sǝuoſ ǝuıɥsunS

Well that was quite a weekend. I have to say that I haven’t felt this alive, loved and beautiful in longer than I want to actually admit. Heading in, things were looking grim. I was heavy with emotion. I met with my father for the first time in years, lots of my friends were having stress and strain and I was getting nowhere with a remix I’d been working on for much too long. The same frustration was true for my ongoing, and prematurely announced contract negotiations. So by the time Friday rolled around my head was getting too heavy for my neck and shoulders to carry around anymore. I needed both my hands to keep my chin up. I was ready to retire for the weekend and just rest.

But then something wonderful happened. Yep, something wonderful. I packed up my back packs and rode my vespa through the 4th of july firecracker tossing competition going on along Webster street as the sun began to set on San Francisco.

“Get the guy on the vespa!” A voice shouted from the blur of smoke and little light flashes. I twisted the throttle of my p200e and ran the red light. “No thank you.” I said to myself smiling. When I got to the corner of Hyde and Golden Gate I realized I’d forgotten my power supply for my mac. “Fuck!” I said to the homeless couple standing in the street. They smiled at me. I grinned, and turned around and headed for home. I really didn’t mean to challenge my friends back on Webster chucking firecrackers back and forth across the street, but my reappearance was taken as a temptation they couldn’t resist. The popping of the firecrackers made the sky look curiously grey, brown, and light with the flashing of report. I zoomed through the battle again, left my bike running, and ran upstairs to grab my power supply. I’ve always wished my battery would last longer than an hour, but never more than in that moment.

I arrived at the 222 Club and Jenö was all set up. I set up quickly and we embarked upon my debut evening playing one for one. I don’t usually like spinning like that. Somehow I turned out to be such a sensitive plonker that I want to feel the journey of a DJ set, and the push-me-pull-you challenges of two points of view at once is usually more than I can really get my ass around. I wanna dance, and as soon as something get’s in the way of the flow I become thoughtful, want to sit down, and then want to go home. But this, yes here’s the exception, was remarkable. It took us about an hour to find one another, but we did. And the night was challenging, Jenö bailed me out of a couple tricky mixes, and I was ready with the loop button to make sure there was time for his mixes as well. It really came alive. It worked. I loved it.

After it was over, and it went much too fast, I was ripe and wide open with the music, a smiling Tim, a sweaty and beautiful Mollie, a sweetly smiling Nikki, a grinning and radiant Carmen, a beautifully grooving Zephyr, a cheering man who really hoped I’d play ‘Mother Earth’ (so I did) and a room full of people dancing, and cheering and feeling the musical collaboration, I packed everything and headed outside. On the sidewalk were all my friends, delighted, and ready to go to breakfast. So we raced across town and had a wonderful time eating, talking, laughing, and just hanging out. It was 5:30 am before I got to bed. As I lay my head onto the pillow I was grinning because I was the best kind of exhausted. I slept like a log.

Saturday was a little blip on the radar screen. I completed the last touches of the Soñando Contigo remix I’ve been working on for Kiko Navarro… my second completed remix this week. It’s never really done until you’ve played it out in a club. I learned a lot about the remix by playing it on Friday. The synthetic toms were too loud, the looping theta wave chords were actually not repetitive enough, and the vocals could actually be about 2 db louder, but it was the cheering of the audience in the last 1/3 of the song which really taught me the most. So I spent the day re hydrating, and adding the last touches to the mix. Then I had pizza on my living room floor with Bob, and we went out to see the Hulk with Abel. What I thought about the Hulk movie isn’t worthy of an entire journal entry, but it was wonderful to reconnect with Abel, and to really spend some quality time with Bob. Good friends, and really good times.

Then sunday was a dream. I had been waiting for days for Megan to come back from her trip up to lake county, and a yoga retreat and by sunday at 1:30 pm I was fed up. So I took a walk and pulled up a chair at Café du Soliel and dug back into my third read of ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife.’ If you haven’t read it, and are anything like me, you should read it. It’s the best read along these lines I’ve found in many years. So there I was laughing, bothering the people around me, and then I burst into tears, which sent the people at the tables closest to me packing. Crazy-boy is laughing and then crying, and they were outta here. I smiled, and read on. Megan returned, we met up on the corner, kissed and kissed, and walked a while together. We went to delicious Indian food, and talked and talked. We hung out until moments before Sunday Soul began.

The show was amazing. Great turn out, loving and beautiful conversation, and loose mixing of music I love. Loved and loose. That’s the way I like it. It was a joy and a pleasure to rage thoughtlessly through music I’ve come to adore, playing my own remix twice, and singing a few of my favorites, making up junk, and just trying to radiate some of the love and relief I was feeling. I felt a reciprocal flow of energy, and after three and a half hours I wanted to play another three and a half hours. Brett showed up at the last song, and he and Tre begged me to keep it going. I had already offered the dedication, something you miss unless you’re in the chat, and had to excuse myself.

By 2:30 am my face was washed, teeth brushed, in cargo shorts and a clean t-shirt laying on my living room floor with my eyes closed. A smile broke out over my face as I realized just how changed I was from Thursday evening. There I was, loved and beautiful, done meditating and ready to drift off to sleep. All I had to do was get up, and get into bed.

Is it the release of energy? Is it the exchange? How is it possible that the world can change, without the circumstances of my life which I deem to be a “problem” having shifted in the least? It is not an illusion… because it’s monday afternoon now and I am light as a feather, clear headed, rested, and listening back to Sunday Soul, working hard, and with purpose. These dreams are real, and I am loved, feel loved, calm, centered, and beautiful.

Whatever it is, I want to say thank you. I wish you all of this lightness, and happiness in return. I want to be the agent of that light in your life. If not from my conversation, then from my lips. If not from my kisses, then from my music. If not from my recordings, then please let light come from my words. Not as a surrogate, or any kind of object for your use, but as a voice in the breeze, a rush of energy in the passing wind, or a distant sound to remind you that you are loved, and you are beautiful too.