Continuations, Beginnings, Endings
System Activate, Earthly Delights, Slow Motion, and 3 Anniversaries
We have slowly crept into September. The light shifted so quickly and I awake each morning to the stretched out yawn of the afternoon. Life continues to move quickly even as some experiences feel as though, they too, creep along. This newsletter has helped me cope with this fluctuating pace.
I ended August with a great Deep Exposure on The Lot Radio featuring my dear friend Ali Berger. We talk about his artistic practice, meditation, and not being straight.
Slow Motion
I only have one gig this month and the title of it feels apt.
On Friday, September 26th, I will be opening up Slow Motion in Blairstown, NJ. I have a special discount code, if you would like to attend and want a slightly cheaper way, email me or DM me on Instagram and I’ll pass it along.
One Year on Earth
I can’t front like I made it to the last weekend celebrations of Earthly Delights, the home of my attempts at making Deep Exposure a party. I am sad that it didn’t last and my feelings about it are more complicated than that. I have struggled with articulating the difficulties I faced while trying to promote a party that is not solely for having a good time. I am eternally grateful for the chance that the club took on me to try something that was more aligned with my perspective, a perspective that problematizes what can be accomplished with loud music in a night club setting. I learned a lot, I appreciated the opportunity. Thanks Theresa, Luke, Sophia, and Kate. Thanks to all the bartenders, door staff, security, kitchen staff, and cleaners. Thanks to all the regular dancers.
I recorded every set at Earthly and in the coming months, I’ll share them here with you.
System Activate
The return to New York after that weekend in Vermont has felt like a long, slow sigh, and I have reached the jittery point of anxiety that precedes my next inhale. I just wish that the air that I now breathe wasn’t full of lead, carbon monoxide, and stress filling my lungs.
I left some heavy bags in those woods and I will try to narrate that experience and the structure that allowed me to leave Vermont feeling a little lighter.
The orientation of this party, rave, gathering, that is System Activate allowed for this relief. I’m grateful to Blaire, Eris, Maya, Fait, Evita, Q, Ketia, Catherine, Glenna, Alyce, Lexi, Nick, the safety team, all of my friends, everyone who played, everyone who volunteered, and everyone that attended. I laughed more than I have in months, maybe years, I got to look into the eyes of my friends and say I love you a lot, I really truly enjoyed myself, which I wish wasn’t such an unfamiliar feeling.
Utopia and radical joy are terms often invoked by music marketing enterprises and artists alike when attempting to describe the rules and goals of live music events that attempt to hold more than “feeling good”. I once trafficked in these terms. Now I find them quite alienating. This alienation has led me to find new language for the work that I do and the events that I participate in. My curiosity has always led me to ask, what brings people together to share in “something”? Often, within the context of events focused on providing amplified electronic music with the intent of dancing, the “something” is a nebulous “good feelings” or “good vibes”. This “something” has its place, but submitting “something” to only contain “good vibes”, discounts the other less convenient “something”s that also occur during these activations. I have been in the dance and a distant memory of being a girl at some point slid smoothly between an unfamiliar melody and wrapped itself around my consciousness. I have talked over the music and been interrupted by a thought that situates my focus deep within the sub frequencies, welcoming a new insight into some well trodden experience of regret or insecurity. I have played a song made by a dead friend, and for the first time, truly wept for them and for all of the people that I have come to know whom have passed on. I have mourned my old self, as a new one was born in the next moment.
If this is all possible, then an event that can be simply described as a group of friends setting up speakers in the woods and playing music for their new friends holds much more tangible density than any invocation of utopia. What is possible is alive here, in this description. A dream has been made material.
