Loners,
This morning I’ve been fooling around with a playlist of songs that I loved in the early aughts. I focused on 2002–2005, but mostly ’02 and ’03. This was a very specific time in my life, as I moved from Vancouver to Montreal. Music wasn’t just my job, it was my everything. There was no silence in my life. I always had headphones on, listening, and I mean actively listening to albums and mix CDs. I was studying every note. When I wasn’t on tour, I was seeing concerts and gigs weekly. Some of the shows were sold out and packed (The Rapture, Peaches), and others were spectacles witnessed by only myself and a handful of others (A.R.E. Weapons at Sala Rosa).
I felt invisible in Montreal, not part of the scene as a fan or as an artist. I was a ghost, and other times an interloper. I saw musicians I admired amongst the crowds and felt searing jealousy and desperation to be acknowledged. Even as our career was growing outside of Montreal and Canada, I would spend years longing to be witnessed by my peers. I’d learn to love the anonymity and aloof way people interacted with me and my “public” self, but at 22, I was weighed down by the chip on my shoulder. Sometimes when I sat down to write songs, I’d imagine those artists, those strangers in the crowds at their gigs, and I’d write for them, sing to them.