House Is A Feeling

If you live away from where you grew up, you’ll probably have noticed how each time you go home it seems less like home. This is how Dublin feels for me. Everywhere is familiar, old places I worked, or bars or cafés, but you can’t escape the fact that you aren’t a part of the city anymore.

I was just home for a few days and for some reason using public transport stirs up a lot of memories. I guess you just have the time to think on a bus or a train. On Monday I got a long bus journey into the city centre, and was listening to Petar Dundov’s album on Music Man.

As the bus went along its usual route from my parents’ house into the city, and this strangely unfashionable trance record played, I couldn’t help but think about the hundreds of times I’d been on my way to gigs in the past. There were so many journeys, in summer and winter, looking out at the same shops and houses. I listened to so many different records on that bus route, on the way to see so many different DJs. There was and is something special about silently ingesting music before going to parties and clubs where you violently cover yourself in it. For that short time it’s yours, just you and the sound. (And some kids throwing stuff at you or fighting!)

Of course I still go clubbing over here, but as nice as it is walking to places or getting short taxis, I’ve realised I miss the “build-up” of the journey. When I travelled south into Dublin on a half empty bus on Monday night it reminded me that this was my portal to excitement and music when I was 18. It was my buffer zone between life and dance music.

Now that I’m a little older there’s not as much to discover. Back then the bus journey with my music became as much a part of the rite of going clubbing as actually going to a club. It’s strange how serious dance music can feel sometimes, like it’s the biggest part of your life, the thing that reminds you of your humanity, and then when you’re out and in clubs you laugh and have fun and it’s not so serious. Though there is that 5am intensity sometimes.

On Tuesday I had another public transport epiphany, as I stood at a train station near to where the above picture was taken. I was listening to Air France’s “No Way Down” EP for the first time, when a track called “Maundy Thursday” came on. On a Tuesday night I was the only one on the station platform, surrounded by that amazing view.

The majesty of this short track just took over. It has a cosmic bombast which combined with the view and the wintry darkness to force bombastic thoughts. This is the sort of moment that makes the world around you seem vast and old, like you can feel the weight of a city’s monolithic presence on your shoulders, a city with a longer life than any of its inhabitant. Music really makes me feel like a paper bag in the wind sometimes.

It’s been a while since a record fused with time and place for me like this, but it’s no surprise it happened at night. When people are asleep, it seems like there is less to force your thoughts in a particular direction.

I know since I was a teenager I’ve had these sort of overwrought epiphanies when listening to records. I assume some of you have too. In some ways it’s sad that these transcendental moments are also quite personal and private, and hard to put into words. Writing can make music seem very lifeless and dull compared to the brilliance of these fleeting shocks.

These instances make a mockery of the lazy laments about ubiquitous ipods and music “just being a soundtrack” for people’s daily lives. It baffles me that some people suggest music doesn’t have the power to transcend being used as a soundtrack and force the listener to listen.

And even if writing can’t succeed entirely, I think it’s still worth trying to record these rare moments. (Now if you turn to page 55 of your hymn books I’ve added streams of Dundov and Air France below.)

Petar Dundov-Rain (Music Man)

Air France-Maundy Thursday