Prelude

A1 - A Painful Mess On The Floor

“I want to die. Please let me die. Anything would be better than this.
I love my family, my friends, my life, but whatever this is, it sucks”.

It’s the one and only time I’ve ever had that thought.

This thought swirled in my head while laying on the dust covered linoleum bathroom floor of an office in downtown San Francisco. Surrounded by packages, shipping supplies and mail. The smell of cleaning products and cardboard filling my nose as I struggled to breathe through intense physical pain. At that moment, I really did want to die.  

“On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your pain?
On the rare occasion that I’ve visited an ER, I would struggle to answer that question from medical staff.  I would think of the times I had experienced pain before. Like during a high school softball game, I went to catch a pop fly and lost the ball in the afternoon sun and instead of catching the ball in my glove, it hit the ring finger trying to block the sun and broke it. I remember going into the nurse’s office and when she said “what’s wrong hun” I stuck my hand out flat like a pancake with my finger pointed down to the ground.
On the pain scale, this was a 4.  

Or the time while riding my BMX bike near Anderson Park in Redondo Beach when I mis-timed a jump off a curb, flew over the handlebars and landed flat on my chest, wind rapidly removed from my lungs. My elbows were bleeding badly, after a layer of skin was removed from sliding along hot summer concrete. That was a 6.  If the broken finger was a 4 and slamming my 13 year old body on the concrete was 6, I could not fathom what 10 could be. 

That day on the bathroom floor, I found out. 

When the pain started in my neck, it was an instant 6. Over increments of 10-15 minutes it radiated upward. As it moved to the back of my head it notched up to 7. Soon, this pain I had never felt before engulfed everything from my shoulders to the crown of my skull. When it reached its apex
I thought, "If this is not a 10, then goddamn, I don’t know what 10 is".

My nervous system red-lined. Light pierced, sound hurt and talking felt impossible. Nothing I did seemed to stop the progression of pain. In the way a ghost pepper keeps getting hotter, so too was this pain overtaking my body. Each wave brought me higher on the pain scale. My mind had no clue if or where it would end.  Making the situation even worse was where I was when the pain began. 

Earth Class Mail was a windowless mailroom on Market Street where I worked. My job was opening, scanning physical mail, shipping and receiving packages, sorting, organizing and recycling mail for customers who were transitioning to electronic communication. The pay was more than minimum wage, but not by much.  This was not a job I held in my teens, 20’s or 30’s.
I was 40. I was also an established artist. A touring DJ. A Grammy nominated  producer with hundreds of releases, remixes and other production credits. I ran a business that had global reach. That business was in house music.  

I was firmly entrenched in the culture and business of house music for over 20 years by that point. To fans of my music, it might have seemed that I was a success story. While perhaps true artistically, there was also a severe and silent impact that was hidden from most people. The business I created to enable my artistic goals was failing, cascading financial issues, year over year, until I reached a point where I needed a day job like Earth Class to stem the bleeding. I had two young kids and a wife whose two decades of patience and support had reached their logical limits. Multiple attempts at a career change failed.  Options were limited and tough times became rough times.  So when the opportunity arrived to work for a friend at Earth Class Mail, I jumped at the chance out of pure desperation.

Earth Class was not a detour I took. It was the consequence of choices made 12 years earlier. The weight of the business that was supposed to enable my artistic pursuits had finally pushed me to the bathroom floor that day. 

When the waves of pain in my head would subside, I thought to myself “How the hell did I end up here? In my 40s, suffering on this bathroom floor, alone in this windowless mail room?"  What I did not know at the time was that I was experiencing complications from a spinal tap procedure I had a few days prior. Complications that caused my cerebrospinal fluid to leak from the needle site where spinal fluid is drawn. 

This drop in cerebrospinal fluid caused my brain to "sag" inside my skull. My brain was literally hanging by its nerve endings. If you have had the unfortunate experience of nerve pain, imagine the worst version of that, then place it in your brain. Going by that pain scale method, this was a 10 out of 10 experience. 

