When I woke up this morning, I saw that I had typed this on my facebook status update on my phone but did not post it.
"I dreamt all night about my grandmother who passed away one year ago to the hour.. I dreamt that we had this week between Christmas eve to spend with her but then she got sick again. We spent all night trying to get across the world to bring her an 'imaginary tool' that would fix her, but then we realized that doing a dance for her would help about as much so we all sat in a circle and my mom danced for her until sunrise in a yellow print dress and it was beautiful.. Then i got an email that she died again this morning and cried ( I woke to alex texting me that he was going in for surgery).. Also, I had some kind of inception-style dream within a dream that my grandmother sent me a message to my family to tell them not to ignore the conflicts between them, and that allowing a family relationship to deteriorate was disrespectful to her.. Anyway sorry if no one cares about this and it's the longest status update ever, I'm just trying to write it down before I forget and this is the screen my phone was on."
Friday, December 31, 2010
Last Night You Saved My Life
Thank you to my partner and best friend Alex Incyde for reminding me of this passage.
The original quote characterizes 'the DJ' as male, but just for kicks I thought I would change all the 'he''s to 'she''s. You know, just for kicks. Enjoy!
It's a mystic art indeed. It seems so banal, but it holds the potential of phenomenal, inexpressible power. A great DJ can arouse more raw emotion in her audience than the composer of the most bittersweet opera, or the author of the most uplifting novel, or the director of the most life-affirming film.
When you're DJing and you're great at it, you're not playing records, you're playing the dancefloor. You're not just mixing tunes, you're mixing energy and emotions, mixing from surprise into hope and happiness, cutting from liberation to ecstasy and love. When it goes right, you're inside the bodies of everyone in the room, you know what they're feeling and where they're going, and you're taking them there. You're sweeping them off the earthly plane and transporting them to a higher place. You're moving their bodies and their souls with the music that flows from your fingertips.
You're putting them in the moment."
- Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, 2000
The original quote characterizes 'the DJ' as male, but just for kicks I thought I would change all the 'he''s to 'she''s. You know, just for kicks. Enjoy!
"The disc jockey has been with us for almost a century now. In that time she has been ignored, misunderstood, despised, worshipped and adored. She has stayed in the forefront of music, twisting and shaping it into fresh forms, perverting technology and forcing from it stunning new sounds. She has conjured a series of novel genres in her endless search for material to keep her dancers moving. In the U.S. the DJ created amazing music, then the UK gave her a home and made her a star. She continued her magic and around her there grew a musical culture more revolutionary and more enduring than any before.
Having forged music more truly universal than any preceding it, the DJ is arguably a conduit for celebration and communion on a global scale. It's possible that the DJ is the ultimate expression of the ancient shamanic role; that the DJ is the greatest witchdoctor there has ever been, unmatched at shaking us out of the drudge of the day and into the life of the night.
Why do we worship at the knees of the record-slinger? Because she is occasionally capable of divinity. When it all connects in a club, there's nowhere you can have more fun.
'A really great DJ is capable of making a bad record sound okay, a good record sound great, and a great record sound fantastic - by the context they put them in, and what they put around them. How they steer them. They can do all kinds of tricks. A great DJ can make people spontaneously cheer just for a little squelchy noise. Which is quite insane really. A little noise like wha-wha-wha and people go, 'Yeeeaaah!' They can have people clapping along to a cymbal, just by the way they're bringing it in. When it's done well, it's fantastic. If it's done really well, it can be quite transcendental.'
It's a mystic art indeed. It seems so banal, but it holds the potential of phenomenal, inexpressible power. A great DJ can arouse more raw emotion in her audience than the composer of the most bittersweet opera, or the author of the most uplifting novel, or the director of the most life-affirming film.
When you're DJing and you're great at it, you're not playing records, you're playing the dancefloor. You're not just mixing tunes, you're mixing energy and emotions, mixing from surprise into hope and happiness, cutting from liberation to ecstasy and love. When it goes right, you're inside the bodies of everyone in the room, you know what they're feeling and where they're going, and you're taking them there. You're sweeping them off the earthly plane and transporting them to a higher place. You're moving their bodies and their souls with the music that flows from your fingertips.
You're putting them in the moment."
- Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, 2000
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Hope and Fear
Here I am again. It's Christmas, again and I find myself reflecting like I seem to do every year on how much things have changed (and stayed the same). I woke up this morning with a weird sense of conviction that although life is about many things that change over time, and now was the time for life to be about coming together regardless of reason, or time.
The older I get the more unsure I am about whether Christmas spirit is about joy, or anxiety. I feel anxious all the time around this time of year, as if things are supposed to go a certain way and we are all expected to live up to an embodiment of joy and virtue and miracles that is impossible.
I watched a documentary recently about a family in 1956 who had won a trip to Disneyland called 'Disneyland Dream'. I was never alive in the 50s, but I feel like we live with its endless idealism and imagination and disregard for the imminent depletion and real limitations of things like resources, and class systems, and human compassion.
And it makes me wonder why, 50 years later, we guilt ourselves for not having the 9 to 5, the nuclear household in a suburban neighborhood, or the safe retirement plan and latest appliances. Have we not figured out that the life model of going to college and getting a great job and earning that promotion and being rewarded for our integrity is based on the conditions of an American Dream which has clearly crumbled at its foundations?
