France 29 Feb – 3 March 24
Train
When I was younger and playing on my mum’s computer, I vandalised Wikipedia. I remember the phrasing; ‘you have vandalised Wikipedia’, because that’s what the message said.
I don’t remember what I’d changed – something pointless like saying all cars have three wheels. I was just amazed that Wikipedia actually had an edit button and couldn’t resist clicking it.
My dad sat me down in the living room and told me off. Saying that vandalising Wikipedia totally disregards the privileges I have. The privilege to read all the information in the world on the internet, was I not grateful for that ? Did I not value being able to learn things freely?
I felt incredibly guilty and thought about anyone whose knowledge of the world was ruined now. Perhaps some people read about the three-wheeled cars and really believed it.
I am with the band on the Eurostar to Paris and they are vandalising Wikipedia.
Recently a Wikipedia page appeared about the band. It’s unclear who made it, but it wasn’t one of us.
Editing things written about yourself doesn’t feel as much of an offence, it would be nice if that was an option for other write ups, but the words ‘You have vandalised’ are still etched into my mind. It makes me a bit uneasy.
The others add in a section about us being flat-earthers, stating that that belief explains our lyrics; ‘with saxophone player Morgan Wallace having been quoted saying “I’ve seen the edge”’.
I read these additions out loud on the train, and realise by doing that it makes it true. I have now said ‘I’ve seen the edge’ bringing the quote into existence by reading it while it was a lie. A mundane paradox.
I say, ‘what if by writing something on Wikipedia it means it’s true?’
Chris says, ‘what if I write “Johnny wet himself” and then he instantly wets himself’.
That’s not exactly what I meant.
I was thinking like a weird truth or dare; ‘Morgan can do 100 press ups’ then I have to learn to do it.
It’s the same as manifestations I guess; writing it into existence. I think of my friend writing “I will get good A levels” 3 times, then 6 times, then 9 times and putting the piece of paper under a crystal.
I can’t join in the edits because somehow I am still banned from editing Wikipedia for three more years even on my phone. I really want to remember the what it was I changed.
First Day
We get into Paris quickly on the train, check into the hotel, then go do a radio session. In the car to the radio, Chris is telling us some facts about the area. Ben says, ‘I always trust what Chris says.’
A week later in New York Ben might change his mind on that one.
It feels easy, corporate, and too smooth. Radio booths are more like offices, and there’s no one staring at you while you play. Maybe that’s how it should be, only about the sound. The radio room has a view of the Eiffel Tower, and during the session I remember to look out the window on the hour to see it do its lights.
Looking at something sparkly always puts me in a good mood.
We get back to the hotel, go to a bar for a bit, then I peel off and go to bed. In the hotel room that night I am trying to cancel my energy bills online.
I’m moving house the day we get back.
I think of the first time I went away with this band on tour. It was in Holland just over a year and a half ago. When I did that, I felt like I had stepped into a totally different world. Flown away into another life, all the things back home were irrelevant events belonging to someone else, totally separate and totally distant.
It’s not like that this time.
I’m more used to the travel, but also the feel of a place is dependant on how you got there. Paris via ferry, staying overnight in Calais, and then driving the four hours down after that is a totally different place to this.
The streets are exactly the same but you feel the distance differently, it changes the tint of the scenery, everything in a different hue.
I think of the version of myself that drove and ferried down last year. I imagine walking around the streets with her, as myself now, this current Eurostar version. We could be standing in exactly the same place but we would not be able to touch, a thin layer of clingfilm separating us. Same city, but we accidentally went to different versions. One side with a slightly more blueish hue.
The only way to reach the other side by going back to England and making a different way there.
The version of Paris I’m in is painted in the same colours as Manchester. The train here felt about the same as the train to there.
I can’t cancel the water bills; I left it too late. I give up and resign myself to paying for a month of taps in an empty house.
Business Trip
We have two nights in the same hotel, work days; a Thursday and a Friday. We all meet downstairs at the same buffet for the second day in a row, eating the same breakfast at a relatively normal time. We had a night away from venues because of the radio show, just an evening in the office. ’This feels like a corporate away trip’ says Chris.
It reminds me of the first episode of Peep Show with Johnson in it. We are just colleagues in a hotel eating all the buffets provided to us and getting on with our tasks.
There are many interesting galleries or museums I could visit, places that would make me contemplate things and think deeply, but I don’t go. I am enjoying the illusion of a normal working week too much. I don’t break it.