With magazines stacked under my head as pillows, a hoodie across my eyes, I laid on that cold, dusty bathroom floor while trying to stay completely still because it helped stem the pain from rising further. The only sound I could process was my deep breathing and my whispered voice begging for the pain to stop. I was a raw animal. Fully broken down, physically and emotionally. I can’t recall exactly how long I laid there, nor how I got home. 

My wife asserts that she picked me up from work. I believe her. But for me, that memory is completely wiped. Time and visceral memory of that day is warped. I only remember how that bathroom smelled and how I felt while laying there in agony. The rest of my memories picked up a day later. When I look back on my life, that day on the bathroom floor was perhaps one of my lowest moments.

The treatment for spinal tap complications is called a blood patch. The procedure was performed a day or two later and was basically the same process as the spinal tap. Same hospital, same gown. Same ultrasound machine and same horrifically long and thin needle. When you see that needle removed from its package, your mind goes primal. It is so hard to imagine something that size is soon going to be inserted into your body.  

The spot on my spine for the original spinal tap was still marked with a pen, so I got up on the table, put myself in the fetal position and braced for impact. You think you are prepared and tough. You are not. The needle slid in. This time though, spinal fluid was not being drawn back into the syringe. This time the syringe was full of my own blood and was blasted into the area of my spine where the hole was leaking spinal fluid. My blood had one job to do - clot and plug the hole. Writing this now I can feel the bizarre sensation of my warm blood filling deep into my back, in places I had never felt before.

“How are you doing? Doing ok?” 
“It’s weird,” I said.  “I know,” said the doctor.
“We’re almost done. Just a little more and we're done”.

Again the blood rushed into my back. The needle slid slowly from my spine and I was sent home with strict instructions -  “You need to lay flat on your back and don’t move for at least 4-6 hours”.  I recall feeling unlucky for being one of the 28.3% of patients that a blood patch doesn't immediately work for. I needed more time to rest as the procedure was not helping. The hole did not close quick enough and pain in my head lingered on. 

The bedrest gave my body a reprieve, but my mind stirred. That stillness brought forth memories of a two decades long life in house music; fleeting glimpses of the 1990s. My first DJ set up in my bedroom. Dirty warehouses packed with hundreds of smiling faces at 8am. Black boogers from dancing on the dusty concrete floors of disused industrial spaces.  Record store outings on Melrose Street.  Happy Wednesdays on the Redondo Pier. Endless hours learning how to DJ, alone in my bedroom. Watching Ren & Stimpy at 5am after dropping acid with AP - laughing hysterically at the dayglow styrofoam heads under black lights in our living room on N.Formosa. Moving to SF after meeting my future wife.  Pepper on Monday nights at Don’s Different Ducks and Deco. EMU Samplers and learning how to arrange music on Natoma Street.  The recording studio on Moulton Street. Turkish coffee at the Hollow Cow Market.

As I lay in my bed, motionless, for over 24 hours, my mind also began to open to something I had been ignoring for years. Beneath the nostalgia of those happier memories lived another truth — the same path that gave me decades of amazing experiences and memories, had also extracted an enormous price. Lying there unable to move, I felt the full weight of what years of unrelenting stress had done to my body and my mind. Trapped in bed and in my own mind, the connection I never allowed myself to make became impossible to ignore. The stress had not just worn me down, it had broken me. In that stillness, a thought arrived that I could not shake: I needed a way out.

Eventually, my blood clotted, the hole leaking spinal fluid closed and my brain was again, floating in my skull. The intense pain retreated. I was better. Not well, but better. 

For years I struggled with unexplained neurological incidents. Tiny “blips” that would happen instantly and last between 5-60 minutes. It was never the same feeling, only the same process. It was like a switch I did not control being turned on and off, making my nervous system go haywire.  I went from doctor to doctor, nurse to nurse trying to find out what was happening to me; EKGs, CT scans, vision tests, lung tests, blood work but never diagnosed. It remained a mystery over a five year period and many visits to the doctor’s office or urgent care. 

