I skipped going to a gig last night.

I bought the ticket back in February: Clutch, playing Vega in Copenhagen. One of my most favourite bands, who I’ve seen at least four or five times over the years, and who I missed seeing on their last local fly-by due to a conflicting academic engagement. On one level, I’d really been looking forward to it.

On another level, however, I realised I wasn’t looking forward to it at all.

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I’d put in a full day finishing up a report for a client, and I’d worked through the weekend too. The cold I caught a week and change ago is mostly gone, but thanks to that combined with Monday’s regular appointment with my nemesis, the rowing machine, I was physically tired as well as mentally.

By the time I finished working at 17:30, it was already dark outside, as well as cold and wet. Swedish shows tend to start fairly early, but Danish ones run late; Clutch weren’t scheduled to take the stage until 21:30, which meant they’d more likely be on around 22:00.

Copenhagen is pretty convenient to Malmö in many ways, but it’s still an hour each way (and around 30euro) to cross the Öresund. I’d need to endure the technical nightmare of accessing the Ticketmaster app on my phone, because no way am I installing an app made by those shameless grifters; then I’d need to run the gauntlet of Vega’s compulsory cloakroom policy, which I deem to be bare-faced highway robbery.

(If you’re going to make the cloakroom compulsory, then include it in the ticket price, you fucking pirates!)

All these thoughts and more were running through my head as I ate my supper (fried halloumi with bulgur pilaf, since you asked), when a little voice interjected—the same little voice, I suspect, that informed me I was fine with being accused of weakness for leaving the Sunn0))) show early a few weeks back.

“You can just not go, you know,” it said.

I argued with it a little. That ticket cost me close to 60euro, after all! (The Swedish to Danish exchange rate is frankly murderous, and, well: Ticketmaster. Fuckers.) And what sort of situation was this to end up in, for someone who used to go to three, four, five shows or club nights a week back in the day? This is not rock and roll behaviour, is it?

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That little voice, which won the argument without too much difficulty, is the voice of changed priorities, I suppose. I figure a lot of folk get it earlier, due to careers and families and what have you. In some ways, you might say I’ve been lucky to avoid listening to it for so long; in other ways, you might say it was a particular sort of stubborn idiocy.

I think that both of those perspectives can be true at the same time. I think those who know me best would say they’re definitely both true in my particular case.

I’m not about to call time on gig-going in general. Music is a long way from being the most important thing in my life, as it once was, but it still matters to me a great deal. It’s precisely because it still matters that I want to actually enjoy it properly—and if that means writing off the cost of a ticket rather than putting myself through the mill, so be it.

If you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it. If there’s a heart to rock and roll, that’s it.