“… home will always be a moment …”
On awards, generosity and other people’s places
A month ago, RA nominated the set I played at Freero in 2024 as the 8th best electronic mix of 2000-2025.
I became aware of it when a friend texted to congratulate me. It took a while for the news to settle in, and even after it did, I struggled to connect with any sense of pride or satisfaction. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I rejoice in this “accomplishment”?
A week after the award was published, my friends and I hosted the meditation retreat I’d been working on for a year. In some ways, that realisation took a while to settle in, too. On the first day, Ugo and I joked that it felt like we’d been pretending for months that we were going to organise a retreat, and somehow people had believed the little fantasy. Now here we were, in the middle of nowhere, having to cater for and hold space for thirty people about to dig deep into their souls. We were being playful. We were terrified.
After the formal silence began, we were guided by the teacher’s instructions and reflections. Noon invited us to be curious, shared guided meditations inspired by the natural elements, offered trauma- and neurodiversity-informed tips, and wove in puns, poems, and quotes, such as Audre Lorde’s words on the uses of the erotic.
Soon, trust seemed to settle in, and even people who’d never meditated before spent more and more time on the cushion. During walking meditation, I thought of Pauline Oliveros’s invitation to “walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.” The field was wide, bright and frosty; the crisp sound made by our shoes every time they Touched The Earth was deeply satisfying. And so was the sight of these strangers and friends falling in love with practices that mean so much to me.
The main board started filling with handwritten notes that grew increasingly complimentary about the food we cooked. In between meals and meditation, we would soften into the sofa by the fire, our gazes lost in the swirling steam rising from hot beverages. It's as if those moments held more space than a quarter of a century. Time had a different quality, one that defied historicisation.
The dance ritual happened on day 4, during the longest night of the year. We set up the sound system in the mediation hall, speakers facing the DJ booth. From laying to dancing, bodies loosened, morphing into the expansive shapes only confidence and safety allow. No one looked at me and no one cared that there was an award attached to my name. I mean, sure, we couldn’t speak… But you sense these things. We were all a bit weird yet welcoming, anonymous yet dearly intimate.
As the silence ceased the day after, we shared sobs, hugs and words like “healing”. My flatmate confessed that this experience reminded her that her “spirituality is community”. Though the world community is often being co-opted, I can see by the way she lives her life that, in her case, the faith is deep and it is embodied. I consider myself highly privileged to have shared an appartement with her and the ways she has made me feel at home go way beyond tending to the nest we are now having to leave.
I’ve lived in this flat for almost seven years. Funnily, this is more or less the amount of time that it takes for a body to regenerate (though the extent and speed of cell renewal varies depending on the organs). So much of my life has happened between these walls. Over this past seven years, molecules circulated when I ate, breathed, washed, wrote, read, played, listened and loved in this place. I became a little bit of it and perhaps it became a little bit of me.
As I’m about to leave a city that I can no longer afford, I’ve been reading Musa Okwanga’s novel In The End, It Was All About Love. The main character travels from Berlin to Uganda and wonders: “Maybe to you, home will always be a moment. For some, home is a building, an actual place, but for you, it is a feeling, the handshake of an old friend or the embrace of a new one, the first mouthful of a meal cooked with love.”
I felt at home during our retreat, not only because it combined all my passions and favorite people, not only because it wasn’t about me or I didn’t have to prove anything with my creative practice, but because it was such a genuine experiment in generosity.
We ran the retreat on the basis of dana, meaning that the registration fee covered basic costs, while support for the teachings and the work we did as coordinators was entirely voluntary. Dana is sometimes described as a decolonial and anti-capitalist relationship to money—one that aims for transparency and equity and is rooted not in guilt but in generosity. Ollie and I reflected on the need to experiment with applying these intentions to other areas of life, not least in the way we practice ethics. In fact, the generosity on display at the retreat largely transcended material conditions. In Sarj’s words, these economies and the very moments they allow: “give us the chance to practice for the transformed world we are dreaming of.”
Our utopia was temporary. But as Noon said, that didn’t make it less real. Shortly after the retreat, I visited my biological family, ending the several year hiatus in holidaying together. A family member commented on the fact that, “hopefully, the RA award would finally earn me some money”. My answer that it probably wasn't going to buy me a house was qualified as a “regrettable lack of ambition”.
Strangely enough, and despite this conversation, I had begun to feel, if not proud, then at least less uncomfortable about the list. While I remained ambivalent about ranking creativity, I noticed a certain excitement at seeing some of the music I cherish appear in RA’s First Quarter of the Century articles. Yes, I too have always been obsessed with Powder’s set at Cocktail, and I remain infinitely inspired by her sparse online presence. Of course, my DJing would not be what it is without Nguzunguzu. And sure, Mary Anne Hobbs’s Dubstep Wars epitomises so much of a genre through which I’ve met some of my dearest friends. As for the “best tracks,” I love that it pointed toward James Stinson’s The Other People Place, an album I listened to and thought about a great deal while recently sailing across the Atlantic.
