Maybe there aren’t really rave friends

When you read this, I'll be in Barcelona.

Working in video games by day, the most common misconception is that I spend most of my workdays playing them. Usually I don't, but this week I will be. Sadly, that means no sitting on the beach or checking out Barcelona's many excellent clubs, but I am at least hoping the torrential rain fucks off long enough for me to see some sun.

I've been thinking a lot about health recently. Over the last couple of years, I've tried to make some changes, partly inspired by people around me who have somehow managed to convince me that there is a way to be healthy and still have a good time.

On Saturday, I put that theory to the test. I went out with the intention of heading to Warm Up, had one drink, realised I was too tired to make the journey and went home.

One drink.

I was 37 years old and had apparently become the kind of person who leaves the house for one drink and then gets tucked into bed.

There is, obviously, a version of my life that makes perfect sense on paper. Exercise regularly. Eat reasonably well. Get eight hours of sleep. Drink less. Drink more water. Go outside. Don't spend an entire Sunday horizontal because you were dancing until 7am.

I would quite like to do all of those things. The problem is that I also quite like clubbing.

Not in the vague "I enjoy going out for a few drinks" sense. I like clubs. I like dancing for hours. I like staying out too late. I like finding myself somewhere at 5am with absolutely no idea how the night got there. I like the people I've met through it, the ridiculous conversations, the unexpected nights and the feeling that, for a few hours, normal life has been suspended.

These things do not always sit particularly comfortably alongside a sensible approach to wellbeing.

I've reached the slightly surreal stage of life where I can be genuinely excited about tucking into the same hastily assembled chicken wrap each week while also being genuinely excited about spending six hours dancing in the woods or a dark room at the weekend.

My body, unfortunately, does not recognise these as separate hobbies. It would quite like me to sleep.

It would quite like me to eat something nutritious rather than whatever can be located at 4am. It would particularly like me to stop treating an entire night of dancing, drinking and very little food as though I've completed a particularly intense wellness retreat.

And increasingly, I think I have to listen to it.

The tricky bit is doing that without turning something I love into another thing I have to optimise.

There is an obvious version of this conversation where clubbing is the bad habit and exercise, healthy food and sleep are the virtuous alternatives. Go out less. Drink less. Sniff your keys less. Get home earlier. Be sensible. Wake up on Sunday and go for a run while everyone else is still asleep.

But I don't particularly want that life, and I don't particularly think that dancing is a bad habit, especially as I'm often out too late to be tempted by the 4am kebab.

I don't want to stop going out. I don't want every weekend to become a negotiation between the responsible thing I should be doing and the thing I actually want to do. And I definitely don't want to turn dancing into another box to tick on an increasingly elaborate wellness spreadsheet.

What I do want is to be able to keep doing this for a long time. Longevity and sustainability are what encouraged me to get my shit together, and I've lost 20kg in the last two years, feeling better than I have in a decade.

Nonetheless, I think I'm encountering the true challenge of getting older in club culture. It isn't necessarily about growing out of the things you love. It's about figuring out how to look after yourself well enough that you can keep doing them.

A real treat this week as there's a new Jorge Martins set, from Village Underground Lisbon. It's three hours long, longer than I'll usually listen to at home, but it's so good throughout it didn't feel right to put anything else in the newsletter this time.

I've seen Jorge multiple times at Warm-Up, and it's always worth the trip. If you're into proggy / deep house, this is the set for you. If you're not, having a listen anyway, maybe you'll learn something about yourself. Here's the link on Soundcloud.

For years, I've had a useful distinction when talking about the people in my life. There are my real friends, and then there are my rave friends. It sounds slightly cruel when you put it like that, particularly because I have spent an increasingly irresponsible amount of my adult life around people I met in dark rooms at 2am. But the distinction has always made sense to me.

My real friends are the people I've known for years. The people who know where I live, roughly what I do for a job and enough embarrassing information about me to make sure I never become too successful. My rave friends are the people I have spent six hours dancing next to while shouting increasingly incomprehensible sentences into their ear.

For a long time, I thought these were two quite clearly defined groups. It turns out that they aren't particularly difficult to tell apart. My real friends know what my birthday is. My rave friends know which DJs I would travel to another country to see. My real friends will ask how work is going. My rave friends will ask whether I'm going to Fold on Friday. My real friends know my middle name. My rave friends see me nearly every weekend at 5AM, which is considerably more compromising information.

But somewhere along the way, the distinction has started to break down. The more time I've spent going out, the more I've realised that some of the people I originally filed away as "rave friends" have quietly become some of the people I rely on most, and you don't always realise it is happening.

A lot of club friendships are built in a slightly strange way. You meet someone because you both happen to like the same DJ. You spend a night together. You exchange Instagram handles. You send each other a couple of event recommendations. Eventually someone starts a WhatsApp group, then another one, and before you know it you've been talking to these people for years.

It isn't necessarily a conventional friendship. There aren't always long dinners where you discuss your childhoods. You might not know what someone's parents do or what their five-year plan is. You might have no idea what they actually do between Friday night and the next time you see them. But you know what makes them happy, what music makes them lose their mind and where they'll probably stand in a club. You know that if a particular track comes on, they will suddenly appear from somewhere in the room. And, increasingly, I've found that you also know when something is wrong.

I've had a slightly difficult few weeks recently. Nothing dramatic enough to make for a particularly exciting story, just a collection of things going wrong, taking longer than they should or generally being more exhausting than I'd like. The sort of period where you don't necessarily feel completely miserable, but you are a little more fragile than usual.

