Is Danny Howard An Actual Human Being Or Just a Construct? | US | Translation

You can try and convince me otherwise, but I'm adamant that Danny Howard isn't real. Danny Howard does not exist. Danny Howard is nothing more than a construction, and I'm not entirely sure who 'he' has been built for. Think for a second about Danny Howard. Nothing came to mind did it? When you had to think about Danny Howard all you really thought about was trying to look like you were thinking about Danny Howard, and hoping that the words "Danny Howard" would trigger some kind of response, but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Danny Howard means nothing to you because Danny Howard isn't real. If Danny Howard was real, then me asking you to think about him for a second, for just one second, would have garnered some response. Admit it: right now you're thinking about potassium poisoning as a result of massive banana consumption, or your favourite member of the Changing Rooms cast, or ionic equations. You're thinking about literally anything other than Danny Howard. Because, yep, that's right, Danny Howard doesn't exist.

Granted, there's no proof that any of us exist, or that anything exists, or that existence itself is a real thing. I am pretty sure though, that I am real, that I exist, for no reason other than sitting through interminable postgraduate philosophy seminars on the relationship between language and reality, where high-functioning stoners in grubby Oxford shirts pontificated about the being-in-the-world of apples or tables or pencils. Apples are real. Tables are real. Pencils are real. You and I are real. Danny Howard, though, is not real.

Sure, you might be able to go on the internet and come back to me with a dossier of facts about Danny Howard which you might use to support your argument that Danny Howard is in fact an actual, real, living and breathing human being as opposed to a theoretical concept. You might tell me, for example, that, BBC Radio 1 DJ Danny Howard is officially launching his own record label 'Nothing Else Matters' with former BBC Radio 1 colleague Nigel Harding and RCA Records. I'd stare blankly at you. You might try and jolt me into a response by going on to say that, "last year, Nothing Else Matters released 99 Souls #5 chart smash 'The Girl Is Mine' which topped the UK Dance Chart and has been streamed 25 million times." Still nothing. I'd look you in the eyes and say, "Yes, yes, I see, I see. Who is Danny Howard, though? Who actually is Danny Howard, though? Tell me about him and his hopes and fears and aspirations and desires. Give me the man. Bring me the head of Danny Howard." And you'd shake like a fucking leaf, mate.

You'd have nothing to say. You'd try and sit me down and show me Danny Howard's Facebook page, with its 126,380 fans, and its 17 profile pictures, and its verified tick and you'd say, look, he is real, he does exist, for a man who does not exist cannot possibly post selfies taken in BBC Radio 1 studios before DJing on BBC Radio 1 like Danny Howard, a real, living, breathing, feeling, thinking, loving human being does. And for a second you'd think you'd won me over. And then I'd knock your Macbook on the floor, flip the table over and roar. "DON'T YOU SEE? DON'T YOU SEE THE LIES? DON'T YOU SEE ALL THESE FABRICATED ELEMENTS THAT SOME SHADOWY HIGHER OPERATIVES HAVE BROUGHT TOGETHER TO CONVINCE YOU THAT "DANNY HOWARD" IS A DJ ORIGINALLY FROM BLACKPOOL WHO ATTENDED EDGE HILL UNIVERSITY GRADUATING WITH A DEGREE IN SPORT AND EXERCISE SCIENCE BEFORE SPENDING THREE MONTHS DJING AT MINISTRY OF SOUND EGYPT WHO ROSE UP THE RANKS AND NOW HOSTS A THREE HOUR SHOW ON SATURDAYS ON RADIO 1 CALLED DANCE ANTHEMS WITH DANNY HOWARD? DON'T YOU SEE THAT? ARE YOU SO BLIND TO REALITY?" You'd shake like a fucking leaf, mate.

I'd smash through the walls of whatever building we were in, and I'd go and seek solace in a very real pint of foaming nut brown ale. I'd start breathing normally again, and you'd arrive sweating profusely, having tried to chase after me, but having slipped on the debris of the wall, and you'd sit down opposite me and you'd say, go on then, if you're so fucking clever, tell me why Danny Howard is a construct. Explain yourself. Fucking stand your ground. Do it. Tell me all. Now.

And I'd go to the bar and buy a bag of expensive sweet chilli crisps and two more pints, and I wouldn't buy you anything because you can buy your own imaginary pints, and I'd plonk my pints and my crisps on the table and I'd ask you to watch them and I'd go to the loo and I'd come back and I'd take a deep, deep breath, and a massive glug of warm beer and I'd say:

"Danny Howard doesn't really exist because there are a million Danny Howards in the world, a million Danny Howards DJing night after night in club after club, in town after town. These are the DJs who toil away without recognition, the ones who don't have their names on the bill because they don't have names. Danny Howard is the result of this cabal of local residents getting together and forming a convincing replica of a human being, an android with Serato. If Danny Howard exists on a corporeal level, it's as an elaborate puppet, a puppet stuffed with meat and threaded with human hair, a puppet given a voice box that's controlled by a central committee. That's if he exists at all. After all, he might just be, and I think this is more likely, nothing more than an illusion, a holographic being willed into existence by people who live in Leicester and really like bouncy big room deep house records. Danny Howard is no more real than the possibility of alien life being stumbled upon in our lifetimes, or global warming. When you thought you were watching Danny Howard smash it at a festival in Bracknell what you were really watching was an idea, an idea that you invested in for reasons I'll never understand. No one smashed it. There were no big tunes. Nothing happened. It was you, alone, in a field, in Bracknell. Danny Howard doesn't exist. The government want you to think he does, because him existing is a means of generating income for the entertainment industry because Danny Howard is one of those DJs who ends up playing on bill after bill despite not being real. Same with Adam Beyer. He's not real either. He's just an RA profile and a Just-Eat account. None of them are real. They're all fucking fabrications. All of them. They're all fucking invented. Each and every one of them."

And you, you'd stand up, and you'd say, "you're fucking mad, mate."

And you'd leave. I'd sit, surrounded by my empty pint glasses, and I'd order a plate of scampi and I'd know I was right: Danny Howard isn't real. He's just a construct.

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