We are the words that move

Somehow, bright empty streets are a good place to remember dark places.

“Oh hey! We in!” Doors open, suddenly, yet always, we are both downward and upward. But you never quite know anything really, with these nights. A name. Ish. A face (yours, mostly). A commitment to the arts/clubbing/space exploration programme of the currently visited nation.

Typically, you only really become briefly present about half way through the night/morning. You have made friends with unlikely faces. In a kitchen. A corridor. A hotel bedroom. A green room. A space in which enthusiasm is viral, energetic, all conquering. We arrive to celebrate the specific, the poised and particular… and end the night in a warm bath of the general, the shared, the pleasingly out of focus. God, I miss it. You?

The ‘current thing’ (diminish your enemy with low-ball vocabulary choices) has many tangible costs. I shan’t revisit the obvious ones here. But pedalling around my city on regular solo bike missions, past shuttered bars and pubs and clubs with reputations now frozen into stills, you confront the dynamics of the world denied you. And strangely, there’s perhaps something new to record and observe.

» read more