Life Without Buildings (thing)

The first time I heard Life Without Buildings was sometime towards the end of the year before last. I was unhappy.

Flexitime had allowed me to pour into my job as much of myself as I cared to lose. I arrived back at my sole-occupied flat at about eleven after cycling half-asleep through what was left of the Cambridge traffic, almost confident that the big iron back at the office was doing enough work on my behalf that I could sleep for the night. Without pause for thought or food I undressed and fell into bed, turning on the radio to let uncle John play me something to listen to as I fell asleep. My ears pricked up at the mention of a new band from Glasgow, and then he played 'New Town'. It was beautiful. I listened to the plain and melancholy guitars, the raw emotion and fragmented imagery of the vocal, and thought of home. I thought of the recent events that had made me question the ideas of happiness that I'd set safely aside as impossible and realise that they held no happiness for me. I thought about the choices I'd made in my life, and the reasons I'd made them.

I was unhappy, but I'd found something beautiful.

In September the next year, following what can only be described as a thoroughly miserable time, I took some time off to visit home and family. I noticed with glee that LWB were playing The 13th Note. Though live music would normally be entirely outside my normal asocial range of activities, I'd decided I wanted to see LWB, and some of my friends from uni, preferrably at the same time. I put the idea forward and it died on me, eventually eliciting only one positive response, from one of my closer friends who I'd previously introduced to LWB by the normal route of a mix MD.

Well, I had a little crisis then. I realised I'd been relying on my group to run with the idea, that I could be swept up with their momentum and forget that it was ever my own idea. I can run with the crowd when I try, but to take an initiative of my own... I couldn't do it. Social activity and live music, I realised, were never part of what I'd told myself should belong in my life. I shouldn't need these things. I crawled back into my shell, back into my safe little corner of life.

Until some short time later, when it suddenly hit me how much I'd wanted to see the band. I'd let my issues and my hang-ups push me away from something which I'd really wanted. And I think, in some a way, that point was when I first decided that, despite how hard I'd worked to be the person I am, that maybe, in many ways, that's no longer who I want to be. So perhaps I should blame Sue Tompkins for this, this, this and whatever else may follow. Or maybe I should thank her.