Conversations with medical professionals were always the same. “How would you describe your symptoms”? I would try my best to put into words the strange sensations I would have. “Kind of like instant dizziness but kind of vertigo  I guess” or “It’s like a switch comes and I feel like I’m going to faint but never do, but not exactly like that”. It was always so hard to nail down because it was never the same each time. Therefore, it was always the same script at the end of visits. ‘We don’t know what’s going on, your vitals are fine,” said a nurse. “We’ve checked your heart and all look normal”, said the cardiologist. “Your lungs look and sound normal Mr Lum”, said the GP. At some point I was certain they were convinced that I was a hypochondriac. Even more so after they all seemed to say the same things in unison.  “Sounds like you’re having panic attacks. We recommend Zoloft”.
In my gut,I knew this was not my situation. But until something changed,
life went on with me just dealing with it. Without Zoloft. 

But, a night out for sushi with my family changed everything.

One day after work, I met up with my wife and kids at a neighborhood place on Noriega Street. A typical Outer Sunset spot. The restaurant is long gone but the memory of the dinner remains. I find that interesting. I have no memory of how I got home from Earth Class that day, yet I can recall with strange clarity the funky little outfit my daughter insisted on wearing to school. Dirty tights from the playground, a well-worn hand-me-down zipper hoodie, her little glittery high tops resting on the blond wood bench seating. She'd rouse every time the water was refilled or more of my unagi rolls hit the table. I always loved when our kids would snuggle up like that.
Even though the food was forgettable, everything about that moment was tranquil. Then we got up to leave. The area where she'd been lying on my left side was very hot. Not warm. Hot and numb. 

Something was off. 

By the time we got home, the heat and numbness had spread up my torso. Just on the left side though. Concern was there but, I had been dealing with odd symptoms for years at that point so, I’m not in full concern mode. Yet. Sometimes when those unexplained events would happen while at home, I would take hot showers because it seemed to help. Later that evening I jumped in the shower and cranked up the hot water. Concern grew when the hot water felt cold, like Lake Tahoe cold. But only on the left side of my body.  I tried the other dial. Cold felt scorching, hot felt like tiny ice needles. But only on the left side of my torso. 

"Ok, NOW I’m starting to freak out," I thought.

When I woke up the next morning the entire left side of my body was numb.  You could have taken a pen and literally drawn a line from head to toe, down the exact middle of my body and the left was numb, the right side: normal. Off to the doctor, again.  Doctors finally said words that were music to my ears, ”Mr Lum, that IS odd. Let’s get you over to a Neurologist ASAP”

A2 - Finding The Key To A Trap Door

I was put through a battery of tests with questions like "Is this hot or cold? Sharp or dull? Or instructions like "Walk with one foot in front of the other while staring straight ahead, now close your eyes and extend your hands.  Extend your pointer finger and touch your nose then my hand as I move it around." The results earned me my first ride in an MRI machine. First, I had to undress, put on the robe where your ass hangs out of the back, triple check that all metal was removed. I placed everything in a gym locker located about 20 feet outside of the room I would soon enter. Inside the room where the MRI is located, technicians and staff try their best to make you comfortable. Not so easy to do when temp is chilly from the cooling of the machine and AC always seems to be set to 50 degrees. I laid on a moving sled, flat on my back with some sort of pillow to support my head and neck - no magazines this time. A medical grade beige colored plastic cage was put on my head. This was the first indication that things were about to get real tight. The cage was only an inch or so away from my nose. That alone is enough to induce claustrophobia.

But that tightness, that restless feeling does not fully kick in until the sled jerks then slides you back into the machine. I had a full body scan so I was moved all the way in. At least that’s what I imagine because the only way I could deal with the MRI was to keep my eyes closed the entire time. Only once did I open my eyes and the visual did not induce calm or serenity. I was there for an hour and 50 minutes. It’s a tight squeeze and loud as hell. Imagine the worst dubstep party you’ve ever been to and you can’t leave or move a muscle, scratch an itch or adjust any part of your body for comfort. 

