Aurora Halal: A Hotel Bar in Dublin
© Sean Schermerhorn
New York lynchpin Aurora Halal is in the Irish capital ahead of her gig with The Midnight Disco.
Saturday, October 29, 2022
“I also have braces,” said Aurora, as we ended our conversation. Two glasses containing the melted remnants of ice sat on the table between us. “That's why I'm talking kinda weird.”
“No,” I said, unaware that she had been talking kinda weird.
“I got braces behind my teeth,” Aurora continued.
“Oh, behind? That's cool.”
“Yeah, they make you lisp though. It's very annoying. I'm really eager to get them off.”
“When are you getting them off?”
“In like three months?”
“OK.”
“It's been like eight.”
“That's genius to do it behind.”
“It's pretty cool. See?” She tilted her head slightly forward, opened her mouth, and revealed the row of braces behind her bottom teeth.
I couldn't see very well from the other side of the table. “Is it like —” I stood up slightly, leaning over the table. “Sorry, if you don't mind me looking?” Aurora opened her mouth once more and I had a quick inspection. “Oh! That's actually the brace, as if it were on the front.”
“It's similar,” Aurora said as I retook my seat. “It's like brackets, but then they have this smart wire. It's like a different technology. It's actually faster than braces. It's only a year. Usually braces are three or four.”
“Yeah, I had mine for — Jesus — God knows how long. They have actually moved since, because I didn't wear the retainer.”
“Oh, I'm gonna wear my retainer,” Aurora said, confidently, “because I'm the only one I know who didn't have them as a teen, and I'm like, I better have straight teeth after this.”
“Yeah. Don't wanna ruin it.”
“But yeah, it's exciting, but I'm just like, Oh my God, I can't wa- I hate that I'm lisping all the time. It does not get better.”
I laughed.
“But I definitely recommend them besides that. They're called Lingual.”
“Lingual,” I repeated.
“Like, tongue.”
“I might look into that, because, again, my bottom teeth have started moving.”
“Yeah, mine were like that. That's the main reason I did it, because of my bottom ones.”
“You don't have the top?”
“No, I have both.”
“You have both, OK.”
“But they were telling me that as you get older, your bottom teeth crowd.”
“Yeah.”
“It's like an age thing. They all want to move to the front.”
She left shortly after behind the wall that partitioned us from the foyer. She had seemed a bit obsessed with its adorning squiggly blue patterns.
An orange glow laid trapped between the looming dark sky and the horizon along the Liffey outside. The last stretch of the year.
Myself and Aurora were amongst the elegance of The Clarence Hotel in its dimly lit cocktail bar by the entrance. Music played at a discordantly loud volume.
When we first sat down, Aurora looked over lamentingly at another table after ordering her sparkling water. “I have work to do so I don't want to. Ugh. I love Guinness,” she said as she salivated over someone else’s pint o’ plain. “My boyfriend is Irish actually.”
“Does he tell you,” I asked, “what's a good Guinness and what's a bad Guinness?”
“Well, now I know for myself. It can't be too watery. It's gotta be nice and cold, good body, creamy top.”
Somewhere near the start of our conversation, two glasses full with sparkling water sprinkled on ice, I had asked Aurora, “Have you noticed people approaching you for advice, especially on DIY projects? And would your initial thought be to say to these people, No, if it's DIY, then it has to be from you.”
“Not that many people ask me,” Aurora said, innocently, enveloped by a blue clam chair and sat on her hands. Her hair was tied back, except for a string of her fringe that rested on her cheek.
“Really?” I responded, with obvious surprise.
“I would definitely tell them. Yeah, I'm down to help people. I like to jam with people. I'm definitely down. I'm not into that gatekeep-y, No, figure it out for yourself. Definitely, if people were to ask, then I would definitely tell.”
“But I'm not saying it in a gatekeeping way,” I pleaded. “I'm just saying more for it to be an authentic expression of yourself, not to listen to any outside influence. Because, again, if you get trapped in what other people want to see, then it dilutes the authenticity, if you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, definitely,” Aurora conceded. “Well, I think the best things are always a pure expression of whatever their thing is. And all the ones that stand out are like, This is our vision, and when people get into copying — there's a lot of parties that are copying Berghain or something — they're not gonna be as interesting to me.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Because it's not unique.”
“It's just mimicry, yeah.”
“So, I think my advice to any DJ or promotor, is be yourself. Or any person in general, I guess. It's always that, I think. It's the only thing you can do well.”
I laughed. “Everything else, you're completely hopeless.”
Aurora laughed. “I'm serious.”
