Spain, Switzerland and Germany – 29 May to 2 June
After a gap
I haven’t written one of these travel diaries in quite a while. It was never intended to be for every trip anyway, but I left this at New York (in March). Since then was the rest of America, the Electric Brixton headline, the tour in May, and of course all the in between pieces of life that are not contained within gigs.
Now I’ve got a break from touring for over 3 weeks, which feels long these days. It is summer and things are changing as they tend to at this time of year.
So here is the diary for the last tour before the break. We went to Barcelona, Switzerland and Germany.
Barcelona
We are sat at an outside table (too small for 5 people) on a street in Barcelona. I am enjoying Spain a lot more than I thought I would – especially enjoying speaking broken Spanish. I have been doing this consistently all day despite knowing 8 words. Everyone gets referred to as “mi mujer”.
I sit with my women, who happen to all be men, eating my dinner of sausage eggs and chips. Although I enjoyed the tapas earlier this is hitting the spot.
Some people arrive to do an interview and it had been arranged that they’d only interview two of us, so the rest of us sit around the table and don’t speak. (It’s audio only).
I think this is quite nice, silently eating my eggs, like listening to a podcast while eating a meal. The people leave and some patatas bravas arrive along with some cocktail sticks. I sit there moving around the cocktail sticks to different areas of the table feeling increasingly agitated. I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s the fact I got up very early, or too much sitting around all day, or a specific kind of claustrophobia in the fact that I know these people so well.
I need to go on a walk. I get up taking three cocktail sticks in my hand.
Barcelona is very user friendly; I see a hill that looks good to walk up, I try it, and it is. It just keeps going and going. I call my mum because the agitation is too frenetic to be funnelled only into walking and the cocktail sticks. I need a third channel, chatting shit to someone on the phone
I walk very fast and the hill goes up and up. It gets green quickly and it reminds me of LA. I laugh at myself in my own brain for that association. I can hear my sister in a fake American accent saying ‘yeahhhhhh … did I mention I went to LA ?’. It’s good to have that internalised, constantly making sure I don’t become too much of a twat.
Up in the hills, the similarity is true though. I’m aware once I’ve gone to more places it will become less so. Until a few years ago anywhere hotter than England was so similar to the south of France. Truths governed by how much you have seen. Sometimes I would like to go back to earlier points of view.
As my mum asks me about Barcelona on the phone I realise I know nothing about it and, so far, have learnt nothing about it. Rather arrogant to travel so absent mindedly, and with so little connection to where you have landed. I don’t like it, but perhaps I’m lazy nowadays. I haven’t written anything in a few months after all.
I can see the skyline now, and my mum mentions the cathedral, which I didn’t realise was of note. I see a lump in the grid, scaffolding and triangles and realise that must be it. The lump looks like something sat on its haunches amongst the city. Nesting itself among the squares, more organic and larger than its surroundings. It’s so far away I can’t see the details so I make up my own cathedral as my mum talks about it, one that looks like the melted clocks.
The sky is yellow, grey, and blue, and I know it’ll be closing off soon. Everything is looser at this hour, because you know it’s almost over anyway. The lines of the trees painted more freely, soon to be hidden by the dark where they don’t have to hold any form at all.
There’s sand at the top of the hill and things built from sandy wood and dark trees, smoke in the air and people sat in groups and a breeze that feels like it recognises this height. Gaps in the cloud and it feels like, finally, gaps in the air, which was an impenetrable block in the heat of the day.
After enough time on the top of the hill I think it’s time to check my phone, and the exact second I open it a message pops up asking where I’ve gone. Satisfied enough now that I’ve witnessed a coincidence, however small, I start the walk down the hill.
I listen to a new song and feel good. I’ve only been listening to songs I know for a long time.
Airports (again)
In Barcelona airport the next day I am tired. Two nights of not enough sleep. Everyone is tired, each person making their own way through security not bothering to be a group. On the other side I text Ben to see where he’s gone and he says he’s in a VIP rest area. I make my way over.
I want sofas instead of metal benches. Airports always have those metal benches with the holes in. Today I would slowly sink through, gently falling out into a thousand tubes of spaghetti.
At the entrance to the VIP area I see a queue towards a desk. Presumably this is where they verify your VIP status. I start to wonder how Ben got in and text him to see if he can come grab me from the inside but no reply.
At the front of the queue I tell the woman my friend is in the VIP area and I have some of his luggage which I need to give to him. She is not impressed, eventually letting me in on the condition that I immediately leave after dropping it off.
I find him sat in a sofa-chair around the corner. Sunglasses on and a leather jacket, a clip art image of a VIP. I ask him how he got in and he says he just walked in. The obvious option is always the best.
I try and stay sat in the comfy chairs but the woman from the desk comes over to evict me. ‘Sir, you have to leave right now.’ she says to me. She doesn’t bat an eyelid at Ben.
