technorganic, antichnology

Last weekend in Tijuana, I worked with Husky/Pedro Bermudez. 

It was quite possibly THE worst experience I have ever had with a promoter. After leaving me to get from hotel to venue on my own resources in a foreign and notoriously dangerous city, Pedro left the venue without paying me or telling me he was leaving, forcing me to take a CDJ as collateral. I tried to contact him via both telephone and email and he was unresponsive. Unfortunate, as he was my only contact for the Ensenada show the following night. I didn’t hear from anyone until 3 pm the next day, despite my endless attempts at communication, at which point I had given up entirely and was en route back to LA. He was giving conflicting messages to AVR (the company to whom the CDJ I had in my custody belonged) and to the Ensenada promotors, saying that he had talked to me when I had not heard from him or been paid. 

Friday (one week after gig), had to ship back the CDJ that I had been holding hostage to avoid lawsuit (it was a rental from a third party), upon his repeated promise that he was crossing the border to make the deposit ‘as we spoke’. Still not paid. 

Tijuana is one of my favorite places to play, ever.  The crowd goes above and beyond in their passion for dance music.  They are incredibly enthusiastic and educated, really a pleasure to play for.  It is a great tragedy that some shady promoters are making the city look bad with unprofessionalism and horrendous business practices.  Let it be known that this behavior is unacceptable.  Please spread the word, get Husky blacklisted so other artists/DJs don’t have to go through a similar experience.  

OCT

21 (thurs) standard hollywood lobby, LA

23 (sat) the lab, costa mesa

24 (sun) crane’s hollywood tavern, LA

28th (thurs) standard hollywood lobby, LA

NOV

4 (thurs) honey fisted central sapc with double fisted crew and honey sound system, santa monica

11 (thurs) voyeur nightclub turntable lab night, LA

TBA Ensenada, Mexico 

having a time settling back in after three weeks and six countries and new friends and reunions and adventures and prayer and challenge and joy.  briefly recapping, it went:

NYC, london (jetlag, dirty harry), berlin (joy and excitement, inspiration, solitude and reconnection), prague (brief), orleans (more than I ever could have hoped for*), stuttgart (loving reunion), london again (slow roasting, abbey road, awakening to some truth), NYC (gently seeping into reality), LA (24 hours), tijuana (disasterous but survivable, and the best crowd in the world) and now ‘home’.  

Read Patti Smith’s “Just Kids”, memoir of her relationship with Maplethorpe.  Unbelievably beautiful and moving, something I will be nourished by creatively for some time, I believe.  

“The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work.  It’s the artist’s responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.

I left Mestophopheles, the angles and the remnants of our handmade world saying, “I choose Earth.”

-p 256

Perhaps this is not the right forum but I feel it necessary to move beyond ‘cool’ for a moment and be honest about the experience of being carried through immense fear of newness, of growth, of baffling conundrums of travel and language barriers and exhaustion and self obsessed anxiety, and articulate just how incredibly taken care of I was.  By friends, by strangers, by the universe, everything was alright.  Better than alright.  Glorious, in fact.  I feel changed from this journey and eager to make this nomadic adventure lifestyle my own, to share it with you.  To drop the pretense of I know what I’m doing and live in thanks that my passion, merely playing two records at the same time and inviting something more profound and beautiful into the mix, quite literally, to try and channel a Love onto the dancefloor, that this task affords me the opportunity to grow along these lines… what an unbelievable gift.  Today, replacing fear with Curiosity and complacency with diligent Work, entitlement and pride with humble joy and gratitude…that is the mission, the task at hand.  

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.  

*”This morning I went for a sunrise run in Orleans, France, on a deserted country path between the banks of a still, flat river populated by mallards and great blue herons.  While I was still using, I had a vision of Joan of Arc riding into the battle of Orleans, under the direction of God…a move that she was later burned as a heretic for.  I have always felt a strong connection with St. Joan, admired her courage and her selflessness and integrity at all costs.  It was mere ‘coincidence’ that I found myself this morning, waking early after a club gig, in this little French city of her birth and death, under a blue-pink sky, listening to only birdsong and my own footsteps.  I prayed before starting off to channel in my interactions today the same love I have been shown on this journey (both life, and literally, these last weeks on tour).  I have been so utterly cared for, and to be blessed with a day like this, to SEE the incredible love from and for a Higher Power in my life, to trust in this merciful Creator, to humbly feel how I have been rocketed into the fourth dimension…tears of joy and gratitude flowed freely….”

those first stumblings out of new york’s finest, filthiest clubs on summer nightmornings in my teenage years, that is the last time i can remember feeling this way, this fresh excitement and innocent joy, this pure wonder at dancing all night, at new sounds, at friends without names.  now tinged with profound gratitude, carried through fear fields and crawling through deserts of vice, now in an unknown language, now the threads of different lifetimes weave together gently, perfectly, endlessly, i am once again humbled by the incredible mercy, rather than justice, that placed me here.  

thank you thank you thank you

i am alive i am alive i am alive.