Epilogue

So this is where I’ve chosen to end it. It feels strangely poetic that it should finish here, this ridiculous, exhilarating, heart-filling adventure that began in 2008, one month before my son was born. Now, seventeen years, and 228 gigs, later, it ends with him and me standing side by side at a Wunderhorse gig, his first ever live show. Not by design and not through any narrative sleight of hand, it just happened that way. But if there’s such a thing as poetic symmetry, then this feels right to me.

Of course, it’s not really the end. I’ll still be going to gigs. In fact, there’s one next Tuesday. But the furious sprint has become a steady jog, the deluge, a drip. Between 2013 and 2017 I went at it like a man possessed. Now it’s slower, more deliberate. The company has changed too, because life happens, the sprawling, complicated stuff: jobs, mortgages, kids, health, loss. Things shift.

I began writing this book in late 2024, almost exactly a year before I now sit here finishing it. It started because I found an old notebook and fell headlong down a rabbit hole of memory. This was project forged in fragments, late nights, weekends, mornings, one story leading to another. In the process, I unearthed forgotten details: little scribbles my past self had the good sense to leave behind. The more I wrote, the more I remembered.

So here we are seventeen years later. The question remains: What was all this really about?

The answer has been hiding in plain sight. This book was never just about music. It’s also about a transformation. Before all this, somewhere along the way, I had lost myself. I had tied my worth to a single purpose and built a mythology around it. But things change, and when the thing you’ve built your identity on begins to shift, life can feel unmoored. Music, and the act of going to these shows, meeting new people, engaging with new ideas, and the creativities it sparked, became a way back. It offered me a route through the fog.

These adventures rewired me. They brought me into the orbit of people I never would have met, experiences I never would have stumbled into, and perspectives I might otherwise have missed. They taught me to listen, not just to songs, but to people, to life, and to myself.

I said “yes” more. I learned stillness. And slowly, I regained perspective and empathy. I found my way back to a sense of who I was, rather than the version of myself I had been busy performing.

I learned that whilst life isn’t fair, it’s still extraordinary. When in doubt, take a step, just one, and then another. Don’t cling to your rock. Change will come again, and again, don’t fear it. It can be traumatic but I steadfastly refused to wear that trauma like a badge.

I learned to put myself out there and found that amazing things happened when I did. Above all, I learned to love the small things, the tiny moments that make you and others just a little happier. They’re the spark that very often leads to very big things and those things can set everything else alight.

So carpe that diem. And keep it carped.