Aftermath

It's been a long, long time since I was heading into work feeling as spaced out and sleep-deprived, and downright vulnerable as I did this morning. Almost a reminder of the bad old days.

Still, it was a worthwhile price to pay for a wonderful few days in which I made some new friends, renewed some old acquaintances and strengthened some existing ones: all within a framework of hard - and sometimes fraught - work, not to mention a bewildering array of fantastic music.

I took this photograph at 1.30 am this morning, an hour after closedown. It was a last tour of all the different parts of the site just to check if anything else needed attending to. I wandered into this space and, for a few short moments, allowed myself to be enveloped by such a powerful sense of stillness and silence. It was simultaneously eerie and soothing.

I'm often not sure whether one loses or finds oneself at such times...perhaps a bit of both.

Quite a stark (but lovely) contrast to the frequently astonishing musical mayhem of the last 60 or so hours. Not to mention volume - often so dense as to be a physical barrier. The absence of such in the space in the photograph, was almost shocking.

Now, this evening at home, there's silence and solitude: it's much-needed, but somehow I've gotten very quickly used to the intensity of hundreds and hundreds of people milling around, and also of working within what very quickly became a very close-knit team of good people.

It was a blast.