Labour and Love

Rikki Ililonga - Love Is So Strange

Covid didn’t change things terribly for me. I was already in a state of isolation, after having to leave Canada when work permit woes finally caught up with me. Since I’d lived there in a non-permanent state for a decade and barely scraping by because of that, the only person I could turn to in the US was my mother. So, faced with a sudden reality back in May that I had to go, I travelled 2000 miles back to a place I’d left many many years before.

But the mileage wasn’t the greatest distance.

For a bit over a year I’ve been languishing and growing rounder in the middle out in the green woody suburbs of Houston, a place that for me represents sweating even at night, while having to drive everywhere when not dying of an allergy flare-up.

Joni Mitchell (and Janet Jackson, and Pinhead Gunpowder) sang to us that we don’t know what we’ve got ‘til it’s gone, but I have to disagree. I know exactly what I had, and I never doubted it while I had it.

Because of my shaky resident status in Vancouver, I lived for close to eleven years with one arm tied behind my back (inside joke, it was my good arm). The only thing I had to give in return for all the support I kept receiving was love. I talked to everyone I could, I helped wherever I was able to, and I shared opportunity whenever it was presented.

But the greatest way to give my love back, not just to my friends, but (thinking naively) to the city itself, was by giving it a soundtrack. If I’m honest with myself, that barely mattered to most people who chose to receive my love-gift by proxy of where they spent their money. A funny thing about deejaying at bars is that there are only three groups of people who take note of what you’re doing besides yourself: The friends that have popped by, the odd person who stops at the DJ booth on their way to the washroom and asks you a song title, and the employees of the bar who hopefully think you’re a welcome alternate to listening to the same Spotify playlists over an eight hour stretch, five times a week.

I miss playing records for people. I miss the fun of playing that one song I’ve been saving for the right moment, when I know that special person is close by and I’m playing this just for them, anticipating the moment it reaches their ears and they turn to look at me and smile and I know I’ve just given them a little moment of joy. That moment when I’m starting to feel a bit stuck in a routine, and I suddenly see a familiar face and my spirit lifts a bit with a jolt of why I do this strange task, setting the mood for a night out to escape the bullshit of every day modern life.

I also miss the slow drag of the hours before playing when I wish I had the night off actually, because I’m about to lug a heavy-ass crate of inconsequentiality to a bar where the majority of clientele couldn’t give a rat’s ass that I’ve spent hours digging through hefts of music, spent a whack of money on increasingly expensive vinyl that I’ll then destroy slowly by playing it over and over again in a drunken low lit environment. I miss getting to the bar and cursing at the state of disarray the DJ station has been left in by the last fool who has given themselves over to the same foolhardy belief that somehow any of this really matters. I miss walking around after getting everything set up, checking the sound, the volume levels. It’s more than the cursory run-through it actually is (because at a bar or taproom all I’m actually doing is ensuring I’m not causing everyone to have to yell even louder over each other). No, its a parade lap. I’m warming myself up, doing zig zags here and there to the attention of anyone curious enough to notice, and to announce that I’m now taking over: a human being in control, not an algorithm.

I AM A HUMAN RADIO STATION.

I even miss the end of the night, when the last sloppy patrons won’t leave. When I just want them all gone, so I can break everything back down, get my money, crack a joke with the staff about the overall personality of that particular night. Every night has a personality. I miss putting all the records back that didn’t quite make it into their sleeves because of the pace of the night. Every night has its own pace. I miss humping that heavy crate of records out the door and lighting a cigarette while I wait for a cab. I miss the exhaustion of the whole routine as I try to wind myself down at 3 am, when my mind has been functioning three songs ahead of itself for the past five hours. That’s a thing that is hard to get across to people while it’s happening, I think. I’m always halfway in the moment, and simultaneously fifteen minutes ahead of myself. I’m always drawing a line, usually in chunks of at least three songs at a time: the song currently playing, the song cued up next, and if the one to follow that will either keep us all locked into this groove or change directions, and how drastically or subtly I’ll do that. It’s always about drawing a line, drawing with sound. Like with visual art, I’m constantly making decisions and experiments that may or may not work, for the sake of the overall end result. And they’re decisions most people don’t hear but just as in a completed drawing or painting I’ve done, I know where they are, underneath the surface. I know what led to what, how windy the road was from start to finish. I enjoy reflecting on this at the end of the night.

Covid didn’t take this away from me. I’d already lost it. But it’s a bit bruising to think that even with going back to Vancouver, that those nights may be gone.

But this is love. It comes, it goes, it mystifies.

The music I share is my love: for myself, for you, for the people who’ve made it, and for the people who didn’t even know they needed it.

Like what I’m doing here? Let me know by suggesting it to someone else that may like it. Not into this song? Stick around for the next one, it may be what you didn’t know you needed! Remember, there are only two genres of music here at SERMONS!: good and bad, and I have to much to do to waste time on bad music.