I know that place

Occasionally at work I'm pulled in to run the show when others are busy. Today I was told the act I was working with was originally very famous, having at one point sold out Wembley Arena and toured the world before having a mental breakdown and retreating into obscurity. I was told he doesn't like to remember,  which is absolute fair, there are a solid two years of my life I'd gladly ignore. But how does a person go from selling out a 12,000 capacity arena to playing to 40 people in a glorified cellar? This is actually something I've seen quite often, fame is such that what goes up eventually comes down, or just blips out of existence, and you don't notice because that's the nature if fame.

So I met this man, and I was struck by his kindness. The kind that comes from suffering. The sort of fragility that comes from hitting the bottom and finding a new normal where you're creaking and shattered but just so so glad it's leaving you, whatever it is. Because almost always it's a case of it leaving you, because you leaving it suggests an element of control.

He was absolutely fragile. Like a child. And utterly self-conscious to the point of bombarding me with a constant stream of questions about myself, which (forgive me, famous people) is completely out of the ordinary. But I understood what he was trying to do. To keep the conversation from yourself you ask all the questions. You tease out and linger on the details of anything else. And it pulls you away.

So I just keep telling him about the time I fell offstage and think I know this. I see this. I know that hell.

I'm writing this out now because it hurts that I saw it so close I guess.

And perhaps because I kind of feel like a broken person too.

Another me, another me.

Every so often I get hung up on who I am and who I have been.

We had a lecture with an author called Nuala Casey today and she spoke about past selves, and what happens to them when you aren't that person anymore.

I've just done a massive sweep of this blog to clear it up for human consumption and I've rediscovered many versions of myself.

There's Nicole circa 2006 who was scared to so much as wear her hair up in case someone made a comment about it. I'm not her.

There's the one from 2008 who was so scarily hung up on a guy that looking back on it makes me slightly concerned. Not her either.

There's 2009, choked up with depression, school drop out and worker bee.

There's the one who went to college and shopped at Primark all the time I tried to do the girly thing and failed miserably.

There's the me who went to university to study live events production and was so sure she was in the right place, doing the right thing. And then she took a sharp turn and ended up in 2015 starting all over again.

Who am I now? I was this person who speaks way too languages and travels over to Norway all the time, but I haven't been in months. How can I be the same person who tours with a band seeing and doing so many crazy amazing things when I'm sat in a lecture on metaphysical poetry at 9am? How can I be the one programming lighting consoles and hauling cables and microphone stands around when I'm sat writing a poem?

These don't feel like the same people.

And then there's the people I knew back then. I feel like I should know them and I don't, and I don't know how to be who I was so I can know them again.

I suppose it's the realest example of time marching on, but it still caught me out today. Where are the ones I was? I'm not them.

The people who are

I've found that life is significantly better when you surround yourself with good people. This might seem like an obvious thing but it's taken me a while to come round to it.

 

Last year by all rights should have been horrendous. I lost my grandma to the absolute shitpit that is cancer, and in the last few weeks of her illness I felt like I was dying, because how could I possibly stand it? When she got to the final stretch, at first I couldn't even look, because it seemed perverse to be able to count someone's ribs from across the room, to be able to see their heart beating through their chest, to hand them a sippy cup of luke warm, extremely weak tea that weighed nothing and see their arm drop to the mattress like it was a dead weight. In the last week, I stayed in her house, by her side, talked away to her even though she couldn't hear me anymore. I never knew what to say to my grandma, and I always thought that out of all her granddaughters, surely the one with multiple tattoos, facial piercings and neon pink hair was the biggest disappointment, and maybe I was, but she loved me. So I prattled on, I read and re-read the death-and-dying leaflets a nurse had left me and when the time came, I knew exactly what was coming next. I watched her breathing turn into a spasm, I held her wrist and felt her heart stop. I took her pulse whilst my family watched and, bizarrely, panicked when I couldn't find it.

 

By rights the last year should have been the worst of my life, though I'm pretty sure I say that every year. But it's easy to hold on to the shit in life and ignore everything else.

 

Actually, last year was the best. Last year was fantastic. I've never been so consistently happy, and I think it has a lot to do with who I've surrounded myself with.

 

I've spent the last year jumping between being on tour with a band and studying for a new degree. Starting at a new university has been fantastic, I had no idea how much I'd love it, how different it is from my last degree, and that I'd make such goddamn excellent friends. Getting to do a degree with such a creative angle has given me so much to experiment with, and I love it.

 

I can't adequately describe touring. I've grown up with the band, their music is the music I listen to when I'm homesick, and being with them feels like home. Clichéd as it sounds we are a family (actually one member is my family), there's nothing I could do that any one of them would judge me for. Even without the element of going all over the country and out into Europe seeing new places and playing shows, the times spent in the tour van listening to everyone's favourite songs and just talking is the best feeling in the world.

 

 

(My guys and my ladies. Photo by Howard Rankin)

 

The shows are hard. I load and unload everyone's equipment from the van, I set it up, I go into a new venue every night and learn the lighting rig in time to produce a lightshow every night and come home bruised and achy, and it's the most rewarding job in the world. Not only do I get so see the band pour their whole heart into their performance every night, I get to be part of it too. And we get the occasional day off in Amsterdam too, which is always, always an event.

 

I was low-key terrified that there wouldn't be a tour this year, that it would be an album-writing year, but last week we started up again, and after six weeks off it was such a relief to get back on the road again. There's nowhere else I'd rather be than everywhere with the best people.