On Being a DJ
I like a lot of music and lately have been pretty obsessed with getting my living room set up just right. It’s become a bit of an after-work routine to put on an album and just let it wash over me as I sit in the chair in the middle of the room. There’s been many a night where I just put on one album after another, smoke a little, and just let the day pass away, a type of meditation if you will.
As I was talking with a friend, I realized that I really, really value music. I have easily two hundred CDs, over a hundred albums, subscribe to two different streaming services (one to sort of scout new releases and the other to listen (they actually stream CD quality tracks)), and an external hard drive that probably has thousands of tracks.
As I continued talking, I also touched on my listening set up and how I finally got some of the look I wanted in the corner of the living room. It became easier to convice my wife about it when I realized it really was a shrine, an altar.
She’d complained that my visual art choices made it seem like a college kid’s dorm room (a Pink Floyd flag, the four Beatles (each framed and put up on a wall), and a Grateful Dead bandana thumb-tacked to the stereo cabinet).
As we were talking, I described Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and the Grateful Dead as my “holy trinity.” So using the language of shrine or altar was a word…
