Four Years

Four years in Second Life has a way of seeming like a lot longer than four years of real time. Things change more quickly in our digital realm. People arrive, splash around in our lives, and vanish with a greater frequency than anywhere outside of live theater.

So for me, it means a lot to have been playing at Velvet for four years today. I took the gig without ever having been inside the place before, because Jasper mentioned in an IM that he was playing the dB's, and I was still trying to play hugely eclectic sets for apathetic crowds at mainstream venues. I had no idea there was a place like this in SL, where new releases might be celebrated, where weird bands from anyplace—who never managed to click into the mainstream—might have a home. And where I might as well.

I started out on Saturday nights, in roughly the same timeslot Mallory has now. I was still mainly a photographer in SL, and there was a bit of friction as to how much time I was suddenly siphoning into this new profession, but I knew from the moment I got Nicecast running on my machine, that this was what I wanted to do. It's what I had always done, from the days when I would stay up late at night making mix tapes for friends, or planning out a special playlist for a car trip to maximize the amount of songs I was eager to play for someone I could get into a limited time.

Within about a month, Jasper asked me if I would move to Sundays. I thought he was demoting me, so I said I would do it if I could take up four hours on the deadest day of the week, to stretch out, goof off and dig a little deeper into my collection. I've been there ever since. Three times now, I have hosted my 26.2-hour charity fundraiser at the club. It's where I log in nearly always.

My main goal as a dj is to play music I love for people who might love it, too. The highest order of compliment you can give me as a dj is telling me that you bought something you heard at one of my sets. Well, and huge sums of cash, of course, but mainly that you liked something I shared at a set enough to embrace it as a part of your own collection.

My relationship with Velvet is a long, complicated one. In that way, it is much like the relationship people might have with a hometown. There have been times when I wanted nothing more than to flee from it into the night, but by the time I ever felt like that, Velvet had become too much a part of my SL-DNA for me to ever truly cut the cord and remain in SL for long. This is the place where I met so many of my cherished friends, played so many sets (at least 400, and counting).

Now I also function as the club's manager, where my goal has expanded into finding djs who also get a rush from playing a song they genuinely love for someone else, who light up when that someone grows to love it, too.

Four years is a long time in SL. Here's to four more.