Recently I had the pleasure of DJing my friend Aarona Pichinson’s Yoga Soundscapes benefit yoga event in midtown Manhattan. We’ve worked together before, sharing a love of global-seeking electronic music with an emphasis on percussion and bass. The event was produced by a student that attended a Soundscapes a few months ago at Yogaworks Soho. He loved it so much that he wanted to try it in one of his company’s buildings as a benefit for a local fire department that had lost men during 9/11.

Originally planned as an outdoor class in a public courtyard attached to the residential building, thick clouds and doomed forecasts forced it to be moved into the fitness center. More intimate and makeshift—I spun while straddling a weightlifting bench—the night had a great energy everyone had a wonderful time. Everyone, that is, except one.

Being positioned slightly outside the studio floor in the weights section, I could see the room through a pulley machine. About midway through my set, I dropped out and three guest musicians—Haale, Matt Kilmer, and Joshua Geisler—played a live set for about fifteen minutes. It was part of the climax of the event. They began by playing live over a banging Nickodemus and Zeb remix of Turkish flautist Omar Faruk Tekbilek, raising their volume once I dropped the beat out. And, for roughly five minutes, it got loud. That’s what a climax does.

Funny thing is, the gym was still open during all this. Members were mostly fascinated, stopping their workouts to peer in, even dance a little to the speaker set up over me as a monitor. Suddenly, one rather pissed off member rushes at me. “You have to respect the members!” he yelled, commanding me to turn it down. He tried to touch some knobs on my mixer, not realizing that the music he was hearing was being created by the musicians not, oh, five feet from where he stood. After seeing my amused look, he figured it out, walking over to the main mixer, which their microphones were in fact plugged into.

I cut him off, telling him it was a benefit class for 9/11 firefighters, and that this part would not last long. He was relentless. His cheeks puffed out with breathless exasperation. I wish I would’ve thought to tell him that yoga could help with that. He yelled at me about respect again. Now, fire is a tricky element to deal with. When you can’t put it out with water, you have to use fire to confuse it, like how firefighters know to burn a clearing so that the first fire has nowhere to go. I replied that he was the one that needed to learn respect. While I don’t like confrontations, there are times when I’m grateful for my six-foot-four frame.

His body went into spasm when I mentioned the word respect, like I killed his baby panda. He told me to F off, and to not tell him about respect. I repeated my sentiment, he repeated his, then stormed off.  However I could keep him from turning off that mixer was going to have to do. All the musicians and students were having a moment of ecstasy, oblivious to the frustrated madman on the other side of the pulley. Besides, some situations aren’t meant for appeasing. They’re designed to be diffused. And sometimes diffusing means igniting.

At the end of the night, the man at the front desk came over to me, fervently apologizing. Apparently the member had screamed at him when he saw his (lack of) progress with me. I felt bad that the fire was routed to him, but at least madman was away from our equipment. Front desk worker was genuinely upset by it all, hoping that I was not mad. By the end of our conversation, we were laughing over the whole thing. That’s when he told me this gem, one so indicative of why someone would demand respect when so little already existed.

“He told me, ‘I’m going to demand my money back.’ The irony is that he has a one-year free membership.”