The results came back showing evidence of an autoimmune issue.  Sometimes doctors will have patients undergo a spinal tap to look for supporting evidence of the diagnosis, however, the spinal tap was inconclusive. In the end, all the pain I went through with the spinal tap complications was for nothing. Nonetheless, my care team thought the MRI imaging was sufficient enough to stick with the diagnosis.

A3 - Kidnapped By A Building 

Experts suspect that environmental factors can play a part in triggering these types autoimmune issues in people whose genetics make them susceptible. Though I’ll never be able to prove it medically, I firmly believe that the environmental factor that triggered mine, ironically, was the thing that brought me the greatest artistic and professional success.  The thing that defined me for almost twenty years of my life. The thing that was my identity. My community. My sole responsibility, then an albatross around my neck that ultimately became a noose.  A building that represented a deep part of my artistic origin story and stood three floors above the corner of Polk Street and Sutter in San Francisco. 

In the early 1990s it was the home to a popular record store on the ground floor called BPM and music studios on the top floor called 3rd Floor Productions. In the year 2000, I signed a lease and it became Moulton Media LLC. For fans of the music coming from the building, it was known simply as Moulton. Moulton was nearly 8,000 square feet of commercial real estate that consisted of offices and open space. In terms of audio and entertainment, it was a building with decades of Bay Area music history already soaked into its walls before Moulton moved in.  From the 1950s until the early 1980s, it housed different well known AM and FM radio stations. For a brief moment in the 1980s it housed a Chinese news TV station before becoming a creative home of house music in the early 1990s. 

For the people who worked there during the period of 2001 to 2015, it was a creative cocoon. To me, it was a landlord's nightmare and an unrelenting financial burden from the day I signed that lease. 

Year over year of compounding financial pressures began to alter me. Moulton was never meant to be my main business or occupier of my time. It was simply meant to be a means of providing me space to be an artist. But the consistent physical and financial stress of it began to also erode my sense of self as an artist.  Every single artistic choice was an urgent financial necessity. I never had the luxury of writing for artistic vision. I had to finish tracks as rapidly as possible to keep Moulton solvent. While others saw a prolific period of releasing music, I was experiencing never-ending pressure to sign away the rights of my music to whoever had an advance - even painfully small ones.  All so I could just hand it over to utilities, the tax man, or landlord.

As the artistic output began to suffer under lack of time investment, the stress and internal turmoil grew. My inner voice and sense of self began to feel poisoned and it warped my perspective.  Every win for someone else was a defeat for me. Every gig not booked, every recording session that was cancelled last minute felt personal and disrespectful. Every minor issue became a magnet for grievance I could not decouple from. My environment created a negative inner voice - about myself, about others, about everything around me.  

I also struggled as a DJ in San Francisco during the 2000s. Despite traveling to over 30 countries, playing at renowned clubs and putting out popular records, I was rarely booked in my own home town. With a few exceptions, people and promoters I knew seldom booked me. I never inquired nor spoke my mind. I would just internalize the confusion and anger. People would come to the studio on Polk and ask me for copies of the music I was producing, but never reciprocated with invitations to DJ. My internal dialog was:  “How are you going to ask me for music but never book me?”  But my mouth would say “Sure, give me a second and I’ll grab some CDs”.

Even parties and events I promoted felt under-supported or lacked the same crowd response I would get in places like Australia, the UK or Spain. True or imagined, that was how I was perceiving the experience. I became deeply confused as an artist at that time. My inner dialog was constantly thinking “How could it be that I am seemingly valued artistically abroad but invisible in San Francisco?” I think time and distance have given me understanding that stress was warping my perceptions. I've since come to regret the precious hours wasted thinking “maybe I just suck and no one wants to tell me”.  I was unable to see that cognitive dissonance, alongside the financial pressure, had been slowly crushing me like a sectional sofa in an industrial shredder.

Resilience was a super power of mine. That ability not only allowed me to endure 15 years of un-yielding stress, it also prevented me from seeing that I was the proverbial frog in boiling water. I was able to deal with a lot of stress and keep going. At a cost.

