Making Things Happen VS Moving Things Around

Weekend in Toronto, Dancing My Queer Asian Ass Off, and questions on creating

Hello again, mysterious beautiful faces in the internet. I hope everyone is bracing through this strange Hamilton weather. And if you are not from southern Ontario, then congratulations!

I just returned home after a night away in Toronto dancing at Subdivision supporting Roland Gonzalez and Toronto Hustle, and Kai Alce. It has been forever to spend more than a few hours in Toronto since everytime I visit it’s usually is to escape from a small city like Hamilton into a bigger city (losing yourself versus finding yourself, or are they just the same thing?). Toronto reminds me of everything about Hong Kong — passive aggression, well-dressed and snobby executives, shopping malls, and among many other peculiar things for someone who has been living my best hermit life just an hour away.

Having spent 23 years prior in Hong Kong made me appreciate a smaller city like Hamilton in its inventiveness — one that is not the same as “deserted” or “abandoned” but the meditative space it gives you to dig into a deeper understanding of yourself. Outside of all the blatant consumerism, Glamour, and convenience that is so accessible, if not being force-fed, how does one ground a creative energy and practice that rewards sustained nourishment and care?

Ron Trent, one of my House idols who produced the track “Manifesto” one of the line writes,

You need to ask yourself
What do you represent?
What do you present?
When you're done asking yourself these questions, what is your prescription?

In this twelve-minute track, or as the title suggests, Ron Trent’s manifesto of house music as his practice — stems from a historical place that is far beyond mankind’s history and long before House musical history. Fundamentally he is asking a basic question — what does your art stand for between re-presenting as a duplicate, extension of your being — or representing as your creation reaching into the many possible registers of power? And what does that power look like, sound like, or feel like?Ron Trent continues to acknowledge the many people that are connected to his practice:

“I represent the people
People that have come before me
I represent my people
I represent my brother
I represent my sister
I represent all the sons & daughters of the Earth that I hear stand forward & express themselves
.
I represent my people
I represent all things that I come from
The music that was played to me”

My friend and I arrived at the venue earlier than the crowd to catch Roland and TorontoHustle spin. I first heard them earlier this fall in the basement of a Hamilton club AndThenYou and have become a huge fan since then. The first time I took the dance floor by myself and danced like it was my living room and I pretend I just hired two private DJs to play my favorite music. To my surprise, they both remembered me from Hamilton and were shocked to hear that I am in town to show some support. Kai Alce (“Born in NY, Raised in the D, Living in A”) also played some heavy hitters with all the lows and highs turned up. I left shortly after at two. A straight couple is having a petty fight when the guy refused to carry his date’s coat.

Going back to the earlier point about deejaying as a representational practice, namely — situating house music as a social and collective experience, the send and return, the reveal and the secrecy, the blessing and the reciprocating dance back to the booth — these are the more instantaneous ways where that representation logic that Ron Trent talks about. But in addition to that, it also comes with social mapping and crediting knowledge: the dancefloor as an altar or a classroom, cartographically speaking — if we see each track as a node of knowledge stemming from a specific time and space, and the people behind who produced it, and the eventual deejay reproducing that experience on the dance floor.

I have been missing home and have been doing some research on house music productions in Hong Kong or in Asia and hopefully include them in my practice. I am slowly making a shape of a practice, although it comes in years, of what excites me creatively and socially. A friend told me that artists are sometimes self-obsessed in ways they crave reinvention but then instead of just making a whole new thing maybe just push around the existing pieces and see things in a new layout.

More writing to come, I promise! I am writing this at home, sorry for typos. This has no intellectual rigor but just for fun reading.

Listen to my latest mix here:

Some Reading Past Week:

Ron Trent, Prescription Co-Founder and Chicago Mainstay, on His Life in House Music

KEVIN SAUNDERSON: “BLACK PEOPLE DON’T EVEN KNOW THAT TECHNO CAME FROM BLACK ARTISTS”

Underground & Black - A Blog by Ash Lauryn