In some way, the appearance of crocodiles pt. 2 on this list shone a light on the Freero community, a festival and a wider scene which, as I’d written here and here, made this mix and so much more possible. Accepting generosity is a practice and sometimes you have to learn it, not so much for yourself but for other people’s sake.
In recent years, accepting other people’s generosity has often meant crashing on their sofas. Around the time that I moved into this flat, I stopped flying. I increasingly stayed over with friends (or friends of friends) and promoters during grounded journeys or around a gig. Hotels are expensive (and ugly! and unwholesome!!). Ultimately entering other people’s places has led to share precious moments of deep connection and intimacy. At times you have to learn to accept generosity, not so much for other people’s sake, but also for yourself.
Sometimes, I’ve taken pictures and you can browse some of them below. It’s like playing “Where’s Waldo” but with Fictions posters instead. I guess over the last seven years, these places have become a bit of me and I may have become a bit of them. If you think of it that way, you could say that a good chunk of my regenerated cells are made from recycled generosity!! exploding mind emoji*
Last year someone greeted me into 2025 by wishing for me “to see the universe as my home”. Isn’t that the nicest thing to receive? And you know what? I did it! And it worked!! Now my current recycled cells are passing this wish on to you, too: may you, in each and every moment of 2026, see the universe as your, our home.
In praise of other people’s places
Bowing to the places above, and many more.
Am I crashing on people’s sofas in order to play music or the other way around?
The same existential question applies if you replace “crashing on people’s sofas” by “spending too much time on Rekordbox”
14.01 - Ripples of Reflections, ikii, Berlin 🇩🇪
Tonight, we gather for some deep listening and community sharing. We will play a recording of a guided meditation which Noon Baldwin led at the recent Reflections Retreat. The visual includes a picture I took during the retreat!!
Please arrive before 7pm or after 7.45. You are more than welcome to join and sit with us, even if you weren't able to attend the retreat. After 7.45, we will share summer rolls (donation possible) and listen to ambient music by myself and Reflections participants Menishu & ophélie on ikii's hi-fi sound.
lazareissoaked
I’ve rinsed this track by ophélie in recent sets. It melts really well into Steevio’s Adref.
24.01 - All Night Long, Ubu, Rennes 🇫🇷
This is a full circle moment as so much of my young adult music education happened in this venue! I’ll be talking about my grounded North American tour as well in Champs Libres the same day.
Inteemate
Rennes tip: the Ethos Records label which has released music from Herbalistek, Cwtch, Chewlie, Gillielove and more.
30.01 - Tweak Soundsystem, Trabendo, Paris 🇫🇷
One of my favorite sound systems celebrating their 5th anniversary! I’m playing before Subsism, The Bug and NVST!!!
lazareissoaked
The above might be one of my favorite tracks of 2025.
31.01 - Osàre! Editions Label Night, Sameheads, Berlin 🇩🇪
It’ll be good to say bye to the club where we hosted so many Fictions nights and what more perfect company to do it with than Sepehr and Elena Colombi?
Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 14, 2023
Colombi’s label Osàre Editions recently released a text (paper and audio-book) by Femke Dekker around the work of Pauline Oliveros!! Synchronicity, you said?
05.02 - Migas, Berlin 🇩🇪
Sarj and I will play records at Migas that Thursday. I’m still trying to sell records but I’ll never sell this one which is a present from my friend Sinan and which makes me feel very at home.
https://www.discogs.com/master/32797-Steve-Tibbetts-Safe-Journey
That said, if you want to help me with the move and take boxes of the records I will have kept down from the 4th floor on the day of my move mid-February, please hit me up. This Migas gig might otherwise be a last opportunity to hug nono as a berlin citizen.
27.02 - Ankali, Prag 🇨🇿
More info on this show coming soon but in the meantime, this is my last track.
Vance
I would like to end this newsletter by acknowledging the homes, whether weathered, constructed, rooted in land, or existing beyond it, that are being destroyed or taken without consent. Recent news has led me to reflect on the ways in which our capitalist-induced dependence on fossil fuels is reinforcing a brutal world order. May we come to see the universe as our collective home.
12.04 - TBA, London 🇬🇧 (NB: I will be in the UK from mid-March until mid-April with some nights still free)
02.05 - TBA, Bristol 🇬🇧 (a b2b with one of my fave b2b partners) 09.05 - TBA, Wuppertal 🇩🇪 (what club could this possibly be)
03.07 - memòri 🇫🇷
12.07 - TBA 🇬🇧
(NB: I am currently NOT taking any bookings in Europe between September 2026 and August 2027.)
