Why I Can’t Write About the Arctic Monkeys
When I was 11, I was quite convinced I would marry Alex Turner. Which, looking back, is only a little bit interesting. It’s not an immediately obvious, pretty boy choice one makes at such age, but also not bizarre and “out there” enough to be a funny childhood anecdote. It fits right in the spot of the “oh, cool” reaction. Which is precisely what makes it pretty uncool. Now, I wish this conviction had led to some elaborate fan fiction content that I would insert here, so that you could be entertained while I recoil in embarrassment. To my disappointment, it does not exist. However, deep in the confines of a childhood desk drawer lies a notebook containing a single paragraph. In it – from what I can recall – me and my future husband run into each other on the off-chance, in an unspecified street of my hometown, and decide to go get ice cream. You can probably imagine the rest (of which I’m jealous, since I obviously couldn’t – otherwise we’d have more of it).
Apparently imagination is not my strongest suit, because I’d never anticipate the impact this band would have on my life, let alone that the ripple effect would continue a decade later. And I don’t mean it in a sappy, sentimental way – although, that too – but there are actual, traceable chains of events that never would have taken place otherwise. I don’t want to bore you with the details of my life too much, so allow me to tell you the beginning, and then just speed through the rest.
In July 2013, my dad took me to accompany him at what was my first proper big music festival. We’re talking almost 100,000 people, pre-influencer era really, which means most folks were actually there for the music. Or to get fucked up, but even for those music seemed to be of equal importance. Am I romanticizing a core memory? Probably. Still, that’s what it felt like. Here’s what I remember: I remember Rihanna pulling up to the Kings of Leon show and dancing through the whole set right in front of the stage, surrounded by security. I remember a small group yelling “Elephant!” over and over again between tracks during Tame Impala until the song was played. I remember Nick Cave being held by his feet by the people in the crowd, looking as if he’s walking on water, and only being able to think of the word “demon”. Most importantly, I remember enjoying watching Arctic Monkeys alright. I was nodding my head and my dad along with me, until something switched. During one of the songs, this quiffed bloke in a striped jacket yells out “I don’t want to hear you!”, and to my surprise, the entire crowd responds accordingly with the following line. The loudness of it alone could make the ground shake, but everything was buzzing electrified in that one moment and that’s when I knew. Should I be able to choose how to spend each moment of waking life, I want it to be exactly like that. Everything after was just me seeking to replicate that feeling. I understood the sheer power of a united crowd and suddenly sports fans didn’t seem so psycho to me anymore. Even so, I preferred to stick to music shows.
From then on, this band became the sole basis for my primary school persona, and it just sort of kept going. As we consider this one of the first “internet bands”, since instead of shying away in fear of online piracy, they embraced the culture and used it to their advantage (check out this short 2005 Guardian article about that, with a gloriously pixelated thumbnail), it also meant the group had dedicated fan spaces scattered all over the globe. I found one composed of fans from my home country, and I infiltrated it using an illegal Facebook account. Remember, I was 11, and you had to be at least 13 to register. This rebel spirit lives on in me, I’m sure you can tell.* I’m still occasionally in touch with some of the people I’ve met on there, and one of them I’m actually friends with to this day – shoutout ZB, you’re a real one. I’d introduce the music to kids in my grade, which they were mostly annoyed by. I don’t blame them, since there’s nothing worse than a child feeling superior because they discovered something cool and then proceeding to shove it down everyone’s throats. But some of them caught on, others just got excited when their parents would get AM CD’s as Christmas gifts and then report the news back to me. I was spreading the indie rock gospel. Then came more shows, and more bands, and now we’re here and all my money lines the pockets of ticketing platforms. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Since then I got to see the band every 5 years, like clockwork, which constitutes the single most consistent arc in my personal bildungsroman, as well as an ideal opportunity to reflect on the passage of time. Everyone always warns you that years just slip away without notice. But you don’t really believe that until routine life really buys into the whole dichotomy of days feeling like years and vice versa. As I was about to see the band a decade after that first time, I remembered my mom took a picture of me that day. I dug it up. It’s the least cool picture you can imagine. I’m wearing what I believe to be leggings, or at least really tight black jeans, a see-through, long neon yellow tank top with some sort of writing on it, and purple fur-lined galoshes. Talk about a fashion queen. Apart from the outfit, it strikes me that in the photo I’m really just a kid. And it brought me right back to the time and all its wonder, but also all its pain, and I didn’t even realize how much pain was stored in those memories. Because being a kid is actually pretty fucking hard, no matter how sheltered or loved you might be (I was lucky to be both). I realized that on my lowest days, if I glance at my reflection, I see that kid. She doesn’t judge, she’s just there to cheer me on. If she managed and came out alright, so will I.
Walking back from the show last week, I let all that wash over me. And I thought – I will never be 20 years old again, seeing my favourite band on a perfect, warm May night, walking back to a place I call a home in a foreign country. And that’s ok. Also, I will most likely never marry Alex Turner. This one’s a little more rough to take.
*Obviously, painfully ironic.
Putting these words on the page was surprisingly difficult. How do you compress 10 years of your life without oversharing, while simultaneously conveying the importance of something so seemingly simple as a band? I do not know, hence the slightly confusing title. I still tried. It’s all a little bit magic, and this writing thing has always been based on mutual trust, right?
