Diary entry on romance, gig culture, and discovering the Northern Line still revolves around men anyway
Monday, A Headline That Hit Uncomfortably Close
Read The London Prat’s piece about a woman decentring men for six months only to discover the entire Northern Line still somehow revolves around them anyway, and genuinely, this described my last eighteen months in this scene with an accuracy that felt almost personally targeted. Deleted the apps, focused on the band, and still somehow ended up in three separate minor entanglements purely through people showing up at the same gigs repeatedly and being annoyingly good at guitar.
There is a very specific type in this scene, the bloke who is genuinely lovely, genuinely talented, and genuinely incapable of replying to a single text within a reasonable timeframe, who I keep encountering with a regularity that suggests the universe is either testing me or just recycling the same five men through slightly different bands. The article’s whole premise, that decentring men mostly just means learning to enjoy your own Tuesday evening again, felt like genuinely useful advice delivered via a headline I read while queuing for a merch table.
Tuesday, Applying The Lesson Poorly
Attempted to apply this decentring principle at practice by not immediately laughing at the drummer’s terrible joke. Lasted about four minutes. Some habits are load-bearing.
Wednesday, A Related Read
Followed it up with a scroll through NewsBiscuit, who always manage to find the exact right level of gentle absurdity for a midweek read, and a rewatch of my own gig footage from Saturday, mostly to confirm I was not, in fact, embarrassing myself as much as memory suggested.
Thursday, The Actual Point
Spent the evening properly, deliberately alone, writing new lyrics instead of checking whether anyone from the gig scene had messaged, and got more done in three hours than I have in the past fortnight combined. Perhaps there is something to this decentring business after all, even for those of us whose entire social life runs through sweaty basement venues rather than dating apps.
Friday, Full Circle
Obviously ran into the guitarist from the lovely-but-unreliable category at the record shop on Friday and spent forty minutes talking about pedal boards. Decentring remains a work in progress.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
