Holiday Hang Over - Looking Ahead

Yes friends: we've survived another Holiday Season. In some ways I feel like I am still getting my bearings. It's been a fun and exhausting tumble into 2009.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Christmas with the Family 2008

This is the second year in a row that I have been home for Christmas. Because I've missed quite a few with the family I do enjoy going to church on the 24th, staying at the House in Pointe Claire and eating plenty of my mom's food. Christmas Day we open our gifts, talk to my older sister overseas and usually end the festivities watching a movie. This year our little cousin chose Bedtime Stories. I was crashing so hard from all the food that it truly was a Bedtime Story: I fell asleep through the entire thing.
"Lululemon Hoodie with a Pony Tail Hole!" awesome x-mas gifts 2008
typical Vicente Christmas Tradition: Food with Napping (and TV)

PARTY FOR A PURPOSE: BE BRILLIANT
Me with Julie

On the 26th of December Party for a Purpose held their first party at Suco Lounge in the heart of Downtown Montreal. I am really proud of what our Organization was able to accomplish, raising one thousand dollars for The Canadian Association of Education and Outreach (www.caeoquebec.org). I also had the honour of spinning with local heroes Christian Pronovost and Rilly Guilty.
DJs extraordinaire: Rilly Guilty and Toddy Flores
lovely ladies of Be Brilliant


More DJing....
Happy New Year! Typhoon 2008

There wasn't much of a cool down after Be Brilliant. New Year's was the following week where I spun at Typhoon, my regular Thursday and Saturday residency. Then I had one more big party, the M: Brgr staff party which was a hot mess and the most fun.

All in all I keep learning more and more about DJing through these experiences. There are definitely some moments where I am on the cusp of exhaustion. But I ask myself, "How am I going to handle myself when I am a bigger DJ and I have to travel and DJ back to back gigs around the world? What will I do then?" After all this time I still really love it. And I'd rather be tired and spinning music to people than doing any other job for sure.
Frances and Marc Andre

the boys across from us at Picasso's at 4am

2009

Slowly I am getting back to a more familiar routine. Montreal has been pretty cold which curtails my desire to go out at all. But I try to get out every once in a while just to stay sane. I am working at M: Brgr three days a week still but I have my DJ gigs to keep my in action with my passion and also my Contemporary Dance classes on Sunday which I find so inspiring. Those are my three main gigs.

I want Party for a Purpose to have another event late in the Spring just before the School Term finishes. It hasn't been discussed yet but I am hoping our next party could benefit an organization my cousin Fred turned me on to called Kiva (www.kiva.org) that does Money Lending in developing nations. Really inspiring stuff.

Lisa and Janelle are sisters who collaborate in Art Projects together under the name Las Hermanas Iglesias (www.lashermanasiglesias.com). They asked me to help create some new music for them for their exhibit in the Queens Museum in New York which I was really honoured to take part of along with my friend Kris.

Recently, one of the women at the Dance Studio approached me to see if I would be interested in showcasing some choreography for a Dance Event for New Choreographers which I recently agreed to do.

I just want to be clear that I am not really saying these things to just toot my own horn. But one of the things I got out of doing the Self Expression and Leadership Program in Landmark is a real genuine sense of accomplishment. Often times I find that I am truly hard on myself when things going badly in my life. I am so self abusive and unsupportive. It's so easy to say to myself, "Well Mark, you fucked up again. This didn't work out, you're in debt, you're a bad person." But it's interested when good things come along and what we say is, "It was luck. I was in the right place at the right time. It was chance."

This year is about really being present to all the happiness and joy and adventure I bring into my life. Through my studies I was really able to understand that I create my life. No one else does. My sister has another way of putting it. She likes to look at life as an equation that equals out to a certain result. But if you want to change the result the one thing you can change in the equation is the variable, the "x". Change the variable, change that result. I want to really get present to the fact that I am the variable in my life. And that all the good in life is not only just auspicious circumstances and dumb-luck. It's designed by you and me. Are you ready to be an Architect?
"The most visible creators I know are those artists whose medium is life itself. The ones who express the inexpressible - without brush, hammer, clay or guitar. They neither paint nor sculpt - their medium is being. Whatever their presence touches has increased life. They see and don’t have to draw. They are the artists of being alive." -Jay Scott