Me and Ben Lime-bike to meet Chris at Bouillon Chartier. We consistently turn into oncoming traffic, it’s hard to switch it in your brain. Someone shouts ‘connard’ at us and I know that means asshole because it sounds like ‘canard’: duck.
I remember the similarity from when my dad was trying to do French road rage. He got it the wrong way around, shouting ‘duck’ out the car window.
In Bouillon Chartier I order a steak. The others say the meat tastes old, but I eat all of it because I paid for it. Maybe not the best choice.
A Break
As soon as we finish the gig in Centrequatre (Paris venue), I walk to the back of the stage to pack down my sax and it snaps in my hands. The crowd is still there, everyone else still at the front. I stay there frozen in disbelief. My sax has broken in many ways before but it usually involves a screw, a pad, or a small wire. Something that can be remoulded or screwed into shape by hand.
This time two pieces of metal that were fused together (the crook and the octave key) have simply snapped in half. There are no screws, it needs to be soldered.
I become an incredibly annoying person for the next hour, telling everyone this must be fixed.
One day later, onstage in Aeronef in Lille, it has been fixed. I got up early and quested to a French village, with the help of Jean-Micheal and Elizabeth, and found a man who could meld it back together again.
The sax feels different. One thing has changed, very subtly, but I find it strangely hard to play. My lungs feel smaller.
I am only fit in one very specific direction. Repeating the same show over and over again.
A few days ago, we had been talking about the concept of aiming for a viral song. And how bizarre it is to write a song focussing on a catchy fifteen seconds. But during this trip, I had got hooked on a catchy fifteen seconds, live clips of it popping up all over my instagram. A bit from the song ‘Salad’ by Blondshell. It goes ‘It doesn’t happen to women I know, I put it in a box in a TV show’.
There is something very very satisfying about singing along with ‘it doesn’t happen to women I know’. I borrow some noise cancelling headphones so I can sing along to it louder.
In Paris, one of the others picked me up and ran with me in a fireman’s lift to show he could save me in a fire. It was funny and I was laughing. And I was also aware if I wanted to get down there was absolutely nothing I could do.
I walk around listening to ‘it doesn’t happen to women I know’ obsessively. This being the soundtrack to the past few days has me thinking about how you can be in the same place but not really. Like the two versions of Paris.
I am in the same place as all the others, we are on the same stage. But it’s as if they are stood on rock and I am stood on glass. Although we appear the same height, it is not a sure footing.
The resoldering of one tiny bit of metal was enough to offset me. This is all delicate.
I couldn’t get down from the fireman’s lift.
When we walked up to the venue (Aeronef) it was on a thin metal platform. That metal gently sagged underneath the weight of the others, it didn’t move for me.
There are physical differences, and no matter how much I can match their energy on stage, my strength doesn’t carry into different settings where theirs does. It’s just physical.
I write in metaphors around the point, but it’s not so much a hypothetical when you’re out late every night with this kind of job.
Walking home in each unknown city will always be different for me than them.
The steak at Chartier was definitely a bad idea. I have food poisoning now and wasn’t 100% sure if I would make it through the gig. But I have.
I am outside on the metal platform while the others smoke. I am squatting to try and feel more comfortable, and moaning every now and then.
‘This feels like some 16 year old party, everyone on benzos’, Joe says while I sit on the ground quietly moaning, everyone getting dripped on while they smoke.
From the edge of the platform you can see a vista of trains and buildings and motorway. Intensely urban, and very well composed. I waddle to the edge to get a look and see a street light covered in rain. As the rain drips from the bottom of the bulb, it holds the light inside the water. The drips for a second look as if they’re glowing.
This is how I feel; melted. But I don’t think that at the time, I think that is beautiful.
Looking at something sparkly always puts me in a good mood.
Ben thinks the larger view is beautiful but I always like something small.
Home
On Sunday we take the Eurostar home. I am still weakened, just eating plain bread, bananas and water. As soon as we get back to London I go home, pack up all my belongings and me and Maddy move house. It is not particularly what I feel like doing that Sunday.
Normal life doesn’t always fit perfectly around this.
But the move and everything changing in some ways feels temporary, or at least short lived. I am only there for a week before I leave again. Back to the band and back to the travel.
Next week we will go to America.
The furthest I have ever travelled in my life.