Evacuate the Dancefloor!

On the 2009 hit song, griping about smart phones, and the Three of Swords.

These small tarot essays are getting more experimental. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

I.

Certain songs have lyrics so profound they render me speechless every time. Hurt by Johnny Cash, Heart of the Matter by India.Arie – both covers, but like all good covers, they seem to come from the same soul as the original singers. Where Do You Go To My Lovely? and Fast Car are 5-minute novels. Any Leonard Cohen song. But I give the imaginary award of Most Profound Song Ever Written in the History of Time to the 2009 dance pop single “Evacuate the Dancefloor” by Cascada.

Here’s how I see the song: A person is walking towards the dancefloor, excited to let loose and have a great time. She’s getting into the song, really digging it. Tequila shots are passed around. She locks eyes with a tall dark stranger. Then she realises everything around her is fake and manufactured, including the song she herself is singing – the kind that’s been written for the sole purpose of getting into people’s ears and staying there; all autotune, no soul. She feels sick to her stomach. It feels like an overdose. She cries out for help and tries to warn others (exclamations my own):

Evacuate the dance floor!!
I’m infected by the sound!!!!
Stop this beat is killing me!!!!!!!!!!!

To which her friends respond: I know right! Killer! This beat is sick! She pleads with the DJ to burn the whole place to the ground. To which the DJ responds with something along the lines of: the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

The only other song I know of that captures this particular scenario – of willingly entering a place that starts off great but turns out to be a total horror show, but you’re in too deep so you can’t leave – is Hotel California.¹ But I think Evacuate the Dancefloor is even more subversive because you’re never really sure what Cascada wants. She’s telling everyone to evacuate, she’s imploring the DJ to do something, but she’s not running through the door, back to the place she was before, à la Eagles. She is stuck on the dancefloor and her voice has turned against her, confusing the shit out of everyone. Is she for real? Is she performing? We’ll never know.

II.

I recently read Nicky Shapiro’s You Can’t Blame the Phones Forever, a response to Magdalene J. Taylor’s It’s Obviously the Phones. Both agree that less time spent on our phones is a good thing, but I find Shapiro’s perspective more refreshing. He reminds us that smart phones exist because people wanted them to. Faxing, dial-up, traveller’s cheques, CD racks, magazine racks, photo albums, compact mirrors, autograph books – a lot of stuff to keep track of, all in different places, taking up space and collecting dust. All of that consolidated into a single device that fits in your pocket? Sounds pretty appealing.

Nobody anticipated this device would mean the end of being asked out on a date at the laundromat, the kind of real life meet-cute online dating killed. Or on a more serious note, ISIS, which couldn’t exist in the way it did without the ability to radicalise and groom teenagers over the internet. Some people probably anticipated this and tried to send warnings, but their concerns were most likely dismissed as either ridiculous or inconvenient. But regardless of how any of us feel about it now, smart phones are here to stay, and we don’t do ourselves any favours by over-romanticising a time before they existed.

Now that Pluto is in Aquarius, I like to think it will move us away from this mode of dwelling on the bad consequences of the internet and unbridled capitalism (Capricorn), and into the Aquarian mode of thinking about unconventional solutions that will benefit humanity as a collective. Even if we are all on a slow march to fusing with our smart phones and becoming data points that Elon Musk can manipulate, optimism and forward-thinking opens a small possibility to shift course. More than pessimism and looking backwards, at the very least.

If the smart phone developed as a way to streamline mundane facets of life, then maybe the next phase is not inventing a new thing – a new social media platform, etc – but detaching. Re-embracing the mundane. Touching grass, as they say. Not looking backwards then down at our phones then backwards again, but around. This includes but is not dominated by what is behind us.

III.

It does not take a genius to figure out that the Three of Swords is about heartache. Subtlety is not its forte.

Heartache, though, not heartbreak. Because this heart is still whole. Even if the swords go, this heart will still be one unbroken piece. Punctured and scarred, but whole.

The two different interpretations I read of the Three of Swords – in Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change and Jessa Crispin’s The Creative Tarot – say that this card does not refer to fresh heartache, but old wounds. It has the impression of fresh heartbreak because of the clouds and the rain in the background, and the sheer intensity of this image – it’s angsty and teenage. But it is not a ‘wait and these clouds shall pass’ situation. It is a ‘very slowly and gently pull the sword out bit by bit, and don’t be too quick or you will bleed too much at once’ situation.

If you have walked through the world with three swords in your heart for a long time, there is not much incentive to remove those swords. You’ve already adapted to the discomfort. You are numb to it. And what would be the point of removing them, exactly? Because once you do, you’ll be left with a limp, deflated heart. At least the Three of Swords heart looks valiant and battle-worn, edgy; this is a heart that has known passion. This heart has a good story to tell. At least three good stories.

But it’s also a heart that shouts ‘evacuate the dancefloor!’ while twirling around the dancefloor. It’s a heart that goes online to bemoan being online. It’s stuck. It talks in circles. But the only way out is… out, one inch at a time.

The card on the left is from Nat Girsberger’s Radiant Wilds Tarot deck.

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My novel, Ghost Chilli, was named ‘Most Relatable Read’ in Cosmopolitan’s inaugural Book Awards, which I am beyond thrilled about. I recently discussed Ghost Chilli with Chloe Timms on the Confessions of a Debut Novelist podcast, which you can listen to here. Ghost Chilli is available wherever books are sold in the UK (Bookshop.org link here), and will be out in the US in Summer 2025.

1. I am obsessed with videos of young people reacting to listening to famous songs for the first time. Here is one for a live performance of Hotel California that had me just as stunned as the YouTuber. That 12-string guitar!