The Audience is More Important Than You

Earlier this year I had a really visceral negative reaction to performing (if most DJing can even be called that) in the ecosystem we unfortunately are navigating right now. Over time I was sort of able to see a different side of it and inject some optimism into my life but it’s been an ongoing process to change my approach to things because if I keep doing things the same way I have been I’m almost always going to get the same results; most of which have proven to not make me feel good. There’s a lot of valid criticism around displaying or performing your art these days and the watered down displays of “art” that we’re invited to pay $25 to see at run down venues with one barely functioning bathroom. A lot of the time I feel like I’m invited to play a role of an “audience member”, a necessary piece of the puzzle whose main importance these days seems to be to give validity to the “performer”. It feels like the scene of these performances and nightlife in particular is a lot of times a manufacturing of this “audience” that you can then use to present as a homogenized whole, a frankenstein-eqsue Being that serves the function of saying “this audience has been created in response to my art” and then can be turned into content, displayed, profited off of, and leveraged to sell more performances. It makes sense that this is the natural byproduct of a time where your internet following is a form of currency, and that being the only language we know has to then be translated into our real-life experiences. The problem is that in-person audiences are a one-time, never replicated again, living breathing thing.

A fact I love is that there are so many ways to shuffle a deck of cards that every time you shuffle a deck, it is almost guaranteed to be an order that has never been seen before. It feels like the same can be said about the crowd you enter at any given event. The people, the energy they exude, the mental headspace they’re in that night, all play roles to creating this beautiful disgusting collection of people temporarily fused together for the night. The same friends I force to come to shows at gunpoint will be in a different headspace every time they come, especially as their excitement waters down with each subsequent event. I like to imagine that there is a “build it and they will come” methodology to these sorts of things, but in our timeline now where every single thing you do must be profitable and there are approximately 1 million events on any given night in nyc, it’s almost impossible to weather the storm to get there. In the context of DJing, like most things, I’ve seen that the spectrum of a DJ gig must simultaneously be extremely important and also not matter at all. I’ve been lucky enough to see both ends of this, and feel like I can sort of start to articulate the magic that permeates the spaces they occur in, which mainly lies in the conversation the DJ is having with the audience through music. I’ve seen recently the resurgence of referring to DJs as “Selectors”, what seems to be an effort to differentiate and elevate people from the mass influx of DJs and the sometimes negative connotation that title has now. It’s interesting though because now using selector as a more distinguished title, it also realizes and reclaims the fear that a lot of DJs have, that people will realize they are not performing, they are simply playing other people’s music akin to a human aux chord. Prompting in-person and social media displays of performance: high-energy technical transitions, gimmicks, and so on, to become a Selector it seems a person has to denounce this element of performance and return to the root of what is important in a dance / nightlife scene: the music. Being the person who selects what songs are played in a space where people go to dance and most importantly, have fun, is an extreme honor. It also carries with it the responsibility to be a member of the crowd while you are making these song selections.

A lot of rhetoric around DJing recently seems to be that being the one who is DJing frees you from the crowd and in some contexts places you above them. The archetype of the socially awkward DJ who feels most comfortable behind the decks. Architecture of spaces and this new role of the DJ as the center of the space is a conversation for a different time, but the concept of it is important for this. That conversation between the person selecting music, and the people who are listening to this music in many cases for times for the first time, is something special and should in its best moments function as this gravitational force you feel and want to be consumed into. The heavy emotional and physical weight of a good dance floor creates this feeling of permanence, you don’t want to leave it and neither do these the strangers or better yet temporary partners that are surrounding you. Or you surrounding them. This is at odds with the modern approach to marketing, of getting as many of your friends and people you vaguely know into a space to play music at them. Many of my friends do not have the same interest in the genres of music that I do, or the same approach to a night out, or differing opinions on what events are worth spending the no longer insignificant amount of money required these days to go to, and that’s because they are my friends and I want that diversity of people in my everyday life. Harkening to the other end of the spectrum mentioned earlier, what we’re doing in the grand scheme of things is not that important. Not every event needs to be sold out, packed wall to wall with people, the bar overflowing with money that is dangled in front of the organizers like a carrot that you can get a piece of if you bring in enough people. You’re playing music, and what happens after that is a lot of times out of your control. And that’s what is so great about it. You create a small conversation and space that is temporarily alive and will die when the night ends, but is important for the people there in that moment. This conversation is a lot of times also with people you have never met before, something that is exceedingly rare these days in our ability to masterfully create and bring with us mobile comfort zones. But these are people that you can’t find in your everyday life, that are drawn to what you are trying to say right now with what you are playing and your ability to talk to them through this music.

I struggle with this a lot, not making eye contact, not checking up on the energy of the floor, not coming out from behind the booth to see how it sounds, etc. A dissolution of this comfort zone membrane is required of me to interact with and get to the part of this that is fulfilling not only for me but for the people in the crowd. The experience of fulfillment I have gotten when I have a great night of dancing is something I have been trying to think about and figure out how to create so I can give that to other people. That is the feeling I’ve discovered is the most beautiful, and I want to share beautiful things with people. Being in this temporarily existing environment akin to domain expansion for any fellow anime nerds out there feels amazing; a space where everyone is connected by a common thread and if you want to follow that thread to a deeper connection with a stranger you can, but at the very baseline we are all enjoying this together with no expectation that it should be anything else other than something enjoying together right now. These versions of ourselves are alive right now and will die when we get home and that is a good thing. For the times I am DJing I have figured out now that I should simply be trying to find a way to pay that feeling forward. Anyways, here’s my favorite Britney Spears Toxic Remix.