At noon on May 18th the DRONE will begin. It will continue unceasing until noon on Sunday, morphing and undulating as each performer steps into the center and continues the work. Many audience members lie down, some of them fall asleep, and the ringing quiet that hangs in the air when the first and only round of applause dies down at 12:09pm is unlike any you will ever experience. In this way, like many profound things, 24-HOUR DRONE is very simple. It is also very much, very long, and a lot.

Under any other circumstances the booked acts would be surreal and amazing: live Sunday morning DJ collage, techno farmers conjuring the churn of living soil, a Butoh dancer prowling the concrete aisles, all manner of screaming saxophones and caressed gongs, torch songs and vampiric psych rock and power electronics, etc. But in the generous, spacious, challenging ramble of the day-long song everyone starts to seem like a wizard, an apparition, or a spirit from another realm. Every sung word a spell, every chord an utterance, "heightened" isn't the half of it.

It's really a round encounter. Most other concerts are pretty rectilinear - performers elevated on a right-angled stage, listeners face the spectacle, lines, dollar bills, ticket stubs, straight lines everywhere you look. Though we draw lines on the floor with gaff tape to try and contain the sprawling sleepers, there are circles everywhere at DRONE. Performing in the center on a humble drop cloth stage - at the same level as the listener - we describe the setup as "in the round." Clocks, naturally, are a motif - cycles, the minute hand pacing between the numbers like someone stretching their legs. We recall the wall of the cave, the ruined arcs of druidic artifacts, the folding chairs of a Quaker meeting. This is not a hierarchical pageant - it's a casting of a very long spell, a communal humming of a very long song, every listener that circles up and sprawls out performs.

There's an ancient feeling to the proceedings. Sleeping in the dark in the hollow of mountain, your eyes growing heavy as soot and shadows animate in the thrown light of a fire, the presence of your people all around you, the sounds of their breathing and their shifting beneath the crackling of the flame, the smell of smoke and sweat and mottled fur hanging in the dank of the cave. Sleeping, laying, and listening among 500 self-selected others is a rare, primordial elation.

There's also a strange power in it for the audience member - the longness of it rewards bravery, and the lack of sleep you'll likely enjoy while in attendance leads your thoughts and emotions to eerie new countries. The blankness available to you after 18 hours of listening is truly profound and divine, an inner quiet brought out by outer noise. And if you are fortunate enough to actually achieve slumber it is particularly delicious - why is that feeling of falling asleep while a party surges on nearby so, so good? This is the most extreme possible version of that. When was the last time you stayed out until the sun rose? And then, once risen, did you continue to listen to freaky ass music until noon? Much like the corona of elation one may experience for a time after a particularly vivid shroom voyage, I find myself walking around after DRONE with a lingering surreal pride: we really did that, I say to myself. It is helpful and even joyful to know that you can choose to listen for so long.