Bright Light, Weird City
I’d been on the move since 2:30AM, at first statically, in my dreams. Moving from one stress scenario into the next, urging my brain to deep sleep, yet perpetually stuck in the REM state. Then, as soon as the alarm sounded in my waking life, up, up, up, triple bag and passport check, moving through the eerie motions of the post-midnight clockface, waiting for the nerves to kick in as I drank my tea. They didn’t.
A quick sneak into the daughter’s room for a soft peck and a whispered I love you. A momentary lock with the husband’s sleepy eyes, a sparkle in mine – I’m really doing this. Then, out, out, out the door, and into the waiting cab. Out at the airport, through security, onto a bench and nose into a book. Regular check of the flight boards until my gate appears and a slow amble towards it.
Another bench, another chapter of the book. Second trip to the bathroom for a nervous piss. The pilot disappears into the tunnel behind the check-in counter, the stewards follow, a line forms, this is happening.
I imagine the daughter waking up in a couple of hours. My chest tightens a little. Images of plane crashes, an eternity trapped in another realm, at best weeks stranded in another country. What am I doing? Deep breath, stand in line, here we go, go, go.
---
Arriving in the UK – especially during this time of year – a homecoming of sorts. Cozy nights spent in front of the fire place at the grandparents’ house in Kent, the Nana sitting in her lounge chair on her third sherry, red-nosed and jolly; exciting outings into London with the extended Croydon family, adults warmed by seasonal spirits, us kids high on sugar.
The Kent side of the family is now extinct; the Londoners have moved out and on. I’m the adult now; straight-edged in my intakes, otherwise askew.
It’s a homecoming of sorts. A return to myself. Part of my roots. Part of what excites my patchworked identity and multi-cultured brain.
Off the plane, herded through passport control like cattle, through to arrivals and out the sliding glass doors into a mild, wintery London morning, the sun playfully poking out from behind white clouds.
A shuttle and a midstay moment on the lookout for a red car with a white roof. Or a white car with a red roof. Doesn’t matter, I recognize the driver. Six years since we’ve shared the same space, yet never apart.
I drop into her passenger seat, we drop into deep explorations of all that is current in our lives, drop out of our daily responsibilities for the day, as she navigates the motorways and outskirts of London.
---
Browsing through the highlights of the past six years as we browse through the titles in the bookshops we dance in and out of, the years only noticeable in the slightly laboured way we crouch to reach the lower shelves.
Grumbling stomachs lead us through the food halls of Brick Lane, world cuisine filling our nostrils, hands eager to feed us wave delicacies in our faces with forks and spoons and chopsticks, pitching us their finest in accents as varied as the ingredients steaming in their pots and pans.
Exiting this sheltered mini-verse of culinary skills we head into the drizzle just as the natural light begins to dim and I am no longer conscientious of time, just baffled by the speed at which it’s all moving – us, the city, the light, the season –
until we enter through the backdoor of Van Gogh’s mind and into the moving, swirling exhibit of his paintings on Commercial Street. Everything outside keeps on moving, as do his works and his thoughts, his angst and his exultation, only we’ve finally come to a halt.
Cradled by low-hanging beach chairs in the middle of the city. The sound of the rain outside regularly spilling over the classical music adding to the motion of starry nights and burnt sienna fields.
When we step outside, everything is dark and we walk through the rain and to the parking spot – both resembling the architecture of our adolescent years. We dismantle it on the way to my two-night-stay, missing the turn to the right address four times.
---
There’s a no-shoe policy inside the Homerton home with the steep steps and the old, creaky wooden floors. The owner, as tall as the house is narrow, is warm and chatty. She insists she is not fluffy but believes the wankered woman down the pub, who once told her to safeguard her heart while on the job of releasing clients from their physical and energetic blockages.
My room is minimalist, bright, tidy and inviting. I slip out of my damp clothes and into my pajamas. I don’t want to leave the room now that I’m finally dry, seated, digesting. But I am desperate to eat the rest of my Vietnamese noodle soup, make myself a cuppa – though not the builder’s variety.
A quick pitstop in the cold but welcoming kitchen, back up the steep stairs reminiscent of all the other London homes I frequented in my childhood, and into bed.
