'Take Me Out' / Franz Ferdinand

Take Me Out

Franz Ferdinand

I have this theory that things resonate backwards.

Okay relax, science people, I know ---- time must move forward; entropy requires it have a one-way direction. But come on: you can't tell me there hasn't been a moment in your past so perfectly timed, so perfectly setting up something in the future, that it seemed goddamn fictional.

Foreshadowing -- real life foreshadowing -- except an author knows where it's going, knows that it's building. We non-fictional characters sit with our memories and say, "Huh, if only we'd known how important this was going to be later!"

But maybe, on some level, we do know.
Maybe the moment everything means most -- that pinnacle of emotion where you love something so desperately you can't breathe -- that moment: that moment resonates backwards and forwards through time, calling us to love what we love, even if it doesn't make sense at the time.
You could say it's the reverse, of course; that the initial love reverberates through our futures.

But I don't know.
Maybe time needs a direction, but I don't know that our experience of it does.

Some random afternoon in April 2008, I was sitting at a Starbucks on Ste-Catherine, studying for one of the last exams of my BA. It was nice out, I think; I might have been drinking tea. The specifics of memory fade after 8 years.

But I do remember that period of my life -- April & May, 2008 -- as where I would want to spend eternity. I can't describe why, or at least -- I could never explain it. Suffice to say I was 21, on the threshold of something immense, and I felt like the universe was prisming out of my heart. Everything changed, that year -- chief among them my relationships.

I've written about friendship and how it took me ages to figure out what the hell it actually was -- well, this was when it started. Birthdays, see, had never really been a huge deal for me. I liked marking the date with a few friends, but it'd been years since I'd had an actual party.

But of late, I'd been hanging out quite a bit with this girl Meg.

Now, to describe Meg would be equally impossible, so I'll just say this: she is the kind of person who matters. Profoundly. If you meet her, you know her -- she is larger than life, and if she's on your side, the room is yours.

So Meg and I'd been going dancing on Friday nights at a bar called Saph. Two floors: downstairs, a DJ who goes by Plastik Patrik spun alternative chaos; upstairs, goth and industrial. We'd dress in corsets and show up early, then own the dancefloor until 3am. More often than not, it was the two of us -- makeup going from flawless to melted, discovering or shouting out song after song, kicking our steel-toed boots and spinning in circles.

And there I sat, staring at my notes and wondering what the fuck I was going to do for my birthday in a couple weeks, and suddenly Take Me Out blared out my headphones and if I could explain anything in words I would, but -----------

I was overcome. My cells exploded.
I wanted to dance so badly.
It was all I wanted to do. At that moment, for my birthday, ever.

So I instantly texted Meg. Thinking of going to Saph for my birthday, would you be in?

Breath held. I needed her to say yes. I didn't care if anyone else could make it: if she was there, it'd be lightning.

And almost instantly, she answered. Fuck yeah!

My 22nd birthday was one of the best nights of my life.

Fast forward 8 years.

Saph has closed. Studying for finals is a distant nightmare. The friendships that were just budding back then have had time to solidify and spin across the country.

But Meg's still here, and she's still larger than life. Our friendship is, too. And we're both turning 30, her in March, me in April. You know what we should do for our 30th birthdays, one of us said, over drinks at 28, is host a dance party, like recreate Saph, and just lose our shit.

And as I said: you want Meg on your side, when you have an idea like that.

Because that's exactly what we fucking did.


We scouted locations. And we talked to Plastik Patrik. And we got decorations and food and art and games and we strolled into O Patro Vys on April 1st, right in between our respective 30th birthdays, and we set up the venue for our huge fucking dance party.


As seems to be the theme of this: there are no words for Friday night. If I tried, it would have to be a novel, or a string of violently ecstatic adjectives, some of which I've made up for the occasion. It was 70 people in a room dancing; it was dozens of heartfelt messages and embraces; it was people from every walk of our lives; it was screaming laughter and spinning in circles and losing our shit. It was electric, blissful, chaotic. It was firespun.

And there was a moment, around midnight -- surrounded by most of the people I love best in the entire world -- when the dancefloor was full. The air was crackling. And the opening chords of Take Me Out pressed out from the speakers.

 And Meg and I caught each other's eyes and, without words, grabbed hands, and ran up onstage.


And looked out at everyone we fucking adore.


And as that inimitable build-up starts around 0:40, we started stomping and raising our fists. With everyone on the dancefloor following our lead, exploding into a sea of hands and upturned faces.

And when the key changed, Meg and I linked arms and lost our shit. The two of us. All of us. Everyone we loved, there or absent -- everything we'd felt in our 30 years -- all of it. Chaos.

And it was absolutely fucking perfect.

So I have this theory that things resonate backwards.