At the trial of my life before God, no further evidence of my resilience would need presenting than the Sisyphus-like existence I had with the toilets at Moulton. Four of them in total. Two in the women's restroom, two in the men's. For years, someone or some people would have horrific bowel movements in one or more of those 4 toilets and simply walk away. No flush. No clean up. Just a fecal crime scene. I never did find out who or why. Was it someone from the street, able to walk right in through doors that never closed properly?  Or was it a psycho in my midst, playing some twisted toilet prank.  As if to say, “oh, you're special are you? Well how about you clean THIS up”! 

This went on for years. When I tell you that I had to deal with this at least 30 times, I am likely understating that number. Even when I was at the peak of my artistic career, selling records, playing clubs across the world and achieving artistic success like a Grammy nomination, I was being humiliated and humbled by those toilets. On more than a few occasions, shit water splashed on my face. While Sisyphus was condemned to pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity, I felt condemned to a life of un-flushed human waste. Sisyphus had a boulder, I had logs.

It’s obvious now that my resilience kept me locked into a situation that I should have walked away from. I held on for a long time. Too long. My commitment to the community of Moulton, while perhaps noble, was ultimately destructive to my mind, body and soul. 

By the time I arrived in pain on that bathroom floor at Earth Class mail, I was in a truly bad place from the unrelenting financial stress, artistic frustration, identity erosion and a body in revolt. Thirteen years of a slow IV drip of stress, poisoning my soul and red lining my nervous system until finally, my own body had to attack me to save me. Though I could never prove the case for environmental factors of Moulton causing my illness, it seems the jury of my body had rendered its verdict.

I always felt like the universe brought me to 1177 Polk Street.  It was in that building on Polk that I worked at a record store called BPM. It was where I made my first friends in the city. Where I met mentors and guides in music production.  It was also a building that defied the odds and remained completely vacant during the first dot com boom until I rented it in 2000.  I wrote songs like Big Tool, You’re Mine, Can We Get Connected there. I went into severe debt there. I chased mice, bailed water leaks, unclogged toilets, hosted underground parties, had deep conversations and made lifelong connections there. 

I rose high and fell low there.

I also feel like the universe put me on the bathroom floor that day to complete its plan. To crush my ego. Smash my hubris. Mock my perception of self importance to the scene. It must have observed the mental poison I was drinking. Like a cocktail of stress that altered who I was. I feel like the universe decided to laugh in the face of my so-called accomplishments as if to say “use that Grammy nomination as a pillow, Mr. Important. Try using your Big Tool record to deal with your illness pal”. 

It was brutal. It was hard. It was necessary. It was love.

The pain in my head that day on the bathroom floor drove me to feel like I wanted to die. What I did not know at the time, is that I did die. Metaphorically. That version of Chris Lum - morphed and twisted by Moulton - began his death. Laying on the floor that day, I found myself confronting a truth I could no longer ignore. 

“This identity as an owner of Moulton, DJ, and producer is toxic as long as it keeps me anchored to this building. Without the building I am none of these things. If I am none of these things, I am nothing. But if I stay, I’m toast”.

Meanwhile, the person closest to me had been trying to tell me what I could not tell myself. My wife saw it clearly long before I did. She tried many times, in many ways, to tell me I needed to walk away from Moulton. I dismissed her. Sometimes gently, sometimes not. I was terrified of what was at stake, what walking away would mean, what I would lose. What I failed to see — what I am not proud of — is that she understood exactly what was at stake. She was watching me disappear. I just wasn't ready to hear it. That failure to listen is one of my deepest regrets from that era. We both paid a price for it.

For years, this path had not been working for me economically, artistically, spiritually, or personally. But I could not let go. I had no space in my brain or spirit to imagine something different. I had a grip on that thought pattern and that building had a grip on me. That day on the bathroom floor though, my hand loosened, my grip finally softened. I laid on that floor broken and defeated. No longer able to summon the resilience that propelled me through un-relenting stress for decades. I was empty. A limp body on a dirty floor begging to be released from pain.