“And even in that sense of being true to yourself and people's dark inner secrets, I know you've referred to Jungian theory in the past with the animus.“
“Oh, yeah,” Aurora said, taken slightly off guard.
“I was just wondering in the current climate of surveillance of thought and people's reluctance to address the shadow self —”
“Right.”
“Is that something you ever think about?”
“What do you mean reluctance to —?” Aurora enquired, trying to clarify. “I feel like TikTok is all about oversharing your shadow self, actually.”
“Ok, fair.”
“I don't know if you ever look at TikTok and stuff.”
“I'm not on it, but yeah, I know.”
“I feel like the teens are in this really crazy movement where they're all trying to be funny, but deadpan, and oversharing all kinds of crazy stuff at all times. It's really insane actually. It's kind of cool.”
I laughed. “Ok.”
“But,” Aurora said, “I think it's confusing right now because everything is online and it's kinda fake online. I find social media to be very dark and depressing and bad for everyone that uses it. I try to barely use it. I don't like it.”
“Yeah, I'm off it as well.”
“Yeah.”
“Again,” I said, “it's just that propensity to compare.”
“Oh, yeah. It's guaranteed. It makes everybody miserable.”
“Exactly.”
“It's called Compare and Despair.”
I laughed, over the rigorous clatter of cocktail shakers at the bar.
“It's like a whole thing.”
I continued laughing. “Ok, yeah.”
“No, it's a thing,” Aurora stressed. “Look it up.”
I tamed my laughter. “Ok.”
“Everyone is like, Oh, they're making more money than me. People like them more. They're more attractive. It's like, all of those things just hurt your self-esteem and it's just toxic.”
“Yeah.”
“There's this whole American techno Twitter that just is everyone complaining all day and being mean to each other and I don't like it.”
“People feel emboldened to act and say such things online,” I said. “That kinda way.”
“Well, I think it's because — I think it's partially, whether they realise it or not, it's because they're addicted to interaction on social media. Because negative responses create more engagement.”
“Yeah, interesting.”
“So, if you write something spicy,” said Aurora, “you're gonna get a lot of replies and comments and then you'll spend all day looking at them and feeling things. So, it gamifies an internal instinct to get the pleasure centre going off, so you wake up and you think of something to say and you hope that you'll get engagement. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I think it's ruining friendships and lives, sometimes.”
“Why don't we exist like that in human interaction?” I asked.
“Because it's miserable.”
I looked back, stunned. “What? Human interaction?”
“No, fighting,” said Aurora.
We both laughed.
“But online,” Aurora continued, “it's fun, I guess, for people. But in real life, fighting sucks, so that's why. Is that what you're saying?”
“Yeah, exactly. I'm saying, why does this antagonism only exist online, if that's how people are really feeling?”
“Because it's what Mark Zuckerberg has built the system to benefit. It's like a game. It's hacked our brains.”
“Yeah.”
“So, you see a lot of posts that are like, Selfie for the algorithm and then Here's my whatever.”
“Yeah, Here's my tour dates.”
“Yeah, it's like we've learned these games to play and then you get things by doing them and stuff. And it's very depressing to feel like there's strings being pulled on your behaviour. It's very weird.”
“Yeah, fair.”
“But I really think that the antagonism, Twitter is made for that basically. That's what gets engagement and everyone wants engagement so they, subconsciously, I think —”
”You were saying that the younger generation are oversharing, do you not think that us millennials —” I stopped “— Are you a millennial?”
“I'm a millennial, yeah. Staunch millennial according to the thing.”
“Are we hyperaware of what we say, what we do, what we think because we know we're gonna get shunned if we're seen to believe — not even believe things — but think things and share those thoughts. And as someone who has struggled with obsessive intrusive thoughts —”
“Right.”
“— The idea of my thoughts being the death of me —”
“It's scary, yeah.”
“It is scary.”
A little while later, with my legs crossed and making gestures with my hands, I asked, “How do you toe the line between maintaining a DIY ethic, but also having community values? How do you tow that line between individualism and collectivism?”
“Em, intuitively,” said Aurora, “I don't know. I mean, it's a collaborative project. I do the booking, but besides that, it involves so many different people, so hiring is a big part of that. I try to hire groups that are doing interesting, amazing things and bring in people that I'm jamming with basically. So, ultimately it is a collective, no matter what, because we're bringing in all the movers and shakers from the scene and they are involved in some way, or going. But, I don't know. I think that it's too much pressure to try to make it for everyone. I can't attempt to do that.”
“No.”
