Open Late

“By the end of the session, I wasn't thinking about going out anymore. I wasn't particularly thinking about staying in either.”

Journal Entry: Open Late

It was one of those strange early evenings where there wasn't really anywhere I needed to be and nothing that particularly needed doing, which should have made it easy, I suppose, but somehow made deciding what to do with myself feel like the main thing I had to deal with.

I remember sitting there with that familiar feeling that I should probably be somewhere else. I could go out. I suppose. But where? Who would I call? Would anyone even be around? And then there was the other question underneath all of that, which was probably the more honest one. Did I actually want to go out, or did I just not like the idea of staying in?

It was early enough that the night still felt open, but late enough that starting something productive seemed a bit ridiculous. There was that feeling that something was happening somewhere else, music and people and movement and all the stuff that carries on when you're sitting at home wondering what you're doing with your evening. I could almost feel myself wanting to be part of it without actually knowing whether I wanted to go anywhere.

Since I stopped drinking, that feeling has become a little harder to work out.

I'd been sober for about ten months by then, after a health scare that changed the way I looked at alcohol and, quietly, quite a few things around it. I think initially I imagined the biggest change would just be not drinking. That seemed like the obvious bit. Stop drinking and carry on with everything else.

What I hadn't really appreciated was how much else had grown around it.

The drink before leaving the house. Something to hold when you walked into a room. That little bit of time between being at home and suddenly being out somewhere with other people. The feeling of arriving and already having something to do with your hands while your brain caught up with where you were.

I never really thought of any of that as something I needed. I wasn't walking around thinking I couldn't be myself without a drink, but once it wasn't there anymore I started noticing how much those little rituals had been doing for me without me really thinking about them.

There was no buffer anymore. If I felt awkward, I felt awkward. If I didn't know whether I wanted to be somewhere, there wasn't anything to blur that bit around the edges.

Some nights I liked that. Other nights it made things feel a bit more exposed than I was used to.

That evening I was having one of those arguments with myself where neither side was particularly convincing. I could go out. I could stay in. I could message someone. I could put something on. I could probably go to the studio and make some music, although I wasn't really in the mood to make anything. I just didn't know what I wanted.

So I went into the studio anyway.

It's tucked away at the back of the garden, far enough from the house that when you shut the door it feels like another little world. I wasn't going in there with some big intention. I wasn't thinking, right, I'm going to have a brilliant night on my own and prove something to myself. I wasn't trying to make a chapter or work through anything.

I just wanted to put some music on. So I did, and then another track, and then another. For a while I was still thinking about the evening while I was listening. Should I go out? Was I wasting the night? Was I going to regret staying in? All that usual rubbish was still going around in the background, only now there was music underneath it.

Then, at some point, I stopped noticing the conversation.

I can't really tell you when it happened. I just know that I was suddenly listening properly.

That thing happens when I'm making a mix where you stop trying to decide what the whole thing is going to be and start responding to whatever is actually happening. One track gives you an idea for another. Something doesn't work and you move away from it. Something works better than you expected and you leave it alone. You make a transition and then you're listening to what came out of it rather than thinking about what you thought should come next.

That's probably the bit I enjoy most.

You can't really fake it when you're in there. You either like where you've got to or you don't, and if you don't, you have to do something about it.

The session just started moving.

I wasn't thinking about an arc or where I wanted it to end up. I wasn't trying to recreate the feeling of being out. I was just following the music, and one decision led into another until I'd been in there quite a while without really noticing.

And then I realised I hadn't thought about going out for ages.

That caught me slightly off guard because I'd gone into the studio partly because I didn't know what else to do with myself. I hadn't left the house. I hadn't called anyone. I hadn't had a drink. I hadn't somehow become more sociable or more confident or talked myself into having a better evening.

I'd just been listening to music. And I was completely absorbed in it.

There was a point where I could feel the energy in the room, which sounds a bit ridiculous when you're standing on your own in a little studio at the back of your garden, but there it was. The music was moving and I was moving with it and I wasn't thinking about whether this was what I should be doing anymore.

I was just having a really good night. That made me think about how much stuff I'd attached to having a good night without ever really questioning it. The drink before going out. The ritual of getting ready. The feeling of arriving somewhere. The assumption that connection had to happen in a particular kind of place, with particular people, at a particular time.

Maybe all of those things had been part of it. I don't know.

But the bit underneath them was still there.

That was probably the thing I hadn't understood properly after stopping drinking. I'd been so focused on what was no longer there that I hadn't really thought about the parts of myself that were still there.

I still wanted music loud. I still wanted that feeling of disappearing into something for a while. I still liked being around people and the strange thing that happens when you're in a room full of strangers and everyone suddenly seems to be responding to the same piece of music at exactly the same time.

I hadn't lost that. I just wasn't sure where to find it anymore. And that night I found some of it in a room at the back of the garden.

The session carried on and, as it got later, I became less aware of myself actually making it. I wasn't checking whether I was enjoying it because I was too busy listening. I wasn't thinking about the fact that I was on my own because, for a while, I didn't particularly feel on my own.

That's probably why I remember this one.

Not because it proved I didn't need alcohol, because I don't think that was the point. And not because staying in suddenly became better than going out. I still love going out. I still love being in a room with other people and hearing music properly loud and feeling that collective thing you get when everyone is caught by the same moment.

It was more that I'd forgotten there were other ways of getting there.

I'd spent a lot of time thinking about the things I used to do before the feeling arrived, without really asking whether those things were the feeling.

They probably weren't. They were just familiar.

By the end I wasn't sitting there thinking, brilliant, I've learned something about myself tonight. I wasn't particularly thinking about staying in or going out anymore either. It had all become a bit irrelevant.

I'd gone into the studio because I didn't know what I wanted to do with the evening, and somehow the evening had just happened.

I think there was something quite nice about that.

No plan. No drink. No particular reason for being there. Just music, a room at the back of the garden, and a few hours that I hadn't expected anything from.

Open late, I suppose.