LuisInParis is Moving!

We're moving!

Well, Luis will stay where he is, and LuisInParis will stay where it is, too. I'm keeping all of my archives from previous years in the same place for future use and so that you can still find any posts that you like through search engines. Nevertheless, no new blog posts will be published here.

What is new is LMGMblog. As my Paris fieldwork period has come to an end, I've decided to move away from the post-a-day format (which I haven't really be sticking to recently, anyway) and split up my writing work. LMGMblog will include:

1. “party reviews,” that is, accounts of techno/house/etc. events as I did frequently on my old blog.
2. brief essays on concepts and issues I’m working through for my own intellectual work, with the hope that you all can give me the sort of support and critique that I need to write better and smarter
3. readings/reviews of books and articles that I encounter as I work on my dissertation

There will NOT be any more of my recipes here, but that’s because I’m starting a totally new food blog called Macerating in Public, where I'll be posting photo-blogged recipes, restaurant/shop reviews, and other foodie geekery. Check it out! There’ll be updates soon.

Last Update on Old Blog

Hi, hi. OK, so this will be the last time that I post a reminder on this blog about new posts on my new blog. We've got a couple of things posted recently: 1. a review/summary of Nigel Thrift's essay, "But Malice Aforethought," which is on urban studies, affect, and light-touch intimacy. 2. a new podcast, which I have dubbed the "Dancypants Podcast" for no particularly good reason.

Luis is not a bedroom DJ…

…but more of a "living room" DJ. In any case, I recently posted my first recorded DJ Mix/Podcast on Soundcloud, which you can also find embedded in my most recent post to my new blog.

New Orleans by Train, the Adventures Thereupon

Hi again. As with the last post, I'm posting a link here to my newest post on my new blog, LMGMblog, just in case you haven't updated your RSS reader / bookmarks. This new post is on my trip to New Orleans for a conference, and my adventures during the 19-hour trek by train. You might be surprised at how much happened.

San Fran Field Trip: Intimacy, Strangers, and Translocality

Hullo again, everyone. Since I know that many of you have RSS subscriptions to this blog—and perhaps you haven't updated your RSS reader with my new blog—I'm posting a link here to my most recent post on LMGMblog. I'll be doing this for the next few posts across my blogs.

So this post, entitled "San Fran Field Trip: Intimacy Strangers and Translocality," is a brief reflection on a trip I took to the Berkeley and San Francisco back in mid-March. What was interesting about this trip was that I posted a Facebook status update a few days before my departure, asking if anybody knew what was going on in the Bay Area. Within the space of a couple of days, I had a daily lineup of techno/house events in San Fran, along with a network of friends-of-friends that were offering to act as guides. By the end of that weekend, I had a whole new network of contacts and friends in the San Francisco techno scene. The notion of a trans-local music scene/network is a concept that is central to both my doctoral and my post-doctoral projects; I'm trying to argue that the practices, values, and people in "minimal techno" or "house" or whatever circulate between locations in a way that allows a partygoers to arrive in new locations and insert themselves into the scene with minimal friction. I can already argue this point by describing the flow of musical recordings (vinyl, mp3s, podcasts), people (DJs, techno-tourists, friendship networks), and writing (online magazines, travel guides, forums); but this anecdote provides a great example of how this ease of mobility also comes from the previous travel and trans-local contacts of members of your friendship network. More interestingly, the request for hospitality by a mutual friend (i.e., the person who introduces you to new contacts at your destination) activates a bundle of ethical responsibilities that make the encounter especially intimate.

OK, go read the rest of the post!