Another postcard

For two nights we walk into the Moth Club and out of our own lives. We are there to see Everything but the Girl, performing as Tracey Thorn / Ben Watt. We are there with a crowd older than myself to remember some tunes, to live out some dreams. We are there to celebrate people, to appreciate these humans who have given so much to the soundtrack of our lives. It’s beautiful to see people face to face, to feel them as they age, and to be glad to know how human we all are underneath. There’s no glamor, few photographs, no recordings. It’s just a group of people excited about music. Some of us have flown a long way. All of us have waited a long time. For Tara and myself this will probably be the only time, in from Hong Kong, too young and too American to have had a chance to see them live in the ’90’s. We saw Ben Watt once (pictured above), in Tokyo, on the Hendra tour. We lucked into it while on vacation thanks to Twitter — the old twitter. That show was magical, everyone peaceful, the band in sync, and his voice strong with the joy of touring his own songs again. Perhaps of writing his own songs again.

For so much of our lives we are trying to create. We are trying to create an atmosphere, a community, a family, a world that feels the way we believe things should feel. Caring. Open. Curious. Adventurous. Willing to try new things and able to be ok even if they don’t work out. Interested in the people next door, the people serving food, or working beside us. It’s not a complicated world, the one we’re trying to build. It’s walkable and affordable, for all of us. There are posters on the walls of shows to see, and people playing music because they love to, because they’re able to. The family that runs the local restaurant wants to pass it down, and their kids agree, not because they have to, but because they like it, because it’s enough. More than anything we want a world where everyone has enough, without worry and pain. Mostly we want a world where we treat others like ourselves.

The life that we have missed, I think it still exists

Watching Tracey sing words that have echoed through my ears for years I am overwhelmed with joy. The first notes, the opening lines, bring me back to the Saikyo line, to that boy roaming the hinterlands of Saitama on a BMX, on commuter rail.

From the top you can see so far into the distance

Here in my forties the things that matter are no different than they were at twenty, at seventeen. I care about people, about all of us, together. I care about how we make each other feel, and what we can build together if we try. I care about being able to drop in, to swing by, to pop over, and to be part. This comes with it’s own challenges, as the people I want to pop in on are scattered all over the globe.

And then I want to let myself fade. To put on headphones and get on the train. Or, like we do on exiting the Moth, to get on a rental e-bike and glide off into the night, comfortable in the city Everything but the Girl have been describing. It’s been decades that the younger me couldn’t imagine and the older me doesn’t believe we’ve survived, and yet here we are in London, out among the walking wounded.

Out amongst the walking wounded
Every face on every bus
Is you and me and him and her

Quoted lyrics from Everything but the Girl’s ‘No Difference’, and ‘Downhill Racer’ from the 1999 album Temperamental, and ‘Walking Wounded’ from the 1996 album of the same name