We don't have Norman Rockwell dinners. People die, and jobs are lost. And integrity is rarely rewarded. And this isn't a tragedy, or a failure anymore than waking up from a dream. Its just the truth.
This Christmas, my grandmother is not with us, and we are not what we once were. Uncles are sick, and injured and unhealthy and Aunts miss their mothers. The children have finally moved out in their near 30s after five years or so of suffering questions of self-worth and capabilities. We are not ideal. How could we have been? But we are a family, and together, we are happy. We are perfect.
If you asked me what Christmas meant to me, the only thing I could be sure of is that this is the time my family spends two weeks out of the year eating food and playing games together- and that's good enough for me.
The new year brings even more anxiety. What is going to happen to us? Will this year be good? Will this year not be good? Will we follow through with the promises that we make to ourselves and others? Is this the year that the apocalypse will come? Am I going to die in 2011?
I forget sometimes, that January 1 is just a day like any other day. It has no magical powers except that it is a poignant reminder of the mystery that is our future, and the uncertainty it brings. It reminds us how much we hope, and fear. My grandmother died on December 31, 2010 and a chapter began in my life that I never even had a concept of. I simply just could not imagine life without her, and here I was, and here she was not.
But then life kept going, and I kept breathing, and I was alive. In June my dear friend Josh died accidentally, and I did not know that I could hurt so profoundly as I did when I realized that he'd had hopes and fears too, and dreams and that we'd never grow old together and be able to look back with joy on all our mistakes and masterpieces.
I will always hold that melancholy in my heart. Tears of grief are hot tears and they tattoo our cheeks. Every time we look in the mirror we see their marks, even if no one else can. Every time I look in the mirror, I see my grandmother, and Josh. How could I forget them when they are me?
It was so unexpected. Life has kept going and I have found that it is even more beautiful than I could have possibly grasped ten years ago, or even yesterday. Every day, and I realize how blessed I am to realize this, that out of reason or time we find each other and come together… that out of reason or time we can't help but to help each other find ourselves, lost as we are… we come back changed to the places that changed us, only to find that they have changed too and all of this hope and fear filters through our minds and into our own personal histories… and eventually, some time between now and our last breathe, we will see what an epic tale it is, that your life is a timeless legend so perfect that you couldn't have imagined or anticipated it even if you tried.
The older I get the more unsure I am about whether Christmas spirit is about joy, or anxiety. I feel anxious all the time around this time of year, as if things are supposed to go a certain way and we are all expected to live up to an embodiment of joy and virtue and miracles that is impossible.
I watched a documentary recently about a family in 1956 who had won a trip to Disneyland called 'Disneyland Dream'. I was never alive in the 50s, but I feel like we live with its endless idealism and imagination and disregard for the imminent depletion and real limitations of things like resources, and class systems, and human compassion.
And it makes me wonder why, 50 years later, we guilt ourselves for not having the 9 to 5, the nuclear household in a suburban neighborhood, or the safe retirement plan and latest appliances. Have we not figured out that the life model of going to college and getting a great job and earning that promotion and being rewarded for our integrity is based on the conditions of an American Dream which has clearly crumbled at its foundations?
We don't have Norman Rockwell dinners. People die, and jobs are lost. And integrity is rarely rewarded. And this isn't a tragedy, or a failure anymore than waking up from a dream. Its just the truth.
This Christmas, my grandmother is not with us, and we are not what we once were. Uncles are sick, and injured and unhealthy and Aunts miss their mothers. The children have finally moved out in their near 30s after five years or so of suffering questions of self-worth and capabilities. We are not ideal. How could we have been? But we are a family, and together, we are happy. We are perfect.
If you asked me what Christmas meant to me, the only thing I could be sure of is that this is the time my family spends two weeks out of the year eating food and playing games together- and that's good enough for me.
The new year brings even more anxiety. What is going to happen to us? Will this year be good? Will this year not be good? Will we follow through with the promises that we make to ourselves and others? Is this the year that the apocalypse will come? Am I going to die in 2011?
I forget sometimes, that January 1 is just a day like any other day. It has no magical powers except that it is a poignant reminder of the mystery that is our future, and the uncertainty it brings. It reminds us how much we hope, and fear. My grandmother died on December 31, 2010 and a chapter began in my life that I never even had a concept of. I simply just could not imagine life without her, and here I was, and here she was not.
But then life kept going, and I kept breathing, and I was alive. In June my dear friend Josh died accidentally, and I did not know that I could hurt so profoundly as I did when I realized that he'd had hopes and fears too, and dreams and that we'd never grow old together and be able to look back with joy on all our mistakes and masterpieces.
I will always hold that melancholy in my heart. Tears of grief are hot tears and they tattoo our cheeks. Every time we look in the mirror we see their marks, even if no one else can. Every time I look in the mirror, I see my grandmother, and Josh. How could I forget them when they are me?
It was so unexpected. Life has kept going and I have found that it is even more beautiful than I could have possibly grasped ten years ago, or even yesterday. Every day, and I realize how blessed I am to realize this, that out of reason or time we find each other and come together… that out of reason or time we can't help but to help each other find ourselves, lost as we are… we come back changed to the places that changed us, only to find that they have changed too and all of this hope and fear filters through our minds and into our own personal histories… and eventually, some time between now and our last breathe, we will see what an epic tale it is, that your life is a timeless legend so perfect that you couldn't have imagined or anticipated it even if you tried.
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