DJ Plead: On a Hillside in Eupen
Photography: Luke Brosnahan
Jarred is contemplating all that he has unearthed about himself over the past few months.
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Rows of greenhouses and vegetables and green-leafed archways lead the way to the Meakusma campsite. Jarred and I sit down on the hill by the pumpkin patch, under the only tree in the vicinity with fallen red rose petals. The rattle of the soundsystem where Jarred has just finished his set continues to shake the incline that we rest on. People continue to worship the imposing stack of speakers a short distance away from us. The sun drifts away. My sunglasses stop the falling star from piercing my eyes.
“How was is it,” I say, “with the crowd facing away from you?”
“It was so good,” says Jarred, his arms cradling his knees. “I could keep my eye on everyone and make sure that everything was working. Usually when I'm DJing, there's one guy who's standing in front of me, not dancing, just looking straight into my eyes, which completely throws me off.”
“Eye contact is the most intrusive mechanism.”
“Definitely.”
“I remember Skepta saying he wore sunglasses for a whole year because he felt that is the way to get into someone's aura. I don't know if he was being esoteric about it, but it does make sense. And, not to get too salacious too quickly, but even in the act of making love. You get eye contact involved and it intensifies to another level.”
Jarred laughs. “Something like that.”
“Even in that vein of love making, you're very much a collaborator.”
“Yeah.”
“Is it that second opinion that you very much value?”
“The thing I value the most from the collaborative process is that my ego falls away a lot and it's more about just working within the means of that collaboration and not overanalysing it and not taking anything too personally.”
“Yeah.”
”Because,” Jarred continues, “if you're making music alone, you're very much like, This is what I produced, and How are you people going to perceive it? Or Are people going to like this?”
“I get you.”
“Whereas, if you're making it in a collaboration, it's more about the dialogue between the other person and I feel like the reception of the audience is less in focus because you have this other person to interact with and go back and forth with, so you can just throw out ideas and if they stick, they stick, and if they don't, they don't. You're not just sitting there after you've written something being like, I don't know if this is going to work or not. It doesn't matter about that anymore once you're in a collaboration.”
The soft screams of young children frolicking around a nearby flowerbed are starting to merge with the rattle of the soundsystem’s bass.
“So,” I say, voice slightly raised, “where have you been based in Europe for the summer?”
“In Berlin.”
“Back in Berlin?”
“Yeah. I wish I could spend more time there, but the touring schedule has been quite intense this summer.”
“Where do you call home?”
“Sydney.”
“Are you going back to Sydney?”
“Yeah. I'll go back in November to Australia, but we'll see. I'm kind of not really based anywhere at the moment. I don't have a lease, as such.”
“And are you going back in Sydney because of visa issues or you just want to return home?”
“I want to return home. My sister is having a baby. I want to be around my parents. Yeah, just family reasons. Just to be around the family.”
“Yeah, fair.”
“In 2019, I did move to Europe but then the pandemic happened and that's three years ago and I'm different. I'm older now. I'm not in my twenties moving to Europe anymore. I'm well into my thirties, and, you know, I've got a different mindset about living in Europe. It's not to say that I won't be back.” Jarred lets out a dejected sigh. “Yeah, it's just — yeah.”
“I understand. I've moved back home to Dublin for the first time in three years.”
“Oh, really?”
“At the fore of my decision is family.”
“Yeah, Irish people are like this for sure, and the Lebanese. My Lebanese family is very much family focused. It's catholic also. I don't know if you're catholic. I'm guessing you are.”
“Culturally catholic.”
“Ok, yeah, exactly.”
“You know that kind of way?”
“That's what I mean. There is that focus on the family and as I've gotten older, especially once I ticked over to 30, you see your parents getting older.”
“Yeah.”
“And my grandmother is quite old and I don't want to miss out on anything, really.”
A large queue of people starts forming at one of the food stalls at the bottom of the hill.
“Going to Berlin and having that Australian community,” I say, “did you find that endearing and helpful or did you find it kind of stifling?”
“Yeah,” Jarred says, “the Australian people that I hang around with, I love them and they're my close friends, but I also speak German, so I have German friends there as well. I have a different insight into Berlin than any old Australian that moves there to be a graphic designer.”
I laugh. “The usual story.”
“You know what I mean?”
“Is the German from the Swiss connection?”
“Yeah, exactly. I'm half Swiss.”
“I speak a bit of French, but people who are bilingual or multilingual always tell me that with different languages comes a different personality.”
“Oh, for sure,” says Jarred. “When I speak German, I'm different. I mean, my capabilities have diminished a little bit, in terms of sense of humour and how much I can express myself about intimate and complicated subjects. I'm quite limited in a lot of ways, in German, so naturally my personality is more stiff. Language is imbued with what that culture is like, in a lot of ways, so once you start speaking that language, you do have a different personality because you're adopting —” Jarred ponders — “that culture, I guess, by speaking the language. I don't know if it's the same for you and French? I'm sure it is.”
“It is,” I say. “I do try and adopt that coolness and irreverence when I try and speak French.”
“It makes sense,” says Jarred. “You're also mimicking, right? So, when you're learning a language, you're mimicking the people that you're seeing and naturally you're just going to mimic them, not only in pronunciation and language, but also with mannerisms, right? Gestures change when you speak a different language and maybe the way you interact with the world, in general. You pick that up through the way that French people do it, or in my case, German people. You do the same, in one way or another.”
“No, definitely. I’ll show you.” I take off my sunglasses. “With French, they're very much about their eyebrows, so I'll always go, Pfft ouais,” I say, flicking my eyebrows up.
Jarred looks back excitedly. “True yeah, they are about their eyebrows. They are. That's so good.”