The force of the universe was present with me that day on the bathroom floor. The same force that brought me to Polk street in 1993 then brought me back again in 2000 wasn’t finished with me yet.  Once it had broken me that day at Earth Class Mail, it saw that I was ready for the final act. It would arrive the following year with two events landing almost simultaneously. After four attempts over two years, Pandora Radio finally said yes to hiring me. I could finally experience some financial stability. More importantly, the building on Polk was being sold. The new owners would be tearing it down. Generic, soulless condos would replace five decades of San Francisco music and entertainment history. There would be nothing to go back to, nothing to drive by and become nostalgic for. No physical reminders.  The universe gave me that gift.

So there it was, the exit. I was finally ready to take the offramp.  Exit 2015. 

I could finally pull over and rest.

After more than a decade of distance, healing and reflection, I now see that on the bathroom floor that day, Chris Lum, the person before Moulton, formed a chrysalis. From that hardened shell, something is emerging. A return to the world of house music that gave me so much joy, shaped me as an adult and eventually led me to who I am today… 

The Custodian. 

A4 - The Needle Drop

“Now that I’m old enough to enjoy the music and culture with you, it sucks that you don’t DJ and make music anymore”.  

These words swirled in my head for months. They were delivered by my daughter after I DJ’ed for the first time in 13 years. 

When I closed the Moulton space on Polk, my friend Homero and I were running a label called Moulton Music. I knew it was time for me to walk away fully, totally. But Homero was not saddled with the same decades of stress and pain I was and as such, had far more inspiration and reason to keep going. So, I gave him the Moulton name and said “go forth and be great”. He has done that and more by establishing Moulton as a successful record label and event production business. 

We’ve been working at our day jobs together the last 12 years and he has consistently invited me back into the fold. I’ve always resisted. Convinced that the music life was a former life. I was at peace with never doing any of it again. Then one day he invited me to play at one of his events. Invite is too soft a word actually. He lovingly bullied me into playing. I am grateful he is persistent. 

Moulton was having an all vinyl event at a little spot in San Francisco called Phonobar in Hayes Valley. It's the kind of place I used to love playing. Small, intimate, great sound, low ceilings, warm colors and a great crowd. Where 80 people dancing and creating a vibe can rival the energy of a 500 person club. After months of pestering me to play, I relented. “Why not, it might be fun,” I said to Homero. For a month straight I practiced like I used to when I was just starting out. I had not “practiced” for a DJ set since at least 1993, let alone become lost in the act of experimenting with different combinations of records. Or meticulously making mental or physical notes when to mix in, when to mix out of records or work out how long to hold the mix.

Looking back now, I think that preparation period was the first breath of fresh air over smoldering embers of an extinguished artistic fire. On the day of the party, our daughter was there with me, working the door. It reminded me of the times my wife would be working the door at parties I played back in 1993. Our son flew home early from college for the holidays to be there and my wife rounded out the family affair.  My time to play came and I had fun. A lot of fun. In ways that I had not in decades.

It was one of those sets where everything was in a flow state and the crowd resonated with the music. The sound system was tight and the vibe felt just like old times. It made me feel like it was 1992 again. But what brought me to near tears was how blessed I felt to look out from the booth and see my wife and two young adult kids dancing and having a great time. It was the first time my children had ever seen their dad DJ.  It had been so long since I felt that feeling of being good at “that thing”.  So long in fact that I had forgotten how it felt.  I did NOT feel invisible this time.

It was such a joy to be able to share that experience with my family. “My kids got to see me kill it.  I can be at peace now” was the feeling in my soul for the next few weeks. Then my daughter said those words to me and they continued to bounce around and echo in my mind,“It sucks that you don’t DJ and make music anymore. Sucks you don’t anymore. Don’t anymore”.  Anymore”   

One of my favorite things to do over the last few years is go on long walks with my dog. He’s a rescue mutt from Tulare county. Cute little black and white face and a medium sized body. He loves to walk. It is not uncommon for us to clock 8+ miles on a single walk. Or 15 miles over a weekend.  When you are out that long, the mind wanders.

