Whitechapel

“Sometimes you just need something that lets you begin.”

Journal Entry: Whitechapel

I remember the train into London.

“Platform 11 for London Paddington is... delayed”. Absolute fuck sticks.

Great start to the day at 7:10 on a Monday morning.

I was technically moving, eventually anyway. The train was moving, everyone around me was moving, London was presumably doing whatever London does at that time in the morning, and I was heading towards it, but I didn't really feel like I'd started yet.

I knew what I needed to do that day. I knew where I was going, what was expected of me, who I needed to speak to, all of that stuff was already sitting in my head before I'd even got there. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with me. I wasn't upset or exhausted or trying to escape anything. I just had that slightly odd feeling of being behind myself, like everything had started without me and I was still waiting to catch up.

I get that sometimes. You can know exactly what you need to do and still somehow spend ages not doing it. Not because you're deliberately avoiding it and not because there's some huge reason you can't, you just haven't quite crossed that little line between thinking about doing something and actually getting on with it. I can sit there knowing I need to start something and somehow find myself doing absolutely anything else first.

That was probably where my head was when I started putting this together.

I don't think I made the connection with the train at the time. I wasn't sitting there thinking, right, this mix is going to be about starting. I just started listening to things and noticed I wasn't really approaching it in the usual way.

Normally I can get quite deliberate with a mix. I know what I'm looking for, or at least I convince myself I do. I'm thinking about where something should go, whether a track belongs, whether the energy is right, what I want the next section to do. Sometimes I can spend more time thinking about the mix than actually listening to it.

This time I was doing something slightly different. I was waiting for something to happen.

Not some massive reaction. Just anything.

A track would come in and I'd suddenly pay a bit more attention. I'd sit forward or turn it up slightly or find myself listening to one particular bit again. Sometimes it was barely anything at all, just that feeling of, alright, stay here for another minute.

If that didn't happen, I'd move on.

So there was quite a lot of stopping and starting. I'd put something in, listen, change it, go back, try something else. I'd think I'd found something and then decide I hadn't. There were probably moments where I was wondering what the fuck I was actually doing because I wasn't really getting anywhere.

But I kept going.

I think eventually the music just became more persistent. Not bigger, not more dramatic, it just started holding my attention for longer. One track led into another and then I wasn't really thinking about whether I was building anything anymore. I was listening to what was there and responding to it.

That was probably the point where something changed, although I wouldn't have noticed it as a moment while it was happening.

I stopped checking.

I wasn't looking at the whole thing from the outside anymore, wondering whether it was working or whether I was doing it properly. I was just in it, listening to one thing and then the next thing and making the decision that was in front of me rather than worrying about all the decisions that were still coming.

And it reminded me of that train, although I only really noticed that afterwards.

The train had been moving the whole time. I'd been moving the whole time. I just hadn't really felt involved in it yet.

And then I was. That's about as dramatic as it got. Sorry if you were expecting or wanting more from this today.

I didn't suddenly feel amazing. I hadn't solved whatever strange little resistance I'd been carrying around that morning. London hadn't changed and neither had the list of things waiting for me when I got there. I just stopped waiting for myself to feel ready and started doing the thing.

I think I like that about this one because there wasn't really a breakthrough. Looking back, it was almost annoyingly ordinary. A delayed train, a Monday morning, a bit of music, a lot of changing my mind, and eventually I was listening properly.

There are days when starting feels much harder than it should. I know what I'm supposed to do, I know I need to do it, and somehow that still doesn't mean I'm doing it.

Sometimes I think I've been waiting for some feeling to arrive first, like I'll suddenly feel ready and then everything will become easy. I'm not sure it works like that.

Sometimes you just put the first track on.

Then another one.

And eventually you're not thinking about starting anymore because you're already doing it.

I suppose that's what this one was for me.

I started.