Death of a DJ

As I've recalled on another occasion, I've only ever ventured in through the doors of the UK's and arguably the world's longest-standing and grandest Goth club, Slimelight, on two occasions. My contact with its organiser, Mak Ma Yuan, was confined to asking and receiving permission to lift images from the 1987 home movie of the club to use in that blog post a couple of years ago. But discovering that the reason why so many of my friends were quartering their LiberFaciorum profile images with the Slimelight logo was because he had died gave even me a jolt. Yuan had opened the doors of the club in its various homes for 33 years, and under the current restrictions had kept it going virtually. He'd been instrumental in securing Slimelight's venue, Electrowerkz, a £78K grant from the Cultural Recovery Fund via the Arts Council to help the recuperation from COVID, when that becomes possible, a fact which shows as nothing else could how culturally indispensable and uncontroversial the Goth world now is. As I say, my contact with him was fleeting and remote, and that seems to be the case with the far greater number of the people I've seen commenting about his death. But he is one of ours, and one whose work allowed many others to express an important part of who they are: a benefactor, then, whose passing deserves notice and regret.

The other day I found myself encountering a funeral procession in the village - not one I was taking, obviously. Peter from the undertakers, top-hatted and frock-coated, led the hearse over the crossroads not far below my house, and what were obviously members of the family made their way variously across the road, a black car following behind and other vehicles waiting to move with differing degrees of impatience. I took my hat off and waited for them to pass, wondering not for the first time how virtually everyone else on the street ignored what was happening, pretending that the death of an individual they do not know is nothing to do with them, an event which they don't know how to react to and have no obligation to acknowledge. No man's death diminisheth them, it seems.