Guinness World Record Follow Up - Part 1

Prior to dropping the needle on the first record, DJ Promo's nerves were evident for all to see. He got up at 5am to do the final preparations and was feeling excited up until about 10 minutes to go when he became nervous, much more nervous that he had thought he would be. Interestingly, the little things that went wrong during the event helped DJ Promo maintain his alertness. Being the event manager as well as the DJ was a huge undertaking and meant that he had be fully alert to sort out issues such as the live video feed not working at the same time as mixing records. If he ever tried something like this again, he’d make sure that there was a team of people to manage the event leaving him free to focus on DJing.

Having been a DJ for so long, DJ Promo has learned the art of mixing so well that he can do it subconsciously. When sleep deprivation began to affect his conscious thoughts, he was still able to mix well. As he explained, his subconscious was able to take over, "My auto pilot works very well and I just got on and did the job at hand. On the other hand, I was hallucinating more and more frequently; only after the sun had set and only after not eating." The availability of food and water was important to DJ Promo's mental alertness. On the second day, a feeling of flatness and illness went away as soon as he had enough water to drink and, on the third and fourth days, the energy from small amounts of food was enough to stop the hallucinations. DJ Promo explained further, "(on) Wednesday night I went without food for several hours and was seriously hallucinating as a result. From that point onwards I was frequently disorientated and my alertness was more unconscious than conscious.” DJ Promo said that this reliance on his subconscious alertness had very little effect on his ability to mix, “my coordination was all screwed up on Thursday morning but even then I could mix and mix well. I just needed someone to prompt me to mix. And yet, I remember at 67 hours walking away from the decks whilst two tracks were in the mix, going to the toilet and coming back with the tracks still going together perfectly."

Hallucinations are a common effect of sleep deprivation and for DJ Promo they began after three days when there was an interruption to his supply of food. He recalled that, "At first, the hallucinations were really scary. I couldn't see the decks even though I knew I was DJing. I saw two houses aside a cobbled street. The houses were the turntables and the cobbled street was the mixer. I was moving furniture between the two houses and organising it on the cobbled street. I knew it wasn't real, but that's what I was seeing. I was fully on auto-pilot and my DJing was fine. The crowd was going insane and yet every time I looked down I saw the same thing; two houses and a cobbled street. I remember it so vividly that it's like a photo." As soon as he ate, the hallucinations stopped. Later when he returned from a break (in accordance with the Guinness World Records rules), he had forgotten how to DJ, "I knew what I did, but couldn’t remember why I moved this or touched that. Everyone though I was joking as again my mixing was fine but I honestly couldn’t remember what to do. I tried to show the crew that I couldn’t mix by demonstrating with the mixer but what I did was perfect. It was as if my brain wasn't telling me what I was doing, it just got on and did it! The next hallucination was much worse. I was completely unaware I was DJing. I (thought I) was repairing the decks and mixer for four hours. It was a storming progressive set and my head was down at the mixer and I just got on with it. Every time I looked up the crowd cheered and whistled but and I would see them and couldn’t work out why they were reacting when all I was doing was repairing the equipment."

The many messages of support that DJ Promo received throughout were inspirational when the going got tough and made everything worthwhile to him. At the moment when he broke the existing record, DJ Promo remembers feeling relieved, but was completely unaware of his surroundings. He hallucinated that he was at a different venue that had been arranged by Guinness World Records and remembers feeling surprised at the number of people there. In the following three hours he felt disoriented and wasn’t enjoying himself. In the end, the decision to stop was an easy one to make.

Surprisingly, DJ Promo slept for only 9 hours afterwards and has slept erratically since then. The week of rest that he had planned for immediately afterwards didn't happen. Instead, he has had to sort out personal issues and try to catch up with emails, phone messages and internet forums. As he predicted beforehand, life will never be the same for DJ Promo. He'll be doing a lot more charity work, such as victory parties for his world record, as well as continuing to DJ.

 

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