Sometimes I think I should really be over this shit but I'm not. Anyway this is what it looks like in real time. 4am. Running through a rolodex of ten years' worth of memories, wondering how many people hate me and why, because they must hate me, right? You don't just turn your back on a person because they tweeted something and a ton of random strangers on the internet decided you were a racist, and so be it. End of friendship. End of professional relationship. End of situation whatever. Dunzo. How?
I still don't understand how. It’s been three years. I still don’t understand how.
I miss it. I miss the damp beer smell that lingers in the air of the venue. I miss the pregnant pause in the green room with the band before stage time. I miss the mis-timed clattering of drums and the static off the amplifier during soundcheck. I miss the awkward chatter with the day-to-day and the way the room looks like a bad drama club when there's no audience to fill the floor yet. I miss being surrounded by strangers dancing and crying and fighting to get closer. I miss the tour van’s unique microcosm that changes with every single artist you will traverse freeways, motorways and countries with. I miss running across a festival field but being incapable of getting to catering in time because I've bumped into that many people I know. There were that many people. I still don't understand how.
I don't understand how it all falls away. I don't understand how I'm supposed to respond to the emails I still receive from the hundreds of PRs, but especially the ones that tell me about my friends. Or the people I used to call friends. The safe thing to do would be to not look at what they’re putting out, or what they’re achieving, or which TV spot they just did, or what festival they’re about to headline, but who does that? I can't. I still love what they make. It was always about that for me. So I look. I listen. I watch. I cry. I smile. I get really excited for them. And then I wonder… why? Why did they click that unfollow button? Why did they not remember all the times we shared? Why didn't they feel as compelled as I would to say: hold up, that's my friend, and don't you even try. I would. I do. That's me. Nobody fucks with my people.
Why? What was the reason? Where was the explanatory text? Why didn’t they have time to have a conversation? What did I do? Is it me? Was I wrong? The not knowing can drive a person mad. It’s too much information, and too little information at the same time.
I don't understand how it was so easy to watch me be dragged across the fleeting, disappearing, tumbling screen of the internet – this temporary thing that should be, but is not, unbinding – and just shut their eyes. I don't understand how it was so easy to unsay all the wonderful things that they had said, for years. I don't understand how people say that there's no such thing as cancel culture, but I once went to half a dozen gigs a week, had more people blowing up my phone than hours in a day, and was published every other day, including weekends, for all of my adult life. And it's like it never existed. Sometimes I have to ask myself if I remember it right, because there's nobody left to tell me I do. None of them are left.
I miss them. I miss the people who are no longer in my life because a bunch of people we've never met, who we don't even know are actually real, but who apparently have keyboards, called me something bad, and they decided it would be less hassle to just not. And it feels pathetic to say it, but how would I be human if I didn't?
It’s real, the cancel culture. I promise you it’s real. And it really fucking sucks. Perhaps there are no answers. Perhaps you do have to “just let go”. But if you let go of too much, how much of you gets to remain?
With you. Ghosted, cancelled, dragged. Rebecca Solnit writes about an aspect of this, and I'm paraphrasing clumsily: It's not that we're left voiceless, it's that we're left LISTENERLESS (her word). Been sitting with that. It's real -- and I am sorry it's happening to you.
You have a new audience and it’s growing. Keep going. You are brave. You matter. You do good in the world. You have done nothing wrong.