Time Dilation at the DJ Booth
by Khashayar Mohammadi
I arrive at the station, disembodied. I’m brimming with images. I walk into the house. His house. Filled with mourners. A hall to welcome the black vested with cheese platters. The utter horror of being haunted by too many ghosts to keep track of in a line of sight. The panic of forgetting.
I set up my DJ Controller for the funeral. The problem with a crowd is that you miss things. Most people don’t discuss DJ sets in historical terms because a set is situated outside temporality. Time dilates at the DJ booth; watching the mourners dance awkwardly is worth the price of admission to the funeral.
The mild affections inspired by the wandering scholar of the end times dissipate in the reckoning of the four-to-the-floor beat. The bass drum on every downbeat setting the body’s rhythm to the thought-span of a single memory. The post-pandemic beat drop is a grand gesture toward the tombs of the dead, from one somatic rhythm to another within the few seconds of CUE/START => PLAY. The syncopated footwork of a universal climax. We are fading, heading into a climate disaster. Our backs are broken from capital. Only in words are we masters of our own broken back.
It has been only four bars and I feel like the song should be moving faster. As I’ve said, Time dilates at the DJ booth. The dancers don’t care how many times their thoughts are punctuated by the peppery high hats of a house beat, but they’re going to be itching for that snare, for that clap, for that ride for that 808. There are another sixteen bars before the emulated 303 bass even kicks in.
In the gap between a beat and another beat, there’s a sense of defamiliarization, a reversed stage where you’ll miss most of the show. I can’t make out every face, but there has been a lot of crying. The problem with death is that it pushes a frame upon remembrance. It’s a day to remember and my mind collects data for future remembrances. An occasion for an arbitrary push—to force a frame onto sweaty dancers listening to a dead musician’s favourite tracks. Yes, dead. My friend: dead. My dead friend the musician and his funeral.
In the blink of an eye the dancers are denuded, their skins folding in like crumpled paper. I breathe out and know that this communal breath sublimates our sweat as it travels through a ventilation shaft: the only path out of this funeral.
I cue up the next track, but there’s still eight bars left before the drop. The crowd is heavy with anticipation, heavy with tears. We assure all that tonight’s set will be uploaded to Bandcamp. We hand out a Kaddish that does not mention the name of god. We hand out a recommended list of remembrances. We receive our needed dose of goodbyes, but the knot does not untangle. The knot will never untangle.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Creator painting by Navideh Fahim
Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi (They/Them) is a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based Poet, Writer, and Translator. They were shortlisted for the 2021 Austin Clarke Poetry Prize, 2022’s Arc Poem of the Year award, The Malahat Review’s 2023 Open Season Award for poetry, and they are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Prize. They are the author of four poetry chapbooks and three translated poetry chapbooks. They have released two full-length collections of poetry with Gordon Hill Press. Their full-length collaborative poetry manuscript G is out with Palimpsest Press (fall 2023), and their full-length collection of experimental dream-poems Daffod*ls is forthcoming from Pamenar Press (fall 2023). @DearKestrel on Instagram.