Hats

In my forty plus years, I’ve worn a lot of unusual hats, meaning careers. I’ve been a chef, cooking a weekly dinner for fifty people; I’ve been a musician, banging up an alto saxophone for a marching band at college football games; I’ve been a tour guide, leading people on bar crawls through San Francisco.

For the past ten years, I’ve been installing lighting for thousand-people gay-sex parties. A lot of these hats, I don’t set out intending to wear. These jobs just kinda happen. For this job, I make large LED art pieces. I know a bunch of club promoters and DJ’s. These promoters host periodic gay-sex parties. I light up these spaces.

It’s not all unicorns and rainbows, as friction occurs when my aesthetic vision doesn’t agree with that of the event organizers. I prefer warm, brightly-lit red glows. People want to see whom their fucking, right? However, the current aesthetic trends towards Berlin bathhouse cum prison for dark, dark, dark. Even one bulb may be too bright. Club sound systems continually improve for louder and denser, but the lighting sensibility regresses towards candlelight, or even a couple of people waving cigarette lighters. At these events, the faces emerge from the darkness. I may need soon to learn how to read braille.

My fluttering, flickering pieces are too pretty for the crowds at these subterranean clubs. I’ve attempted brightness knobs so the organizers can turn down my pieces’ photonic volume. I may need to switch away from LEDs to a bunch of cracked glowsticks on a string.