The sound of rain. Then a dreamless sleep, profound, weightless, timeless.
My biological clock is clued in on the CET, wakes me in time to call the daughter before she’s off to school. Her imaginary friend has taken my place. I am not missed nor worried. We say our goodbyes and I snuggle back under the covers in an attempt to catch up on three years of sleep. The rain, the cold, the day without agenda, mhmmm –
and then, the first snow begins to fall. I am overcome with childlike giddiness, pulling the blanket right up to my chin, ready to soak up the wonderful white silence of the moment when –
“Fucking hell!”
My host expresses her excitement out loud. A proper British welcome.
---
I contemplate staying in, reading one of the books that will threaten my Ryanair allowance on the way home, on the chez lounge – all day long, all day long, on the chez lounge, with a view of the window, into the garden, where the snow is already melting under heavy rain drops.
But there are so many more book shops to visit. Good food to eat. People to watch. Advantages to be taken.
I make a snap decision, slip into the same clothes I was wearing the day before and leave my Homerton home, unkempt and clueless as to where I’m going. I think Camden, until a bus passes towards Hackney and I jump on –
and am almost immediately kicked back off when I try to pay with cash, as per my romanticized version of pre-Covid big city times.
The driver is incensed by my ignorance, thinks I’m taking the mick. My grandpa would have called him a pillock, but probably would have sported the same ‘tude – after the five-hundred and seventh time having to explain this shit.
So, I end up getting my first ride for free.
---
The Town Hall looks about as central as it can get, here goes. My feet are no longer accustomed to the freeze of English winters stinging through the tarmac and I can feel my toes numbing. I spot a charity shop – a real one, not the “vintage”, central London tourist traps – and enter with a sting of nostalgia.
All those weekends spent rummaging around boot-fairs and jumble-sales and flea-markets and charity shops with the grandparents. The smell of stale lavender and camphor on Nana’s Victorian nightdresses. I can smell it now as the warm air pumped through the tired furnace engulfs me, feel lulled by the memory –
“Mary, no peeing in here!” she shopkeeper scolds an elderly lady, who looks a little rough around the edges. “It’s not fair on the others,” she adds, softening her tone.
A weekly occurrence, it seems.
I flip through the rails, flick through the records, feel fabrics in various states of use and try to remain unfazed. Try to avoid Mary’s puddle, respectfully.
Noone seems to be in a hurry to grab a mop. Perhaps, they are looking for the piddle pad, used for this specific purpose.
My eyes are starting to water. Back to the freeze, into Primarni for an extra pair of socks.
---
Another bus, another downpour, another vocal argument with Google and its miscalculated maps and bus stops. Quick lunch in a kebab shop cleverly disguised as a fancy Turkish restaurant, complete with waist-coated waiters and a three-count cutlery set up on mirroring tables, mine with a view of the pristine but standard late-night, booze-absorbing doner-spit and counter.
Through the Ripper’s haunts, past the Vagina Museum – impenetrable on Mondays and Tuesdays, just my luck – and back to Hackney and its own language and people and charity shops playing old school reggae.
A triumphant walk back through a grippingly gnarly part of the borough, into the townhouse with yellow accent features and a crumbled city stone pathway, up the carpeted stairs, out of my clothes and into a bath dyed blue by a bomb burst open with almond star dust.
Everything submerged bar my cold, dry and cracking hands holding a book from the room’s small library just above the water. An intriguing story, badly written – not bad enough to be waterboarded though, so I get out before my hands follow my drooping eyelids suit.
Lathered in sticky dates, conditioned with coconut essence and glad-ragged in purple dressy-pants and a collared shirt, the body is ready.
The mind is stuck on readily available Reddit reads on the horrors of Uber and whether I will be killed by a driver tonight.
---
A silent fifteen-minute drive to the soundtrack of a broken radio cackling right behind my seat, a sudden halt at a corner shop. Ahead, the main street opens up on a T-junction, a kaleidoscope of curious neon lights. I abandon the car, reuniting the driver with his sole static until his next ride request.
