This Is My Church

After the dj meeting last Wednesday, Tim and I started a weekly ritual that other djs at fig will continue. We mixed and recorded a three hour set. I kicked off the first hour and a half and Tim closed it up. Before I started, I lit some candles and meditated. Djing is a very spiritual experience for me. It’s one of the ways that I express myself. Something I’ve learned recently is when I express myself, I get closer to my inner spirit. I get closer to God. I believe that God flows through all things. When I am in touch with my feelings and emotions, I am in touch with that flow. God’s energy. Music is one way that I get in touch with this.

When I started out our new found ritual, there were still meetings going on and the volume needed to be low. I felt myself getting upset. I like music loud and I was looking at this ritual as a way to show off. It’s really hard to beat match with the volume low. Anger was welling up inside. How dare someone schedule a meeting during this sacred ritual. Pretty soon, I didn’t want to be around anybody. I wanted to be by myself. But was this really the point of the ritual? Why was I doing this anyway? We wanted to start this ritual to share it with others. Should I exclude others from my spiritual experience or invite them to watch or participate? Wanting to be alone was actually blocking me from expressing myself. It wasn’t true to what was happening. I wasn’t expressing to anyone else. I was keeping it within me. To express myself honestly in this situation meant to recognize those who were present and acknowledge the situation I was in. Once I told myself this, my mix shifted. It became more me. It became more real. More true.

The cool thing that I’ve noticed in my years of djing, is when I’m in touch with what’s going on inside me (ie. emotions), I am more in touch with the people around me and my surroundings. The music I pick seems to come naturally. I don’t even think about it. I get an urge to play something and I play it. If I get the urge to add effects or scratching, than I do that. It becomes very fluid, fun, exciting, dynamic. The music ebbs and flows with my emotions, and what I feel, others feel through the music. The crowd ebbs and flows with my emotions. It’s not all one-sided either. I pick up on other people’s energies too. As I said, when I’m in touch with myself, I’m in touch with others, too. The room becomes bound together with feelings flowing from one person to another.

--jonathan hood, resident dj