by Antonio Peña
I was financially broke, living from day to day. I really couldn’t find financial stability. I was working part-time in the restaurant, and it was a good thing to do, because I could have time for myself, and eventually drop into the restaurant two or three times a week, but the money was not enough to pay all my expenses. There might be some days when I had no money to eat, or to pay the rent of my flat, which was pretty much every month. This was hardcore and stressful, but somehow everything always turned out to be alright at the last minute.
I decided to take professional dancing training, focusing on visuals and stage performances. I was a good dancer and had the rhythm in me, but I wanted to get better at it. I started to learn contemporary dance, choreography and performing arts. I found in contemporary dance a way to express my feelings and emotions with my body. I learned how to focus my energy, how to pose and direct the attention of people to every part of my body that I wanted. I learned to perform at different speeds and motions, to combine different styles of dancing and be able to integrate into my own way of performing. This was a huge improvement for myself and helped me to gain artistic confidence and to build a connection with the audience.
Most of my money was spent on my training, or on clothes that I might wear for the shows that I was doing on the street(which didn’t give me money at all, but a huge fulfillment). I spent all of my savings and sold the little furniture that I had. I sold everything, even my mattress, and I just kept the elementary stuff for cooking, a blanket and some pillows. For me, this was enough. With the money I got for it, plus the little money I had, I got some second-hand speakers, lights, a better controller with mixer included. I put some foam on the walls and I created my own little studio. That place was my kitchen, my sleeping room, the place I might spend my days and nights. Everyone around me thought that I was going nuts, but for me, being in that place creating beats, discovering new combinations was a life-death priority, even greater than breathing.
The new studio, even though it was not a professional one, helped me to improve the quality of what I was creating, and helped me to concrete my first demo tracks. It felt in a way as if something in the middle of my brain had opened, and I was getting a waterfall of creative inspiration, even though I did not study music as a kid, I was able to understand it, not from a classical perspective, but in a futuristic way.
Playing once a week at Lindsay’s workplace was a confusing experience for me. I had for the first time a place where I could show what I was doing. My mixes were pretty well received, but I felt so limited as a performer, I didn’t have the freedom that I had on the streets. At the beginning, none could understand what I was doing. The crowd, if there was a crowd, was used to just seeing a DJ playing on the turntable. I was an alien to them. The owner might come to me and indicate with a sign to turn it down or go back to the turntable, and yes, at the time I had no choice, I had to turn it down and go back to my spot.
© Antonio Peña 2024-08-29