetamines of
every kind defined rave culture to such an extent during the
nineties that law enforcement officials and the general public
were forced to respond with disdain and force toward the entire
subculture. In a twist of irony, the very spot where the new
“drug-free” Spirit Club New York is located was
previously the infamous Twilo nightclub. Twilo was shut down two
years ago, at least in part as a result of the deaths of two of
its patrons who overdosed. But it was also a result of Mayor
Guiliani's crackdown on disreputable nightlife, often
characterized by the presence of drugs. And where there were
raves, there were drugs. Until, that is, Robbie Wootton entered
the picture.
Upon meeting this Dublin native, what is immediately
striking is the impressive span of his limbs, evident even in
the length of his fingers. Robbie has a penchant for staring
into the distance when attempting to articulate a particular
personal experience or idea
and then speaking concisely in a
rapid manner about anything from Elvis (“Elvis was a
prophet”) to the politics of working with architects.
Speaking with him also made me realize that we live in a time
when we don't have to go very far east to be exposed to the
spiritual dimension of life or even to make an effort to attend
a New Age spa or meditation retreat. Rather, in the twenty-first
century spiritual revelation can happen at a rock concert.
Robbie has been close to U2 since he was part of the creation of
Windmill Studios in Dublin where many of U2's albums, including
The Joshua Tree, were recorded. It was backstage on
U2's Elevation tour in 2001 that Robbie was first introduced,
through a conversation with a stranger, to what he describes as
“this world that had been a complete mystery, but that I
had always wanted to know about.” That encounter changed
his perception irrevocably. Having taken a year off to travel
around the world, he found that whether in Southeast Asia, South
America, North America, or Africa, he continually met people
whose understanding of the spiritual realm set him on fire.
These travels ultimately confirmed for him that a fundamental
Oneness underlies the human experience, a sense that grew more
profound with every border, continent, and language that he
encountered.
Considering Robbie's history in the entertainment industry,
it may be no mystery that he received a calling to open a
spiritual nightclub. What is remarkable about his story
is that he describes his past as that of a playboy who not only
founded many clubs but also participated in the drug culture
that surrounded them. But after realizing how negative his
lifestyle was, he didn't simply reject the entire world that it
had all taken place in. Instead, he recognized that the positive
elements of entertainment, such as music and togetherness, were
potential tools to be used in the spiritual awakening of others,
and ever since he has been attempting to upgrade that very same
world. But this would only work as long as the negative
elements, such as the consumption of drugs, were kept out of the
picture. Then there is the equally remarkable fact that Robbie
received a calling to open seven spiritual nightclubs,
not just one. Nontoxic raves? Seven of them? Attempting
to spiritually awaken people through entertainment on every
continent of the world? The unique optimism of such ideas did
not fail to catch our attention and is the reason why we found
ourselves in this downtown warehouse district of Manhattan,
stepping around vats of wet cement.
The physical dimensions of the space were already
breathtaking. A state-of-the-art project, it would mainly
consist of three tiers, called Body, Mind, and Soul. Robbie gave
us a running narrative of what everything was and what it all
meant. The third floor, he told us, would be open most of the
week and house several studios for holistic healers,
aromatherapists, and yoga instructors, and possibly a gallery
space for artist Alex Grey's installation, Sacred
Mirrors. He showed us the clinically clean tiled kitchen
that would provide patrons of the restaurant with vegetarian/raw
food on the second-floor mezzanine. Retractable glass doors were
to enclose it so that diners could look down on the
2,000-person-capacity dance floor. This bottom floor was where
the stage would be located, upon which choreographed
performances created by contemporary performing artists like
Gabrielle Roth would take place every Saturday night. “Our
show starts at midnight, which is really Sunday, so it will
become, I won't say a place of worship, but a place of
community, a place of celebration.” The performances at
Spirit are part of what distinguishes the venue from the
“DJ-oriented darkness” that so often defines a club
experience. “Everything about our space is about the
light,” Robbie declared. “The journey here is about
good; it's a triumph of light over darkness.”
In a literal sense, the light also illuminates the narrative
that will be taking place on the stage and through various
media, thereby orienting the club goers to a specific message.
Robbie has been in control of every detail of the creation of
Spirit, even down to the placement and role of the lights, and
this kind of conscious intention is of utmost importance to him.
Of course, there is no way to prevent people who just want to
drink and have a good time from coming to Spirit (while the
nontoxic nature of the environment is strongly emphasized, there
will be a full bar on the second floor, albeit reinforced with
fresh juices and energy boosters). But as Robbie explained,
“Even if people come simply because they heard, 'Oh,
that's a really hot club right now,'” the sense of
premeditation evident in the details, the overall energy, and
the structure of the venue will guarantee that people,
“can only be affected positively by what's here . .
.”
A crucial element of this positivity will be the music, but
a little contextualization may be needed to understand why.
House, techno, trance: whatever you want to call it, music is
understood by ravers as far more than just
entertainment—for them, it's literally a medium for
transcendence. Some go so far as to cite scientific evidence for
such beliefs, mainly that a drum machine, for example, can
maintain a repetitive beat infinitely longer than a human can,
bringing people together in a dance marathon that leads to a
feeling that they are part of a collective organism. Robbie
believes that because most dance music is created by kids in
their bedroom, therefore bypassing the music industry, the music
is coming directly from the divine, through the kid, and then
into the dance hall. DJs who are spiritually aware or awake can
create a flow with their music, a vibration that, Robbie is
convinced, literally increases the consciousness of the people
dancing to it. No raver would disagree. In light of this, music
is undoubtedly one of Robbie's most powerful tools. He
reinforced this when he told us, “For the last ten years a
lot of ravers have been saying that God is a DJ because they've
been having these religious experiences on the dance floor. What
we are trying to say is: Yes, God can be a DJ; God is Music; God
is Sound; God is Vibration; everything in the Universe
is
Vibration.”
There is no doubt that Spirit is part of a larger movement
in the rave subculture toward nontoxic environments, in response
to the destructive drug consumption that defined it for so long.
Whether it is evidence of a larger movement in our culture to
emphasize the positive, uplifting elements of art, music, and
entertainment in the context of spirituality remains to be seen. If Robbie is right when he says that the youth of today are the first generation in decades not to have a “drug of choice,” this may well be the case. According to him, we will finally be able to choose community, wholeness, and true awakening over the illusory liberation of drugs that defined the sixties all the way up through the nineties in every subculture. This is no small thing, and Spirit may be just the place to go if we want to get the ball rolling.