System Activate and any other event injected with so much intensity and empathy has the potential to function as a container that can hold the contents of any heart that entered. System Active was so important and effective because of its simple application. Simplicity allows for a more complex engagement with the event from the participants in the event. Each role, with the right support, can allow for whatever issue may arise. The ease I was able to feel at this event was propped up by everyone in attendance and everyone working hard behind the scenes. This encouraged me to pick up a piece of trash, or lift a log, or offer water to a friend. This encouraged me to show up as the most vulnerable version of myself, which allowed me to present a musical experience that took these factors into account.
I worked on my set for months. I used each set that I played leading up to System Activate as research into how some songs operate. There were bits of expressions and experiences that these songs evoked throughout the last year that made their way into this preparation. When I was asked to close the dance music portion of the final 23 hour push, I knew that I had to meticulously program the set. I knew that the set would start with a heart and I would build the set around its core pulse.
I was digging at Ergot Records during one of my shifts and this record, I Am Not Your Toy by Peter Barclay was in the New Arrivals. Adrian, the owner told me that one of his friends worked on the record, which is a collection of old songs in a reissue form released by Numero Group. The cover of this record is a blurry photograph of Peter Barclay with a scene very familiar to me in the background. Lake Merritt in Oakland. A site that I’ve walked around countless times and the last place that I DJ’d in Oakland on Fait and co’s Envelope Sound System in 2023.
Peter was a performing artist from the South who was gay. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to find a place to fully be out and express himself as an artist. He died in the 90s from AIDS. I took the record home and it seeped deep within me. It was so familiar, its strangeness was so inviting. After some time, this song featuring chirping birds really connected with me. I carried the tune around in my head and another song whispered its way in “You arrrreee my life…” And there it was, the heart. It is incredible that in some way this level of intent resonated with so many dancers given that “You Are Loved” is the song that I have been asked about the most.
My initial plan was to play these songs next to each other, but it slowly became apparent that the audience that I would be playing for would make these connections themselves without a heavy hand. When speaking with my friend Daniel before System Activate I realized that, if I did one final push, I could accomplish this 2 hr 30 min set with 23 records. 23 is a significant number for several of us on the T4T Luv NRG crew. A story for another time.
Here is the track list for my set
Shinichi Atobe - So Good, So Right
Mr. White - The Sun Can’t Compare
Family of Few - Sunrise (Vocal Heat Mix)
Cherushii - Far Away, So Close
Chez N Trent - Morning Factory
Urzula Dudziak - Mosquito Dream
Mike Huckaby - Another Fantasy
Green Fridge - You2Nite (Africa Sunset)
Blaze - Lovelee Dae (Carl Craig’s 70 Degree and Sunny Mix)
Seefeel - Time to Find Me (Alternate Desk Mix)
Mark Grusane - Freak Out Your Mind
There’s more to say about all that went into these intentional selections. The only other thing that you need to know is what I said to Fait after the set was done,
“This bag holds a lot of dead people.”
I play to mourn our dead, so that their lives may stretch and reverberate into the chasms of infinity.
I play to mourn the selves that we may not become as we reckon with the hazards that may bring our lives to a preemptive end.
I play to allow each feeling that you bring with you to become untethered from the monument that you have forged and called your self. So that you may leave your burdens on the forest floor and allow a new, fresh perspective to find its way to you.
I play to allow you to feel that you may die and to shake you into the consciousness of what totality you may leave behind and hope that by enacting each portion of the desires that you hold for your being that you may find solace in some completion of possibility.
I play so that I may feel empty, so that the cacophonous fullness of the being of each life I encounter may enter me and that I may feel its renewal through the growth of my love and empathy.
Thanks for making it this far. I have found it hard to celebrate significant movements in my life for several years. I don’t make a lot of money, so I can’t go on a trip or get a fancy dinner, or buy something special that makes me feel pretty. However, I’d like to acknowledge a few significant anniversaries.
I have lived in America for 22 years
I have been an American citizen for 1 year
I have been taking feminizing hormones for 1 year
I’m spending some time away from the city this week to start writing a book. I don’t know what its about yet, but I know that the time is now because now is better than any other time.