i keep coming back to this thing where it’s about the process.

my saturday is different from most people’s saturday, i imagine. i’m not saying that’s a good or bad thing. but i do tend to make my morning coffee around 5pm. which sounds really lazy, i know. but it’s a race after that point. well not a race exactly. but there is a timetable. following several days of late-night timetables. and saturday coffee is the catapult. it’s the first thing. item one on the agenda. the initial establishment of control over

shit, speaking of timetables

sxsw is a storm of tourists and talent, idiocy and magic, glorious incandescent moments and ugly booze-soaked truths.

over the course of 17 days, i had 14 gigs. and after sleeping most of sunday, i feel vaguely rested enough to do a post-game analysis. now officially, sxsw lasts something like 10 days, but the first rising winds of the storm come early. you feel it one midnight. something in the air. you’re standing out front one of your regular spots, and the crowd trickling by sounds different. the crackles of laughter are louder, the swagger of your average posse is on tilt. something is coming. something is on its way.

maybe it’s the first person that introduces themself as from out of town. and they never quite have to fully explain it, other than, “i’m just here early.” and oddly, you know what they mean.

i’ve never dj’ed so much in such a concentrated amount of time. is that right? that must be true, because i can’t think of a longer stretch of consistent days with gigs. i’m actually not tired, well maybe a little. but it’s a ready-for-action sort of tired. shout-outs to all my people at Clive Bar, HandleBar, the Lost Well, Mohawk (where i didn’t spin this year, but instead staffed for a day, and… extra respect to the Mohawk family for just being all-around badass), and Red Headed Stepchild (one of my newest homes).

this recap is in no particular order, and will probably include swears.

i got to see exactly one performance with which i had no professional involvement. the Holladay Brothers performed at a private party hosted by Kasita. this description is awful and reductive, but it was a lampshade lightshow set to percussive electronic music. i can’t even properly describe what their set was like, but if you ever get the chance, please go see that shit. it was bonkers, in the best possible way. some of my friends worked up the theory that they must be the children of antique store magnates, who one weekend were tasked with testing a huge amount of lamp inventory, but fate had other plans.

i was actually playing later that same night. i mean, we had already set-up and soundchecked, so it wasn’t like i was being totally irresponsible, but i did duck out for an hour-ish to scope out the lampshade madness. oh, quick shout-out to austin pedi-cabbers, without whom i would’ve been unable to jet from Rainey Street to the East Side and back in about an hour. this must have been… the Friday of sxsw Interactive? sorry, i’m really bad about days. whatever day it was, George and i crushed it at Clive Bar. that crowd was thick, and we were killing it. and i usually don’t say that, but i know i must have been on point, because i had an acquaintance tell me the next day that they were watching me perform, totally feeling it, and they didn’t realize it was me. which strangely i feel like is one of the best compliments i’ve ever received.

what else… my marathon mix at HandleBar. my Timeless Tuesday weekly at HandleBar was extended instead of being bumped. so i started around 8pm, and did a solid six-hour set until 2am. this might have been… the first day of sxsw Music? because the badges were out in full force. oh that’s what i was going to say! the universe is not without a sense of balance. this was the first night of sx where someone asked to take their picture with me. which… is kinda hilarious to me. i’m just not that dude. sometimes people will take pictures of me while i’m playing, but most of the time i think it’s the novelty of someone dj’ing with vinyl. but these two lovely girls had been hanging out while i was setting up and for maybe an hour of my set before they were off into the sx night. and before they left, they told me they had been digging the music, and one of them asked for a pic with me. which was really sweet, and a huge ego boost. followed by an amusing ego check by a different, much more unimpressed girl, who… after coming up and requesting the Weeknd, and after me responding that i didn’t have any Weeknd, she looked utterly shocked and said, “No Weeknd. Not any??” me: “nope, none at all.” there was a pause, and then she gave me this look of complete and total revulsion… and then she immediately turned around and left the bar. balance. for every person who thinks you’re a decent performer, someone else thinks you are the lamest shit ever. (and i’m a Weeknd fan, for the record. but that was just way outside my musical path for the night.) i really think the thought process for her was, “A club that doesn’t play the Weeknd is not a club that I need to be at. I’m out.” which… i sorta respect the conviction. but damn.

i mean, an hour later i had people going off on the dancefloor, so it’s not like she threw me off or anything. and actually, i kinda forgot about that interaction until now.

sidenote: drunk dudebros ruin everything. you know what will always kill a hype dancefloor with ladies going off? answer: drunk dudebros being creepers.

