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RoRo ed.
….You know that song, Last night the DJ saved my life?
4:18 Now playing
That’s how I’d sum up my relationship with the dancefloor and its operator. Looking for a whole in the wall, for jams, for my body to s t r e t c h , for the dj to console me. The most sane and safe nights in yt settlement have been when i ditched my friends to go to clubs* and just dance
(*good music n safe space venues were v hard to find tho).
No fucking conversations. No glances. No expectations. No politics!
But isn’t it funny what a controller will do?
I hopped on the decks some years ago with the fear of complacency, adamant that I should only use that spot to remind; remind the floor where we stood, why, and upon whom. I would scratch the tapes anytime people got comfortable dancing. Distort pleasure, remind them again and again, that they shouldn’t be comfortable.
I figured, if i was in a position to influence mood - my duty was to influence thought - not to console white guilt, voyeurism, escapism, the gluttonous and exploitative consumption of the Bla(c)k.
Then one day my mother (the first black woman/ dj i met) reminded me of why we’re trying to escape. What the dancefloor is. That folks are reminded everywhere they go, everything they do is within conflict, is political, and that we all sought solace from the DJ.
I was like… truuuuuuuuu.
I was already playing for the fam, so why not console them too?
If i had to summarise life under covid - it would be the month the West wore #BLM as a face mask, tasted its own breath and then ironically said it couldn’t breathe.
It would be making my living room a dance floor. Dancing without voyeurism, performativity, politics. Realising i’m a great fucking dj and that it was my duty to save my own life.
Coming to terms with my need to have these conversations (class, race, space, blah blah) and to actually be fucking happy, be ok with being happy, feeling satisfied, releasing survivors guilt, and eating good good meant **duality**. A beautiful transition, a sound consistency. Don’t get me wrong, harsh transitions, distortion, infinite loops and contrast are still super cute and i still wanna be super messy. But no more pressure to be or hold. All the stuff I play is Bla(c)k, that is still my intention. But now I play freely.
So! I ask you to revise your intentions of places and collectives you wanna donate to, scrutinise how anti-black the positions you hold are (they are g, they are). Then, to share comfort, here are the reaction posts/memes that I relate to and think about a lot.
Balance and dat. Consistency. Virtue. Twerking. Tweeking.
Whatever, get me gigs and don’t expect shit. Thanks!
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