Picture a jazz club on a dimly lit Thursday night. The rest of the band softens their tone, to let the saxophonist take the lead. In the spotlight, eyes half-closed, he begins to play a solo so sensuous and beautiful, you feel your heart melt. You forget that you are eating a bag of chips and are completely oblivious to the fact that your date is staring at you for making that obnoxious noise with your mouth. Each note soothes your ears and your soul is captive entirely.

You walk out onto the streets of New York. Your date understably gives you some excuse for needing to go without even trying, but you don’t care because you can’t help but wonder: when the music created that magical moment, what happened in the brain of the saxophone player?

Scientists wondered the same. In this study described in PsyPost, researchers scanned the brains of jazz musicians while they improvised and discovered something surprising. Instead of finding a part of the brain lighting up, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex turned off. This is the region responsible for logic, self-monitoring, and decision-making. It’s the part of your brain that stops you mid-thought and asks, “Is this a good idea?” 

Wait… aren’t reason and control the hallmarks of human intelligence?

When it comes to real creative expression, the study revealed that letting go—turning off the inner critic—is essential. As PsyPost summarized: “Musicians’ brains show less activity in areas associated with self-monitoring and inhibition, and more activity in regions linked to self-expression.”

Now imagine a goth fairy pops out of a portal that appears right in front of you, snaps you out of your thought trance, and transports you to the festival grounds of Electric Forrest. You find yourself in front of a strange creature banging their head, making odd noises with their mouths that resemble the words: “yoooo dude this drop is sikkkkk”. 

The cute little fairy speaks to you the voice of David Attenborough: here we find the WOOK thriving in his natural habitat.

While the rest of us might feel a twinge of self-consciousness about how we’re moving (especially having just been teleported by from normie world) the wooks are deep in their flow state. They’re not thinking about the next step or how they appear. They’ve shut off the part of the brain that cares about being judged or looking perfect (in more ways than one). Their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is dead, and this is exactly what makes them our spirit guide. They are the exact type of person we strive to be at a festival.

In a world obsessed with appearances and self-image, wooks remind us that sometimes, to find what’s real, we have to let go of what we think we should be. You might think you know who you are—a collection of stories, opinions, and roles you’ve carefully built up over the years. But that’s just your prefrontal cortex talking. When you step onto the dance floor and stop caring whether your moves make sense, you start to feel something truer, something raw. Your real self, the one buried under layers of logic and expectation, finally gets to come out and play.

You know who doesn’t get it? Fuckin normies from normie world. Ya know… your boss with the suit and the tie and the coffee? That can’t stop talking about numbers and clothing brands?

Normies have built their lives where their worth is measured by metrics and their time is broken into billable hours. They don’t mean to crush creativity or passion—they’ve just been taught to fear it. To them, letting go isn’t an option because the world they inhabit doesn’t reward freedom. It rewards control.

As you sit at your desk, remembering the beat you lost yourself to just days ago, you can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness for the poor fucks. They’ve headbanged without worrying how it looks. They’ve never danced like nobody’s watching because, for them, someone’s always watching. They’ve never shut off that part of their brain that whispers, “What will people think?”

I’ve been in dog shit mental states at festivals before, and to restore my positive energy I’ve disclosed my feelings to strangers, only to be welcomed, and then taken on an adventure. I spent most of my life thinking people were out to get me, and I’ve learned that most people 

Wooks are part of the tribe, and many of us count them among our friends. But we do laugh, lovingly (the first few times) at their wild tendency to fully disappear into a black hole. Here’s the thing: they’re doing exactly what the jazz musician does.

Learning to value letting go of control is like discovering a secret door to your true self—a self that isn’t confined by expectations or weighed down by constant analysis. When you allow moments in your life where the thinking part of your brain quiets down, you find something deeper: the raw, unfiltered essence of who you are. It’s in these moments—dancing without care, improvising without a plan, or simply being fully present—that you reconnect with the part of you that isn’t trying to be anything. It’s not about abandoning reason forever but making space for the magic that happens when you stop overthinking and start feeling. Because it’s in this flow, in this freedom, that the truest version of yourself steps forward, and suddenly, everything feels right.

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