When you're feeling like that, your instinct can be to retreat. You get quieter, reply to messages a little more slowly and convince yourself that everyone else is busy and that you don't want to bother anyone. You spend far too much time thinking about things that, in a more sensible state of mind, you would probably dismiss in five minutes. Then, occasionally, someone notices.

This is one of the things I have come to love most about the people I've met through nightlife. They don't always notice because you've sat them down and explained how you're feeling. Sometimes they just know. A message appears asking how you are. Someone suggests getting a drink or meeting before an event for a quick chat. Someone remembers something you mentioned a couple of weeks ago and asks how it went. Someone sends you a stupid video because they know it will make you laugh. Someone sends a voice note saying they're gutted you're not at the drinks because they were really looking forward to catching up.

None of these things are particularly revolutionary. But when you're feeling a bit rubbish, they can be enormous. This week I feel like I owe a lot to a friend who felt I was a bit off and dragged me from the club back to theirs for a bottle of wine and a deep and meaningful. I'm never one to turn down an afters, but it's rare you leave feeling like a slightly better person as a result.

There is something especially nice about being helped by people who aren't necessarily the people you would have expected to help you. I think part of that comes from the strange intimacy of club culture. You see people in states that most normal friendships take years to reach. You see someone completely exhausted at the end of a night. You see them ecstatic because their favourite track has just been played. You see them sweaty, emotional, overwhelmed, euphoric, occasionally making an absolutely baffling decision about when they should leave.

You spend hours together in an environment where nobody is particularly polished. Maybe that makes it easier to be unpolished around each other elsewhere.

There's also something lovely about the fact that these friendships aren't necessarily built around your identity. You can spend an entire night with someone barely discussing anything of substance. You dance, laugh, complain about the queue, discuss whether the sound system has somehow got worse since last time and go outside because it is approximately 900 degrees inside. You come back in. You don't need to explain yourself. You just exist alongside each other.

Then, months or years later, one of those people can suddenly be there for you when you really need someone. That has happened to me more than once recently, and I've found it unexpectedly moving. Not because anyone has done anything particularly heroic. I've found helping someone struggling with depression, because I think it's pretty clear I am right now, isn't really about the big stuff. Quite the opposite. It's the smallness of it that gets me.

A message. A drink. An invitation. Someone remembering. Someone checking. Someone deciding that they are going to make sure you aren't sitting in your own head for the entire weekend. These things are easy to dismiss when you're doing alright, because they don't seem particularly significant. When you're struggling, they can be the difference between spending another evening feeling completely alone and remembering that there are people who care about you.

It has made me think about the way we categorise our friendships. We tend to have a hierarchy for them. Best friends. Old friends. Work friends. Acquaintances. People you know from school. People you know from somewhere else. And then, apparently, people you know because you all like electronic music.

But life doesn't really care about those categories. When you're having a difficult time, the person who helps isn't necessarily the person who has known you the longest. It is often just the person who happens to notice.

I've been incredibly lucky with the people I've met through this scene. Nightlife gets a lot of stick, even here. When you love something it's easy to see the flaws.

But sometimes I think we overlook the simplest thing nightlife can create: community. Not the grand, branded version of community that gets put on a poster, but the much messier version. The group chat that never shuts up. The person who always knows where everyone is. The friend who sends you an event because they know you'll like it. The person you haven't seen for three months who hugs you like you were together yesterday and the person that drags you to their Barry's class each week because they know blasting through a HIIT class will make you feel more human.

The people who will dance with you until sunrise and then, when things outside the club aren't going so well, quietly step in and help you through it.

This summer was when I stopped being able to tell the difference between my real friends and my rave friends. Not because they became the same people, but because I realised the second category had been real friends all along. It just took me a while to notice.

I'm taking a fabled weekend off this weekend, returning from Barcelona late on Friday. There's plenty to be getting on with though. Friday has a Parable takeover of Ministry of Sound with a ton of local talent (Dasha, playing in the baby box, is always worth watching) while Tush has Kassita playing in London for the first time since she fled to Australia earlier this year. Hoxton Cabal remains worth your time.

Saturday is more bombastic. Colorize takes over E1, Bugged Out fills Drumsheds with nostalgic dancers and sWARM signals will fill out Aaja's basement nicely down in Deptford.

Friday

• Parable: Eli & Fur, Eynka, NOHR + more Ministry of Sound
• TUSH: Bass, Breaks & Techno (Rethink Fundraiser) Cu
• Hoxton Cabal: sima k, Benebe, Josh Hurst (Vinyl Only) Hoxton Cabin

Saturday

• Bugged Out! 2001 & On w/ 2ManyDJs b2b Erol Alkan, Kitten b2b The Hacker, New Young Pony Club Drumsheds
• Colorize: 15 Years E1
• sWARM signals 11: Techno, IDM - Community fundraiser Aaja Basement

Sunday

• Hostmigrate (Live), Trevaylor (Live) The Greyhound

• London’s Heaven nightclub has been granted protected status against redevelopment with Westminster Council certifying it as an Asset of Community Value for the second time, after its first ACV classification expired in January last year.
• Olympia London’s historic Grand Hall venue situated in Kensington has reportedly cancelled all of its shows for the rest of the year. Jamie T and Bloc Party were amongst some of the acts due to perform there.
• The Warehouse Project is taking a year out after its 20th anniversary