I was in a club in Brighton, one of the ones on
the seafront, upstairs. This song came on so loud, so, so, so loud. I was
standing there and I got a feeling. I just started watching people, the dark,
black sticky walls and floor, the bright lights and spilled drinks. I felt drunk but like I had overcome being drunk, I could feel my body, tired after
days of this abuse of my body, and drowned, but my head was lucid. Racing almost.
I didn’t care about my girlfriend, though I held my hand around her hip. She
was talking but I’d stopped listening. I felt empty, the club felt empty. I was feeling something but it was like the way you’d feel a punch in
a racing helmet. Discotheque Despair. It was a vast emptiness, a boredom with all of this. Why would we do it, what are we
trying to forget? Why are we damning ourselves and beating ourselves and each other? I don’t
know. The moment passed but the feeling stayed with me, and sometimes it comes
over, like a single chord, getting louder and louder and more ominous, until it's
crashing in my ears like a wave. But it doesn't sweep me up like a wave, it leaves
me quiet and hollow, waiting for bed, waiting to shut my eyes and start again
tomorrow, to do it better, to be an actual person, to achieve rather than waste. Every time I hear that affected guitar of the intro to the song, I’m taken back to
that club for just a couple of seconds, and I can see the lights beaming then getting lost in the indistinguishable darkness of the black walls again.
