August 22nd - Alive With Pleasure

I’m one of those people who is obsessed with music.

Utterly

Hopelessly

Ridiculously

Pointlessly.

Sometimes it can feel like music is more important to me than all other relationships. I know that it is not true, but in fleeting moments it can feel that way. On hearing something, I drift off into my own world and own thoughts and know that people sometimes have trouble bringing me back to the present here and now.

As it was on 22nd August.

I was having a coffee with Cel. It was my last day. Then I hear Viva Voce’s “Alive With Pleasure” over the store PA.

For a moment, I was lost but everything made sense. Leaving, walking away, changing career, changing continent, changing everything. Yes, the lyrics do include the lines “we’ll be just fine…” but it wasn’t that. It was another lyric, another song and a moment back in December 2006.

I have history with this band.

When I left the Magic Kingdom back in 2006, I went to see Viva Voce the day after I resigned. They were promoting a new album that was gaining heavy play in my flat down by the River Brent. It was stuck in my head and my heart. I had inclined to quote their lyrics in my resignation letter – “We Do Not Fuck Around”.

nb – The same lyric was quoted again, this time round, as well.

In 2006, I had no job, I was about to have my flat taken out from underneath me and I was on the edge of homelessness. But despite having no plan and no idea where my life would take me or how I could pick myself up, I found myself buoyant and bullish one cold Tuesday night at 93 Feet East on Brick Lane. That night, Vive Voce felt like the eye of a storm. I wasn’t just hearing the songs, I was living them. I felt every kick of bass drum through my chest, my thoughts were the dry beans in the maracas used instead of drum sticks in"Faster Than a Dead Horse" and every distorted guitar chord echoed a different part of my soul.

Within minutes, I was lost in the event but became incredibly aware that I had made the right decision. That taking a chance and jumping off the cliff trusting the water below to break my fall was the best option.

It was in the middle of “Lesson No 1”. Anita sang direct to me. No one else, but me. At least that how it felt at that moment…

“So keep your head up, things are alright”

And she was right. I kept my head up and things were alright.

That time, my friend K also came through for me. Without warning and within about two minutes of starting a conversation I had agreed to go to Germany to work for him.

So on my final day over at 214, there seemed something beautiful, touching and telling that the last song I heard on the shop floor was by Viva Voce. A circle was being completed, my leaving had some – albeit, nonsensical -resonance and I was again able to take any doubts and fears of leaving back to Brick Lane in 2006 and banish them.

When I closed my ears to the outside world, I could hear Anita supporting me again…

This time, no turning back, I will again support K.

To Saudi…