“It sucks that you don’t DJ and make music anymore”. 

You have time to think. And think, I do. My inner voice never shuts up.

“You don’t DJ and make music anymore”. 

Always thinking. “don’t anymore”. 

Months went by with this bouncing in my head. Each echo of her voice was wearing down the wall I had built — not between me and the music, but between me and everything I had tangled it up with.

In a casual conversation with Homero, he again invited me back into the fold of Moulton. Frankly, I am surprised he did. For over ten years he would say it “Whenever you're ready, Lum”. I always declined, the thought was never entertained. I was convinced I was done, forever. In order to heal from Moulton, I had to fully extinguish the flame. I spent 12 years doing that. But it seems there were little embers still aglow, deep in me somewhere. I was warming up to the idea. “Let me think about it,” I said to Homero.  

On one of those long dog walks I started thinking about myself as an artist. Not the Moulton landlord, not the record store buyer, not the label manager. The artist. I asked myself “If my artist self were a character in a story, what archetype would I be?” I set off to explore that. I worked through an archetype exercise and arrived at The Sage, The Explorer, The Atlas and finally - The Custodian. When I first saw that archetype, it didn’t jump off the page.

But again, the long dog walks make the mind wander. I think I was on Taraval near the park when the lightbulb flashed. Like the flash of my neurology symptoms, in an instant, I had the idea of this project. And it felt like a purpose. Those mystical forces were with me once again presenting a non negotiable task to pursue…

A project and a calling. The Custodian.

The details of what that means live on the About page on this site. In short, I am returning to house music. Not to rehash what I did before, nor prove anything to anyone. I want to pull on the thread of a 25-year life in house music. To examine and explore the journey between the first rave and closing of Moulton and do this through blog posts like these and through song.

Via this blog, I want to tell the stories of discovery and obsession. The years building the craft. Then the ascension and the collapse that traveled alongside it. I am looking back to find out what created that joy and discover what's left. And what I can make with it now that I'm healed.

Through my music, I want to explore the eras of house music that influenced and inspired me. The exploration will be my attempt to summon the same feelings I had when I first heard a specific song, but told through the lens of who I am today.

The Custodian project is a compulsion. It reminds me of the scene in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind where Richard Dreyfuss begins to compulsively make a mountain out of mashed potatoes. Slowly at first until he begins to pile them higher and soon, he’s taken all of the mashed potatoes from his family and ends up forming a massive mashed potato mountain on his table. It's an image  he has a sense of but can’t quite detail. The Custodian project is my mashed potato mountain. Even if no one joins me at the dinner table to see it. I’m building it.

Starting July 2026, new music I write will be released through Moulton Music. A label I started with my friend Homero Espinosa before I closed Moulton Media. When I walked away to heal in 2015, I handed off the Moulton name to Homero and let him do his thing. With integrity, love for the music, care for the community of fans and dedication to his craft, he has built something I am genuinely proud of.  He has graciously invited me back into the fold as both a business partner and artist.

My stories and writing will be posted here in this blog. I will also curate pages of photos and other media that tell a visual or audio story of a life in house music.  While The Custodian’s path has yet to be fully mapped, it has a destination. I plan to start this artistic memoir in 1990 and chronologically follow a 15 year journey. When I arrive at the end of the Moulton era in 2015, this project will end. 

As for this first entry, I am starting the blog off here — at the end of the Moulton Media era — so you'd know who I had become by 2015 and who I am now before I take you back to the beginning in late 1990.

I am excited for the journey ahead in ways that Moulton years never allowed. When I reach the end of this project, I hope the final words of The Custodian land differently than how they started off this prelude.

“This did not suck. This was needed. It was closure.My custodial duties are done.  My plunger dismantled.The keys to the house, handed over. Nothing’s better than that”.

Until the next dance,

 ~ Lum