the rest of the week of sxsw Music, i had taken up nightly residence at Red Headed Stepchild. i’m a couple months into a Saturday weekly there, and they were gracious enough to invite me to basically be their sxsw entertainment for any night i didn’t have a conflicting gig. it’s a cool spot, and my staff there hold it the fuck down on the regular. it’s a small place, and on first glance you’d think that there isn’t room for a dj. and you’d be correct, but i make it work. or at least i try to. it’s a challenge because there is just no space to spread out gear or records, so there’s no space unused. or as i’ve come to think of it, there’s no room for error. it is extremely difficult to dj with that kind of space constraint, particularly for me spinning strictly vinyl, and with no barrier between me and the crowd. and i absolutely love it. something about the challenge just makes me work harder. it makes the experience more kinetic for myself and (i imagine?) the people seated nearby or posted up beside me. you can totally mess up my set. you could bump the turntables and make them skip. but do you really want to be that person? because it will be obvious to everyone nearby watching that it was you. because i will be pointing at you, and shaking my head. the level of difficulty is absurdly high, just from a physical and logistical standpoint, so when i’m on it or in the zone, it makes it that much more special.

more frequently than any other venue, at Red Headed Stepchild i was told numerous times throughout the weeks that people enjoyed the music i’d been playing. i encountered disbelief that i was actually using records for the entire night. “Wait, everything you’ve been playing was all on vinyl?” yes, exactly. and since there’s no barrier, i’d usually just sort of gesture to what they could see directly in front of them.

it is personally humbling and profoundly gratifying to hear people tell me that they enjoy the music i’m playing. i cannot emphasize that enough. because i know from over a decade of experience that most of the time, people don’t care. 90% of the time, people are barely aware there’s a dj at all. and if you can reach even one person in an evening, and compel them to come up to you and say something positive, it’s a good night. that’s a small victory built on hours worth of work, and often the best outcome you could possibly hope for in terms of crowd response.

i am incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to do something i love as performance for other people’s entertainment. and this year in particular, i’ve been going after it with more committment and focus than i ever have before. and i am more grateful for the experiences of the past few weeks than i could ever properly articulate.

i know we Austin residents can get jaded about sxsw. i’m just as guilty as anyone else on that front over the years, and absolutely it can be a flood of ill-tempered tourists and bad behavior. but it can also be great moments of shared musical experience. fleeting, but no less meaningful connections over momentary mutual enthusiasm between people who would never otherwise meet. in many ways, i didn’t get to experience sxsw this year, i didn’t get to check out all the free parties or secret shows. instead it was something more special for me personally: i got the chance to consistently be a part of other people’s sxsw experience. for an hour, or for a night, i was their musical entertainment. me… just me, and whatever records i felt appropriate for a given moment. that seems crazy, and somewhat unavoidably true. and i don’t think that realization has ever felt as real as it has this year.

it was a marathon of gigs, no doubt. am i tired? yes. i slept pretty much all of sunday, and today i ran essential errands around noon and then pretty much set up camp on my couch. and tomorrow i have my regular Timeless Tuesday weekly at HandleBar. am i burnt-out? no. no, i am not. i haven’t dj’ed in two whole days. i’m ready.

someone asked me a while ago what it feels like when i’m dj’ing. nobody had ever asked me that before, or not in those terms. people ask what i’ve seen. or people ask if i have any crazy stories. or people ask if i have any moments that i remember, either glorious or awful. but nobody had ever asked me what it feels like, in the act of dj’ing, when i’m on the stage or behind the booth. it caught me off guard, and i rambled for a minute as honestly as i could, but i didn’t have a real answer for her at the time. and i still don’t.

it feels like breathing. but not really, or not exactly, it feels like exhaling a breath i didn’t know i’d been holding for days.

it feels like… when you sit down in a coffee shop and settle in, and situate your coffee mug within reach and your bag to the side, and you open your journal to a blank page, and you draw out your pen and you click the top so it’s ready to write even if you’re not. it feels like that. like that *click*. not like a blank page. not like a clean slate. but like you’re about to cover a clean slate with graffiti. like you’re about to paint a blank page with ink from your soul.

it feels like breathing something unwritten. it feels like wild possibility is at your fingertips, and things can go all kinds of wrong or all kinds of right. it feels like magic.

i don’t know how to describe it. or how to explain it. but i keep thinking about it since she asked, and i still don’t have an answer.