I have yet to spot the people but I can feel the buzz from afar. The heart soars, the throat tickles, the happy tears threaten to well. To the right, said the driver; but I see the crowd ahead, waiting. I imagine myself standing in the wrong line for an hour, when I hear the usher say her name. Rejoice.
A mom and her daughters to the left of me, sweet, strangely silent strangers to my right and there I was, stuck in the middle of a queue and I’ve never felt so calm before. So perfectly placed out of place and pleasantly home.
I’d have been content continuing at this snails-pace forever. Feet double-socked, hat-hair brewing beneath the beanie.
Inching ahead toward an invisible entrance, in reverie.
A small, red, vacant booth; a red relic. I produce mine; black ink, Q-coded on white paper.
---
Earth is calling to the underworld, a potpourri of English and Jamaican Patois and French melodies sung into walkie-talkies whilst choreographing the crowd. The space is small, intimate, unaccustomedly quiet. The dark has never felt so good before.
There’s Katie Malco on stage, sharing anecdotes of a bad year between songs, whilst the people below – friends and lovers, fathers and daughters (many fathers and daughters), mothers and singles and all other constellations, share their own in whispers.
Soak follows, with the antidote to their shared US tour maladies, and I have yet to shake the image of them all, sitting in a dodgy motel room with some random lady playing a saw. Contemplate the verse and suspect – at least an ironic – yeehaw somewhere.
I shimmy my way past bodies, floor side left, where a space, almost triangular, presents itself as the ideal hangout for the night. I’m here and, while stage hands and opening acts swap out guitars, adjust mics and arrange an unobstructed flow between gear, I keep dancing on my own.
It’s the first time tonight, in the dim, purplish hue of the bar lights and twinkling merch stands, that voices raise above a soft murmur.
But when they turn out the lights,
when she steps into the light, oh
there’s no one left
between myself and me
and her voice.
---
I have landed, finally, back into myself, handsfree, irresponsible of anyone’s pleasure but my own. Mapping out the contours of Julien Baker’s face as she sings, plays, shares, her hand repeatedly reaching for the side of her head – grounding herself, succumbing to the need to “frustrate herself into humiliation” – I am as present as I’ll ever be.
The atmosphere is unique. It’s less about singing or moving along to all the tracks that have acted as bandages for personal, romantic and existential types of heartaches that seem inexplicable – until she words them.
It’s all about feeling here. Her, the room, the people and the stories in it. The pain and delight and the unity in it all. Between the faithful and the faithless, the self-absorbed and the self-less.
Cinematic, in that, if there were any sound to be heard between songs it would be the careful rustle through the popcorn pot, the uneasy slurp of melted ice cubes swimming in the remnants of an undefinable liquid.
Spiritual, in that, I witness several teenagers sat on the floor, face to face, as though in tantric trance, a transfer of emotional knowledge, the purest of connections through music. Serene smiles, knees touching, fingertips kissing.
And the woman before me, rooted next to our chosen column, strong in her spectrum, not once removing her palm from the structure, the bag from between her feet, the warm winter coat atop her seasonal jumper; her favourite songs immediately recognizable by the way her fingers start twitching and pulsing, her chin resting on her chest.
A full-body experience, in that, for the first time since the masked 2020s, I am inhaling the scent of people – living, laughing, absorbing all it is they need to soak up and into their skin, their soul, their sentiments.
The scent of anticipatory and momentary sweat, post-show sex and squabbles, an instrumental, vocal high frozen, for the foreseeable future, against musky armpits and curved spines and nestled under heavy bosoms.
---
I’m waiting for Something, chasing the stage lights, letting the moment swallow me up, when I realize, I’m waiting for nothing. It’s all right here.
When I move, tempted by experiencing it all from a different angle, I worry I might upset the microclimate the woman before me has constructed around her column, the pilar on which she has leant for the entire time, hyper aware of any changes in the crowd.
I stand on a step near the exit, taking in the scene, panoramic now, Julien using her microphone as a crutch on which to lean during a moment of lyrical vulnerability. Someone behind me complains that the sound has been bad tonight.
Can’t say I noticed.
All I hear is her – taking over and holding the entirety of the room. Gripping me tightly.
The show ends.
I could leave at any time. But I don’t want to.
I’m a sprinter, learning to wait.