“I think that, at the end of the day, I just try to do my best for whatever Sustain is, and it doesn't need to be everybody's thing. It's just my thing. Or, it's not my thing, but it's —” Aurora stopped to think “— whatever Sustain is. It's its own thing.”
“Do you separate yourself from the banner that is Sustain?” I asked.
“Yeah, Sustain is —” Aurora paused. “I honestly feel that I had a child and it's alive now and it has its own thoughts and feelings. I really feel that way.”
I chuckled. “That's good.”
“When it was started,” said Aurora, “it had different ideas and it has basically shown us all the way. It's really weird. It's kind of cosmic. We had to move locations last minute and then the new one ended up being better. All these surprise changes that we didn't expect, ended up making it better and it sort-of leads the way in this weird, cosmic way. And now, I just feel that I'm — and all the people that work there — are there to guide it towards its own destiny. It's for everyone and I'm just trying my best. So, I try not to be too controlling.”
“Even in the trajectory of life itself,” I said, “do you take a backseat and watch it unfold or do you find yourself to be more controlling?”
“I think I naturally am a perfectionist,” admitted Aurora, “but I think in this case, I couldn't possibly be that, because there's too many things. So, I try my best and then it unfolds.”
“Ok, fair. That's all you can do.”
“You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“But,” Aurora said, at some point towards the end of our conversation. The sparkling water was lying still, about a centimetre above the ice. “I went to an all-girls Catholic school and had literally no friends there. And my parents are immigrants. My Dad is Lebanese. I was just a bit of a weirdo my whole life. So, it's like, this is a scene where everyone is a weirdo and it's OK and it doesn't matter really what your deal is, as long as you're nice.”
“When did you accept your weirdness?” I asked.
“I mean, the whole time.”
“Oh, you were quite confident in your alternative sensibility.”
“Oh, definitely,” said Aurora. “Yeah, yeah. I was very rebellious.”
“OK, that's cool.”
“But angsty, you know? So, once I found purpose I calmed down a bit.”
“Were you a difficult child?” I asked.
“No,” Aurora said. “I've always been kind and stuff, but I just didn't fit in and I got in trouble at school.”
“It's crazy how we were indoctrinated into this . . . yeah . . . uniform state of mind,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Aurora. “It was like a spare peg in a round hole for me, right away, because it was all preppy. I didn't look like anyone and I didn't want to and I was very interested in finding a world outside of all that and so I was already, mentally, so gone. My first favourite band was The Sex Pistols when I was, like, 11. You know what I mean?”
“Every parent's worst nightmare,” I laughed.
Aurora laughed. “It's perfect kid music, to be honest. It's really simple.”
I continued cackling.
“But, I don't know, I've always been basically seeking subculture and was surrounded the polar opposite of that. So, as soon as I checked out New York, I was like, Now I can relax. And I don't even feel like I look weird or something, because I don't need to prove anything, but when I was a teen, I definitely tried really hard to look weird and stuff.”
I looked over at the bar as the crashing sound of fallen cocktail shakers reached the tall ceilings and wide walls and reverberated around the room.
“And how was that exposure to the liberation of New York?” I asked, bringing my attention back to our conversation. “In all senses of the word; socially, sexually?”
“It's the best,” said Aurora. “I can't live anywhere else. I love it. It's perfect. It's relaxing, even though it's crazy. You can find anything that interests you and all of it is taken as it is. There's no sense of what is normal or what's expected. Anyone can live their own reality and you just meet so many interesting people all the time. It feels like everyone who is drawn to the city, is bringing this, I'm in New York energy. So, you meet very motivated people that are all like, Here's my thing that I'm obsessed with and I'm on a mission. And you're like, Respect. Do you know what I mean?”
I nodded, slightly absent. This time I didn’t know what she meant.
“When I moved to New York,” said Aurora, “which was in 2006 . . . or, no, sorry, 2007 . . . I tried all these clubs and they felt very stale. It was kind of like older people still hanging on but no new life had been injected into it, you know what I mean?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“And then my parties were at the beginning of this sort-of revival. That was also this new generation making new ideas and stuff, so it's been pretty exciting to see that grow and it’s gradually become more and more popular. Of course, it will probably peak and die out.”
“Are you willing, almost, to accept that death?” I asked.
“Well, I never care about what's popular,” Aurora asserted. “I'm an underground person, so it doesn't bother me. In some ways, it's kinda good when it siphons . . . Places are getting packed. It's really crazy right now. You'd have to be there to know what I mean, but it's lines down the block.” Aurora threw her arm out to demonstrate, pointing beyond me.