White Linen, Train Wrecks, and the Cables I Miss

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White Linen, Train Wrecks, and the Cables I Miss

By DJ WhoYouThink

I’ve been DJing for exactly one year.

Twelve months ago I was steaming oat milk and pretending I liked small talk. Now I’m closing the coffee shop at 3 p.m., going home to my tiny studio apartment, and practicing transitions on my beginner controller until my neighbors text me passive aggressive smiley faces.

I just got back from Burning Man.

Out there, nothing is hidden. The sound system isn’t pretending to be a decorative accent. The cables snake across the dust like veins. CDJs sit out in the open like instruments, not secrets. The DJ is part engineer, part shaman, part sleep deprived wizard. You see everything. You feel everything.

And it sounds massive.

Now I’m at a wedding.

The speakers are wrapped in white linen. Not just clean. Wrapped. Like they’re attending the ceremony too. The DJ booth is hidden behind a facade that looks like a minimalist IKEA altar. There’s a wicker basket with fake greenery and maybe some fairy lights. It’s aggressively elegant. Like someone said, “What if we made this look expensive but also cozy?” and then kept going.

The DJ is invisible. The gear is invisible. The cables are invisible.

The mix is not invisible.

He train wrecks.

With the sync button.

I physically flinch.

I don’t understand how that is even possible. I have a $300 beginner controller and a sync button that practically begs me to succeed. You line up your grids, you press one button, and it does 80 percent of the job. It’s not wizardry. It’s math.

And yet.

The vocals clash. The kicks flam. The transition is a cliff, not a bridge.

I glance at the wrapped speaker like maybe it’s buffering.

Nope. It’s him.

What’s wild is that he’s playing all the “cool” songs. Every TikTok anthem. Every festival drop that I Shazamed at 4 a.m. in the desert. But somehow, it feels uncool. Like someone googled “EDM bangers for young people” and hit shuffle.

He smiles too much. He points at the crowd during drops that don’t deserve pointing. He yells into the mic in a way that feels like a cruise ship, not a dance floor.

I keep thinking about the playa.

About standing in front of a stack of exposed subs while cables ran everywhere like chaotic art. No white linen. No attempt to disguise the machinery. Just power. Just sound. Just a DJ who actually knew when to let the track breathe.

Here, everything looks perfect.

But it doesn’t feel perfect.

The bride’s aunt is filming on her phone. The uplighting matches the napkins. The DJ booth looks like it belongs in a magazine. If you took a still photo, it would be flawless.

If you close your eyes, it falls apart.

That’s the part I can’t get over.

Why are we hiding the one thing that matters?

Why are we wrapping the speakers but not wrapping the transitions?

Why is elegance allowed to cover mediocrity?

I work as a barista. I count tips. I skip nights out so I can save for CDJs. Real ones. The kind I saw covered in dust at 3 a.m., with a DJ who wasn’t trying to look cool. They just were. Because the mix was undeniable.

I don’t have fancy facades. I don’t have white linen. My controller sits on a scratched IKEA desk. My cables are very visible. I’m still figuring out phrasing and harmonic mixing and how not to panic when two tracks drift slightly out of phase.

But I would rather see the cables.

I would rather hear a DJ who understands tension and release than one who understands Pinterest.

There’s this trend where weddings are becoming luxury production packages. DJ, photo booth, uplighting, monogram projection, dry ice, custom booth wrap, coordinated aesthetic. It’s beautiful. It’s curated.

But somewhere in the layering of elegance, the craft is getting quiet.

I’m not anti elegance. I’m anti illusion.

If it looks like a spaceship but mixes like a middle school talent show, something is broken.

Maybe it’s because I’m only a year in. Maybe I’m still romantic about the craft. Maybe the desert dust hasn’t fully washed out of my brain. But I can’t unsee what I saw.

Cables aren’t ugly.

They’re honest.

When I finally save enough for CDJs, I don’t want to hide them. I don’t want to pretend I’m not using machines. I want people to see the work. I want them to know the drop didn’t just happen. It was built.

White linen can stay.

But not at the expense of the mix.

Because no matter how elegant the room is, if you can train wreck with the sync button, you probably wrapped the wrong thing.