A History of My Time in London, Told In Concerts

Two Old Men in Russell Square, photo credit: Lindsay Needels

Dean and I had been in London for three weeks. It was September 14, and we were at the Hammersmith Apollo to see Beirut. Everything inside was red. I kept looking, longing, behind me; I thought I could see someone that I hadn’t seen in a long time, who  one part of my brain once tried to convince me I was in love with, but the other part told me I was just in admiration. I made Dean walk up there to see if it was him, I told her to look for a specific tattoo. She said she didn’t see it.

Later, Dean said she cried when Beirut played her favorite song. That was her first concert.

Days after, the two of us went with Joyce to The Gallery Cafe in Benthal Green and saw  the poet Buddy Wakefield. Everyone was dressed like they knew what was up and people in the audience, if given the chance, could get on stage and prove that they, like everyone else, was beautiful in some exceptional way. I had a glass of white wine. That was the night I learned to let go.

A little over a month later, in late October, I was walking down my street, a day off a plane that brought me back from Italy, where a lot of things happened to me for the first time. I stood alone in Russell Square, watching an Ethiopian funk-folk group called Krar Collective. There were these two very old men near me, wearing 1970s leisure suits and dancing with anyone they could coerce. I bobbed a bit myself. I didn’t know where I would be in the future (I still don’t) but I knew that at that moment I was in the most perfect place I had ever been.

Maybe two days later, Dean and I saw The Tallest Man on Earth at The Forum in Kentishtown. I bought the wrong tickets, so I was sitting alone on the second floor while she was standing below. Everyone was too drunk and they were all confused consumers. The audience yelled at The Tallest Man and he yelled at them back. He told us all of his songs were the same, with different packaging.

Early November, Dean, Joyce, Jessica, and I saw Jack White at the Ally Pally. Jack White was a rockstar who said witty, memorable things, like “If you don’t like that, you don’t like ice cream.” He was the best performer we saw. But I stood behind a man with a hand that he thought he had the right to put where ever he pleased. The whole crowd jumped and raged like an ocean somewhere between displeased and elated and we rocked with it, feeling like we, too had the freedom to angrily lay our hands on whoever we pleased, on whoever dared push us down.

Thanksgiving Night, we couldn’t sit with our families at dinner, but wandered to The Red Gallery on Old Street where we met Native Sun. They overflowed with truth.

Last night, the last day before the last month, Dean and I went to a swanky club off of Oxford Street and saw the poet John Cooper Clarke. Alex Turner is in Dean’s Second Favorite Band, and he has a tattoo of JCC’s words, so we had to see him. The poetry reading was a rock show. One man was so drunk he was trying to have a private conversation with a man in front of an audience, and two more behind me wanted to start a fight. Johnny was great, but at the end of the show, the drunk MC slipped and broke someone’s drink. The glass shattered all across the floor. He made the mistake of letting a woman in the front row take the microphone, and she told him off for all to hear. After trying to keep our attention and failing, he simply told us what we should do with ourselves while we all flocked slowly up the stairs.

And Dean and I went home, knowing the city wasn’t ours for much longer.