So, when I was approached to cover Gold Rush, an EDM festival, for Blaze, my reaction was twofold. Firstly, I answered yes because of course I did, I’m not even going to say no to the opportunity to cover a music festival. But that immediate confirmation very quickly turned to self-doubt; I was wading into uncharted waters for myself, and it was my job to spin this into a positive of my coverage.

So that’s where I was at before the two-day spectacle that is Gold Rush. I'm excited, but my nerves are through the absolute roof. Being an outsider anywhere is challenging, especially when your literal job is to provide insight. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. The first few hours of day one did not do much to assuage these worries, as I felt like the outsider I was so desperate not to project myself as.

Then something magical happened, about three hours into the festival, I was pulled into the pit that had formed in front of the main stage, and a few short hours later, I was hooked. It makes no sense on paper, I was standing in a parking lot, surrounded by a mass of bodies in the record-setting Phoenix sun, listening to music I’m more or less meh on in my daily life. Why was I having such a good time?

And then the dots connected, as much as these festivals are about the music, they’re just as much about the community. I was welcomed with open arms. Once people heard it was my first rave, there was a rush to teach me the handshakes, give me friendship bracelets, ask me if I liked my experience so far, just any way to make me feel included.

A lot of genres within music have reputations of being very eager to gatekeep (Green Day famously was banned from Gilman’s, a tentpole punk rock venue, for committing the crime of signing to a major label), so to see the eagerness with which I was assimilated into the community blew my mind.

I still had the lingering question though: why was I having such a good time if the music was still something I would be hard-pressed to seek out in my daily life? But the answer was right there–you don’t need to love country music to go square dancing or love baseball to catch a World Series game. Sometimes doing something with people who love to do it has a contagious effect, and pretty soon you love it too, and you don’t even realize what happened.

Raves are a sonnet of the strange. They’re a celebration of spending one night letting all of your inhibitions win instead of curbing them like we so often are forced to in daily life. Will this be for everyone? Of course not. Some people will see my experience for exactly what I said it is: standing in a parking lot full of sweaty bodies, listening to music I could go either way on, and that won’t hold their interest in any way.

But I implore you to try, because it feels good to belong, and belonging is what ravers do best.