I pretty much have a bob haircut now, I think to myself. I had thought previous ‘sir’s were due to the short hair. Maybe I should point out the bob to people incase they haven’t noticed it yet. She does not seem the best person to mention this to, so I leave Ben and the real VIPs alone before she calls security.
A few hours later we’re on the other side in Geneva airport on some metal chairs with holes in. We are waiting for the keyboard bag to come through baggage control. This is looking increasingly unlikely. I think of all the places it could’ve fallen out en route from Barcelona; the Alps which we flew over which I had never seen before.
The others are talking about how the Swiss love wine at lunch and three day work weeks. We are watching men in suits drink at a bar at 2pm, although I note this is probably more of an airport phenomenon than a Swiss phenomenon. The phrase ‘lazy bastards’ is mentioned. A man in a suit sat next to us, who up until now had been part of the backdrop, turns around and smiles; ‘Is that what you think about Switzerland?’.
The Swiss man is funny and sits with us for a while whilst we wait. Time passes and no events happen, and at one point the Swiss man stands up and walks away. It seems like nothing caused him to leave, no check of a watch or a phone.
‘Why did he just get up and go?’ I say.
‘He had an idea’ says Ben.
‘He needs the chaos of the airport. He comes here everyday and sits and waits to have an idea’.
I look around me for the chaos. There is a man hoovering the ceiling, he has been hoovering the ceiling for a while now. I don’t know why, but it is very funny to watch. There are two others trying to fix a broken escalator, jumping in and out of a hole, giving up entirely every 5 minutes, and then coming back again.
I can see why the man might come here to wait for his idea. It makes sense.
A bit longer, and after no events, we also get up and leave, accepting that the keyboard bag is lost.
Mannheim
Two days later we are in Germany. My clothes smell of smoke from the fire we built yesterday on our day off by a lake. I don’t remember having a day off in Europe before, one that wasn’t a travel day. The smell is reassuring; woodsmoke. Reassuring too to have done something tangible. Built something that leaves a mark. Music is instantly unobservable the second the sound stops.
Me and Chris are at a festival in Mannheim waiting for Hania Rani to start. Neither of us have heard of her before but I’ve decided we have to watch the set.
It’s fun trying to guess the sound from the set up on stage. Hania Rani has a moog bass synth, a double bass, an upright piano, a grand piano, two synths I can’t see, and more vocal mics than you would expect for one person. This is why I want to watch.
Her set is amazing. She starts just playing the synths by herself, back to the audience, with a white shape slowly unfurling on a black background. It’s nice that she puts her synths wherever she wants, I never understood why you can’t have your back to the audience.
Soon her double bassist joins her and she sings some songs that sound like my guess. I like it a lot. She is in the fog and adding in major thirds when it doesn’t make sense to. Me and Chris both look at each other every time it happens.
I listened to it on Spotify later back home, but it’s different live – it always is.
A few years ago, I thought music was only in the writing. If an amazing song is written, it could floor someone no matter what instrument it’s played on. But after being in gigs everyday, I realised so much is in the sound. In the way it sounds. In whether it physically vibrates your chest or not.
There is a world created by a bowed double bass inside a dark tent. It almost feels like being under the covers with the sides descending all around you. A huge tent filled with all the space in between the bow strokes, and a sub beneath it to make you aware of the size of it all.
I wouldn’t listen to it too much on Spotify but I would give it many more hours in real life. Me and Chris watch the whole thing.
Walking away from the festival back to the city the sky is yellowing and relaxed. It feels good to have watched a set all the way through, and a good set too. It’s rare that we do that on tour. It’s the same feeling as the smell of the smoke; something has actually happened.
Home
The next day me and Ben are in a corner of Heathrow waiting for the bass to arrive. The corner for weirdly shaped luggage. A woman next to me is stacking up lots of parcels that look like they’re wrapped in cling film. They smell of fish, but good quality fish. I want some very much.
I look to my left and see a bag which looks familiar. I walk over to it, starting to laugh as I get closer. It’s the keyboard bag that fell out in the Alps. It’s sat patiently by itself in this empty corner of Heathrow.
I pick it up and no one seems bothered. Time to go home.
I figure I should tell someone before leaving, I don’t fancy getting tackled by border police. It turns out this is where all lost luggage gets shipped to on its way home. It wasn’t waiting for us, we just bumped into it, sat by chance right next to where we stood.
This last tour before a break would always feel weird. But now I have seen this coincidence I feel satisfied. Things come back around.
We walk out of the terminal into the air which feels much nicer than Germany. It feels like summer. Still getting the holiday feeling when you emerge from an airport despite being back home.
When I get back to my house it’s evening, I see Maddy and we are both exhausted. We go out to get chips and sit at the kitchen table in mutually frazzled states. Being in a kitchen is nice; it’s the missing room when you’re in hotels. It feels good to be home