“And they'll give a shrug of the shoulders.” I raise my shoulders and eyebrows in tandem. “Pffft. Je ne sais pas, mais-”
“See, there you go,” says Jarred. “Language is a window into culture, I guess.”
“I would ask,” I continue, putting my sunglasses back on, “what are the highlights of your time here in Europe over the summer, but then I find it the most redundant question, because to reduce your life to moments is basically negating 90% of your life.”
“It is, yeah.”
“You're not gonna tell me about the time you took a shit in a hotel toilet.”
“I could,” says Jarred.
“You could. That could be the highlight.”
“I could tell you many lowlights.”
“But even the lowlights,” I say. “We only account for the peaks and the troughs, but what about the bit in between?”
“Yeah, I mean, the bit in between is basically just being on rekordbox,” Jarred laughs.
“But isn't that a beautiful thing?” I insist.
“Somewhat.” Jarred pauses. “Being in Europe, there's lots of ups and downs. There's lots of things that I've learned about myself. I've learned how emotional I am, and sensitive. I've spent a lot of time alone. I used to think that I loved spending time alone, and I do, but then once you're alone so much on the road or in transit it is quite lonely. Obviously.”
“Yeah.”
“But it is. I've recently been touring a little bit in North America with Azu Tiwaline and we have a really great relationship, a great friendship, and it was just so much more fun, just being with somebody else.”
“Yeah.”
“Just hanging out. Everything that happens to you can be turned into something humorous because you're experiencing it together and that's something I'd forgotten about being alone. I always crave being alone in a lot of ways, but this recent trip has showed me that, actually, doing something with a friend, things are just funny when you're doing things together, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Everything can be flipped. Life is more malleable when you're sharing experiences with somebody. That's what I've learnt. I think that's neither a highlight nor a lowlight, but that's just one of the things that I've experienced recently.”
I nod. “I once thought that I was so aligned with this independent way of living that it would probably hinder any sort of intimate relationship.”
“With me,” says Jarred, softly, “it's kind of the same, in a lot of ways. For sure.”
“Until,” I say, “I got taught a lesson by my brother, who is married with kids, about compromise. A lesson that made me think that this whole thing that I've built in my head that independence is the way forward, is actually probably a lie.”
“There's certain layers to it. I find that I would struggle being in a relationship because I'm so inward looking and I really enjoy being alone and making music. But there is a middle path, I guess, where you can have both, right? Do both.”
“But where do you draw the line between compromise and reliance?”
“Yeah, that becomes quite complicated, codependence.”
“Yeah.”
“I don't know,” Jarred says. “It's a tough one. This idea of being independent as well is a myth too. I'm constantly relying on friends. Just on the phone, I'm constantly calling people. I'm never really alone, but I am physically. Emotionally alone, I've never experienced that. My family is very supportive and I've got very close friends like Tom and Sam in Berlin, who I spend a lot of time with and I'm on the phone to them everyday.” Jarred briefly pauses. “Actually, maybe I am codependent but I just don't realise it in the physical sense.”
“Maybe,” I say, “we feel we have to be ultra independent to counteract the codependency.”
“Yeah, it's ridiculous,” says Jarred, staring across to the hillside one field over, as the sun fully submerges behind it. “Wooooo,” he cathartically bellows, before lying back on the grass and taking out a cigarette. “Ultimately, I'm looking forward to going home and just being with my family. But, as soon as I get there, I'm sure two weeks later I'll be like, God, I wish I was away.”
“It's always that way,” I say, lying down and resting on my forearm so that I can hear Jarred over the pervading bass rattle. “It's always that way.”
“I'll move back with my parents when I get back and until I find a place it'll be like that.”
“Did you ever find when going back home, this tendency to revert back to this childlike dynamic with your parents?”
“I did,” Jarred says. “Exactly. I had that experience when I returned home after Covid in 2020. I was living with my parents for like six months. Me and my parents get along really well actually, but it was something intangible. I couldn't really describe what I was going through, but it was somewhat of a return to adolescence.”
“Yeah.”
“It was frustrating because it had nothing to do with them.”
“Exactly.”
“It had nothing to do with the way they are. It was just, after a while, being in that house where I grew up, where I had my adolescence, in the same room, living there and just being the same way, ultimately, that I was when I was a teenager. It just happens naturally.”
“Do you think we're quick to stigmatise regression?” I ask.
“Well, yeah,” Jarred says. “I mean, I think without having explained it to myself yet, I think that's what I'm going to be doing at the end of the year. I'm definitely going to regress. I'm planning to regress. Go home and become and adolescent again. I need to do that after this six months of insane touring. I need to go home and be a child again, in a way, and go back to my parents house and regress for a while so I can regenerate and do things again. There is a sense of that. It is stigmatised, I guess. But, I want to do it.”
“Yeah.”
“I don't know if it was like that for you in Dublin,” Jarred enquires. “Are you living with your parents or did you find a spot to stay?”
“I'm living with my parents, yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“They set the rules, and as you can imagine, in a catholic household, there's lots of rules. Especially when it comes to intimacy and relationships.”
Jarred laughs. “So, you're not allowed to have people over?”
“No.”
“Awwww,” Jarred says, almost revelling at my misfortune. “That's great.”
“That's why I say culturally catholic because my Dad isn't a practicing catholic at all.”
“But it's imbued in him.”
“Yeah, sex is taboo.”
“I feel like my parents didn't have this same need of regressing back to their adolescence the way I do. I don't exactly know why but maybe it's the lifestyles we lead now, where they're so independent. We don't have secure careers. We don't have any sort of security outside of the home, so the parental nest is where we find —”
“Solace.”
“Solace, right.”