The Correction: Entry 06.5 – Going to Gigs Alone
I’ve been going to gigs alone.
As a DJ. When I’m playing, having my people there matters. Not for company exactly. For the moment. The crew is who you turn to when the room lifts. Someone to share what just happened. Someone to clock the night with you while it’s happening, not after. Some kind of witness I guess.
Recently no one’s been available. I mean I always know people in the club. But I feel better when I see my people next to the DJ booth.
It’s becoming a pattern.
I told Marko about it. Marko is one of my closest friends. Lives in the States now. We speak regularly. He’s one of the few people who has always spoken to me as a peer — never looking up, never managing me. He once named something about me I hadn’t been able to articulate myself. Said there are people who want access to the public version of me. And people who actually know me. He knew the difference without being told.
So when he said this thing, I listened.
He said you might be making your people a bigger focus in your life than you are in theirs. He said that’s not them being unfair. That’s not them being bad. That’s just how life works and it says more about you than it does about them. People have things to do and places to be. Being at a gig isn’t their priority in that moment. And he said it’s not something to be unhappy or sad about. My happiness shouldn’t rest in the hands of other people and their presence or lack of it.
That landed as a paradigm shift.
Not because it was new information. Because it removed the grievance that had been quietly running underneath everything. I had been holding people to my standard. Showing up the way I would have. Reaching out the way I would have. And then noticing the gap and feeling something about it.
The gap wasn’t evidence of anything. The gap was just the gap.
The other thing it did was uncomfortable. Because Ricardo had already told me my own showing-up has limits. I’ll be there if you need a place to stay, an introduction, a problem solved. Coffee is a different story. I have been measuring everyone else against a standard I don’t always meet myself.
Something has gone quiet since I sat with all of this. The space in my head that used to track friendships — who reached out, who didn’t, where I stood with whom — that space is less occupied now. Not because the people matter less. Because I’ve stopped expecting the maths to balance.
Now I don’t mind going to gigs alone.
I’ve stopped turning around looking for someone to share the moment with.
What do I do with the space that just got freed up.
The Correction: Entry 06.5. More to come.
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