After the drop.

Three dates on my wall. EDC in May, Tomorrowland in July, and a smaller one in the desert in October. Everything else is the space between. I count down in the group chat, on a widget, in the shower. I know exactly what I’m counting toward: the mainstage at eleven, Anyma’s visuals two storeys tall, the build climbing until my ribs hum, forty thousand people holding one breath, then the drop, and the lasers open like a ceiling coming off. For four seconds I’m not a man with a lease and a manager. The nine weeks before are better than the fourth day after. The countdown is the real thing. I’m counting toward the version of me who isn’t waiting for anything. I’d like to meet him on a Wednesday. I’ve started with a Wednesday climbing wall.

Fred again.. last summer, the set where he plays the voice notes over the piano and forty thousand people go quiet. I watched most of it through a phone above my head. I have eleven clips. What I noticed on the train home was that I could tell you the framing of the shot and not what it felt like when the piano came in. I was there for the story and missed the set. Next one, a Bicep show in a tent, phone zipped in the bag at the first note. I have no clips. I can tell you the exact moment the whole tent started singing the vocal back at them, and who I turned to, and that my mate was already looking round to see if I’d heard it too. That’s the one I remember.

First festival, on my own. Everyone bailed, ticket already bought, so I drove six hours and put my tent between two groups who weren’t going to talk to me. Day two, Charlotte de Witte, second row, spot held for three hours with a warm water bottle. The girl next to me had kandi up to both elbows. She looked at my bare wrists, took one off and did the thing with the hands, peace, love, unity, respect, and slid it on. Her boyfriend gave me his last electrolyte packet. When the set ended and the crowd surged we grabbed hands so nobody got lost. Seven years ago. She was at my dad’s funeral in March. He was there too, and he brought the food. I do that for one person at every set now. It’s the only ritual I keep.

Every set went the same. Best night of my life, then Sunday, four in the afternoon, on the couch with the group chat gone quiet and a fridge with one yoghurt in it. I’d found my people on the floor and mislaid them by Monday. What I finally noticed was that I only ever texted the rail lot about the next one. Lineups, links, tickets. Never a question. So on a Wednesday, no event within a month, I sent two of them: pub, Thursday? One came. We talked about his job for an hour, which I hadn’t known he had. That was March. It’s a standing Thursday now, four of us, no lineup, a quiz we’re bad at. The floor still gives me the best four hours of the month. Thursday is where the rest of it lives.

Tuesday. The wristband’s still on. Three days ago I was at a Rüfüs sunrise set with my arms round two people I’d met the night before, the sky went pink behind the stage, and I cried, and nobody thought it was odd. Today I had cereal for dinner and couldn’t answer a text. I’m not going to pretend the bill is only lost sleep. I drank more than I meant to, and that comes due on about day three, and today is day three. Grey and flat. What helps a bit: I know it passes. What helps more: my rail friend messaged this morning, not about the next one, just, how are you doing, drink water. Sleeping tonight instead of the aftermovie. Wristband comes off Thursday. Decided that on purpose.

Thirty-four, still going. Fewer, and differently. I used to do four days on a campsite; now it’s one night, a Berlin basement that runs from midnight to six, when I walk out with a coffee from the bakery that opens for exactly us. Fisher at the club, hands in the air, the whole room grinning like idiots. What changed isn’t that I love it less. I stopped asking it to do a job it can’t do. In my twenties every set was an audition. Right group, right person watching. I was checking, and you can’t dance while you’re checking. Now I go with the same three people. We leave when someone’s done. The drop still hits. When I get home, someone’s there who knows what the night was for and never wanted to be on the guest list.