Disorderly Conduct
Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get.
Yes you do.
If you're lucky, you get 0.002% cocoa-solids-coated jaw-breaking-toffee/denture-gumming-nougat that nobody else wants ... and the plastic tray in the bottom layer is empty and turned upside down.
If you're lucky.
99.999% of the time you don't even get that.
99.999% of the time you don’t even get the mildewed and cat-pissed old chocolate lost down the back of the sofa twenty years ago.
Besides … old ‘Gumpy’ could barely read, so the fact that he didn’t know what any of the pictures represented isn’t really sufficient basis for an aphorism about universal truths, is it now?
Or is it?
No ... upon reflection, no … it’s not.
But “Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get, if you’re illiterate” or “Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get, if your mother’s a sadist who keeps lying to you about what it is before popping it into your mouth” whilst true just don’t have the same ring to them, do they?
So poetic licence was taken.
At this stage in the proceedings, I really should recommend you read Julian Barnes’ book/novel/whatever A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, before I get distracted/interrupted, my mind wanders (or whatever) and I forget to do just that.
So … read Julian Barnes’ book/novel/whatever A History of the World in 10½ Chapters.
There … I said it.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, yeah … before I forget … you should read it because I don’t normally read ‘literary’ novels ¹ but I’m glad I read that one. In particular, the (unnumbered) half-chapter (Parenthesis, as it happens) is particularly relevant to what I’m writing here and is the reason why I remembered the novel at this time — when you’ve read it, come back and re-read this … and you’ll probably get the whole “We must love one another and die” vs “if your mother is an illiterate sadist” thing and understand why it sprang to mind now.
I should also mention Walter Moers’ ‘Zamonia series’ of books.
I don’t normally like reading things in translation if I can help it, but the English translations here are superb … and your mileage won’t vary so much as you’ll be walking on Moers’ left rather than on his right, as it were, so the view is different but not hugely so.
It starts, appropriately enough, with The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear ² and is probably best described as a sort of Gulliver’s Travels Through the Looking Glass, if Gulliver were more than one person, if that makes sense — read it/them and see.
Anyhow … where was I?
Oh, yes … Life is … or, rather, isn’t … or, perhaps is after all .. no, upon reflection, it isn’t … like a box of dyslexic colocates of catechols.
A bit like my output here.
There’s someone in my head … and it isn’t me.
Like everyone, the real me is a closely guarded secret — so closely guarded in fact that, sometimes, I couldn’t say with certainty that I even know him myself.
There must be a real me … somewhere beneath the performance … but I have so little time for him that, when he is, I’m far too distracted to notice. So, I really wouldn’t know for sure when he’s around let alone who he is; if I’m not performing, I’m busy thinking either about performing or else about other things than myself — I’m not at the top of my itinerary or on my speed-dial … I don’t have time even for my people to speak to my own people to schedule ‘some me time’.
That’s true even when I’m not actually standing in front of a crowd/audience; okay … dancefloor … but even that entails my playing a role both before and after my set — to some/many I am a creature apart and … as I have learned the hard way myself … it’s best if we don’t learn that our idols are (disappointingly) human, so I keep the faith on behalf of all of us ³; otherwise it’s too much like walking in on your parents having sex on the sofa, cosplaying some has-been characters from a bygone era that isn’t even far enough in the Past to be almost cool again ⁴.
I’m either ensuring I stay on brand … or else ensuring I maintain the illusion on behalf of the profession … but I’m always ‘representing.’
And then there’s Medium … or the myriad other channels which, over the years, have been vehicles for … for what?
Who … what … exactly am I here?
I don’t go by any of the names or noms de plume under which I operate in any of my other fields of endeavour.
Why not?
What do I hope to achieve here?
Well, I suppose it’s been a way of separating out my professional personae from each other. I didn’t used to and they all bled into each other.
That was the intent though; the brand wasn’t ‘this character’ or ‘that persona’ but me … the fact that I had all these different strings to my bow … all these different talents, skills, experiences, knowledge … that I was versatile and could switch between all of them at a moment’s notice … without warning even … be whoever and whatever you … or anyone else … wanted or needed me to be — engage me, book me, hire me, employ me … I’m all you need and more besides … more than you ever knew you needed … more than you never knew you needed.
As a DJ, I quickly graduated from playing one to ten different genres of music in next to no time … had five residencies by the end of my first year; from zero to local hero … the busiest DJ on the underground circuit by far … without even knowing how it happened … simply because people just assumed I could deliver whatever they wanted/needed — they didn’t bother to ask, just informed me they’d booked me without enquiring whether, or not I even had any appropriate music let alone whether I‘d ever played any of it out before.
And, so, I stepped up, learned about whatever new genre it was to be this time … and, more significantly, what was going to be required of me by the cognoscenti … those with refined tastes not merely anticipating but accustomed to hearing the bleeding … ‘edge’ … beats and ‘sick’ sounds of the underground — for whom even underground anthems, let alone the sounds of the mainstream, were far too last week for me to get away with playing next week.
And, so, I had to carve out a niche … create a brand … reason for people to recognise that I didn’t only play what they’d booked me for but all the rest too.
