bm2001 saw irrational geographic camped at 9:45 infant. we had no sound system, but there was a sound system on within thumping distance nearly all the time, and some nights there were 6-16 or so systems booming around us.
if you, gentle reader, don’t know about the dj thing, here it is brief. left record is playing, at a certain beat. the people are dancing. you play the right record just in your headphone, changing the speed of it until you get them pretty much locked together. then, you fade the right record up, and the left one down, some undefined amount of time later. thing is, they seldom synch 100%. this is analog, and 100% doesn’t happen much in real life. so as the dj, you have to reach out and touch the right side, or the left – whichever is faster – and often just a feather of a touch. this slows it down the weeist of bits, and there you have it.
for me, it’s a total left-right thing. i never think those words of course, but it’s an ambidexterous experience, and one that is very spatial.
friday night, with something upwards of 9 sound systems blaring, all from different directions, i lay sleeping. no earplugs. the sound systems’ rhythms phased in and out and through one another, the vibrations literally blowing on the thick waves of playa in the air. i became aware of fitfully trying to dj, finally sitting up in bed and reaching out to touch the record on the right, which in reality was one of the systems in that direction. i was trying to mix the systems.
it was good for a laugh, when i realized it, and put in earplugs. most of burning man, when we were in our camp, was a chaotic study of phase.
by caliban
