I rolled up to the ticket counter at Brooklyn Steel covered in silver. An unusual amount of girls clobbered to pick up tickets, peculiar for a digital age, and I wondered why. I felt overly self-conscious in my getup, wearing quite a loud rave look with carved cheekbones and a jangly charm bracelet, chastising myself for teetering the line between yearning for a fashionable reality and ending up looking TikTok-ified. Silver shadow adorned my eyes and smeared across my lips against my pale skin, a long white skirt swung at my ankles with jeans peeking out to keep me warm, and a 70’s big black fuzzy long coat flanked my sides. I looked part alien and part Ziggy Stardust (desperately hoping to exude the latter). But as fans began flooding into the venue, I became surrounded by goblins and ghouls and an ease set in as I felt myself blending with the crowd.
The concert hall was filled with Berlin-esque characters, twinks in BDSM puppy hoods, boys from North Carolina in horse heads, and girls in clown makeup. Many fans, her “farmies” as she affectionately calls them, donned cowboy hats. It felt part Halloween (given it being dangerously close to the holiday) and part cosplay. Maybe, just as I did, they took a certain comfort in using Halloween as a cover, or more so, their cosplay dressed idol — horsegiirL. As the concert started, Teeno, a b2b duo consisting of Boiler Room veterans Nino Brown and Young Teesh, took the stage as the opener. The stage was adorned with bean bag fruits, completing the farm fantasy that horsegiirL’s character inhabits. They were epic, sexy, hot, charismatic, and in sync. My friend and I mused if they were dating. There was a sense of trolling throughout their set, present from the moment they opened with alarm sounds while dressed in firefighter costumes. They interspersed emo music throughout their slot which is when the crowd of Spirit Halloween misfits got the most hype. They played the Drowning Pool hit Bodies (the one that goes “let the bodies hit the floor”) and what I believed to be some Panic at the Disco hits.
Finally, after about an hour, horsegiirL took the stage. I waited with my camera poised, crouched below her and looking up her horse mask. I was in awe of its functions, the horse lip moving as hers did as she mouthed the lyrics to the songs, the horsey eyelids occasionally blinking alongside her own. She even took a sip of her cocktail through a straw, which I could not fathom how the mechanisms of the mask allowed her to do so. As I swayed along to hits of the times, songs like Troye Sivan’s Rush mixed with techno beats, I waited to hear her songs come on. Fraught with anticipation, I found myself disappointed as I seldom heard her own music. I came expecting a horsegiirL concert, and was met with more of a DJ set. The girls I had seen at the ticket counter, along with hordes more, mewed behind her on stage as they clobbered all over the DJ deck to get selfie videos with her. It was Boiler Room on steroids, influencers fighting to the death for the Last Instagram Reel on Earth. After being at her set for nearly an hour, the only song of hers I recognized (and I know many of them) was My Barn My Rules, which opened her set for 30 seconds before quickly being mixed away. I submitted to appreciating the performance for what it was, entranced by her hands flying across the deck and her attention to the audience, and danced my little heart out. I felt at home in the crowd of overtly queer and subculture concertgoers dressed in character, flaunting sub personas or simply dressed extravagantly as an ode to Halloween. It was a safe space to be a freak, and my sheepish demeanor guarding my silver facade melted away with the music. I’ll cherish my time on the farm forever.