So, it was a matter of no little annoyance when a promoter turned to me one evening, five years into my career … after I’d played a different genre of music for him every week for nine weeks in a row … and said “That set was amazing … you should play stuff like that more often”.
After five years, how could he not know that at least a third of my bookings were for precisely the three different genres I’d mashed together that evening … not know that at least a third of my bookings came about precisely because people wanted me to mash those very genres together in the unique way I did it … not know that I’d just as contentedly stand there and play ‘ping pong’ ⁵ with another (or multiple) DJ(s) for eight hours?
Didn’t he know that I was a … if not the … mashup specialist par excellence? Didn’t he know that I could play anything and everything together and make it all sound coherent? Didn’t he know that my signature style wasn’t any genre but all of them? Didn’t he know that you didn’t book me to play a genre of music you booked me to play me?
And in other walks of life it was the same: what skills/knowledge/experience did you want to engage/employ me for … the technical ones? The Psychology? The languages? As a teacher/tutor/trainer/instructor? In what fields of expertise exactly? I can mix and match them all. Want me to teach you English as a foreign language by way of discussing Cartesian Dualism in German as it pertains to the neurological bases of human psychology all whilst explaining the basics of beatmatching en passant to fixing your laptop which hasn’t been working properly since you tried installing an external soundcard? Sure … oh, wait … I just did.
Want me suited and booted? Let me just get my tie and cuff-links — I’m sure your clients will appreciate how tastefully understated they are.
And before I knew it, nobody knew what to do with me — I was everything to everyone and thus nothing to anyone and they couldn’t keep up … couldn’t keep it all straight in their heads … couldn’t remember.
So I needed a brand … a strand that you could follow through the labyrinthine passages of your experience of me.
And I created one … one that spanned the lot … ran the gamut.
And it was “Oomph! Fuck me, I’m good — you’d better belt up, baby … I‘m gonna drive you crazy!”
From 80bpm chillout to 178bpm ‘Jump Up’ D’n’B … from Zen Buddhism to the latest developments in ‘cloud’ based delivery of enterprise level microservices … I’d engage with it (and you) all with passionate enthusiasm —even if it was chilled out, it was seriously chilled out.
And people still didn’t get it.
Or rather they did … but they got confused about it.
What they remembered was the cock-sure macho posturing … the filth and sleaze … not the reasons for it — they remembered the surface flash, not the substance beneath … noticed what I did, but not why … couldn’t separate it all out and see each element independently … could see neither the wood for the trees, nor the trees for the woods.
Well, that didn’t go according to plan, did it?
Not so much ‘Oomph!’ as ‘Oops!’
So … Medium … the Eternal Twilight of the Sunless Mind … the autoriotography of my abnormal psychology ⁷.
Where I get to be all that I can be ⁸.
Up to a point that is— I keep it separate from a lot of other personae/roles, but it’s a useful outlet for my literary pretensions at least … lets me mash up a lot of concepts and words and such in ways my other roles don’t allow … and, conversely, allows me to split those others up more rigidly because each one is a sell in its own right rather than a feature of ‘the whole package’.
So, I don’t do one thing or the other here … I never know what I’m going to think or say next … not often anyway … can’t decide what to write about in advance — the first thing I know is that the idea is there in my head, fully formed, expecting me to execute it … like it owns my head space.
I don’t do Lessons From Life … or Politics … or Socioeconomic Analysis … or Psychology … or Travel … or Education … or Technology … or anything that requires a ‘column’ with a capital/uppercase Subject Area heading — you can get those from all the other, worthier, more accomplished specialists in their fields, who write … day in, day out … about their vertical market and niche brackets.
What I am … what you get from me here … is a box of chocolates.
I’m a bit like Life, really … unpredictable … not always a welcome surprise … sometimes a bit wearying … even a bit repetitive on occasion.
But it’s never dull and you do never know what’s coming next.
And in a world of vertical markets of self-help listicles and mindful meditations made of yoghurt ⁹, that’s gotta count for something, right?
So, sit back .. relax … hold on tight … enjoy the wild ride through the night.
—
¹ I haven’t bothered to read any other of his works, for example.
² As you can probably guess, it sprang to mind due to the ‘½’ in the title.
³ You, me and even those who are there to worship some other performer— we need to be supportive of each other and maintain the illusion on behalf of our peers too.
⁴ Batman and Catwoman? Well, the ’60s were cool, yeah … Xena and Hercules? Not so much.
⁵ One track each, no warning; you have no idea what they’re going to play next and, at most, two minutes to make your mind up how to follow it — I’ve ended up playing psytrance, dubstep, breaks, pop, rock, d’n’b, electro, chillout, Elvis, Kylie, Madonna, the Monkees, NiN, house, metal, techno, hiphop, you-name-it sets ⁶.
⁶ It is the most fun I have ever had with my clothes on!
⁷ ‘Abnormal Psychology’ … it’s a whole branch/field of Psychology … and, if ever there were a title for my autobiography, that’s gotta be a front runner for it, no?
⁸ Ha … someone should take that line and use it for something — like … oh, I dunno … the military or something: “Join the Army/Navy/Airforce and be all you can be.”
⁹ Or do I mean Yoga? ¹⁰
¹⁰ Yoda?
