A few years back, I lived in a flat roughly 150 yards from the pub I worked in. Being a guy in his mid-twenties with Not Much Going On™ I rarely got out of bed much before my evening shift started, consequently lying awake until morning listening to music. You know, like a real success story.
One such night I found myself in the wee hours digging out an old football I forgot I owned. A glorious little Adidas Euro 2012 effort discarded at the back of a cupboard next to two (two!!) broken hoovers and a pile of free weights given to me one Christmas, stacked out of sight as a monument to Kidding Myself On. I started kicking the ball around my room, bouncing it off the wall like my own version of Steve McQueen. A banging on the wall from a flatmate informed Steve that he had better shut his noise and something about people having work in the morning. So that was that.
The next night, sat awake riding the wave of a truly horrendous shift, the football called out to me. It made a fair point; it had been a while since I practised my keepy ups. So, despite the late hour, I picked the ball up and headed out to the small patch of grass along the street to rectify this. In my headphones: Burial’s 2007 album Untrue.
It always felt to me that Burial’s music was meant to be consumed nocturnally. Something about the eeriness of a 3am pairs perfectly with the moody, atmospheric syncopations of Will Bevan’s music. A scene rendered in greyscale; Untrue evokes the image of a night bus. In a good way, I should add. Not like that night bus you fell asleep on after eight pints and woke up in Lambhill with no money. It was the perfect soundtrack for my streetlight-soaked footballing excursion. The patch of grass was no bigger than a five-a-side pitch and was surrounded by flats on each side. Worn out, dusty and strewn with discarded bottles and cans; it made for a beguiling little arena.
Keepy ups are among the first things you do with a ball as a youngster, and in adulthood they remain instinctual and endearing. There I was: right foot, left foot, right, left, thigh to thigh, a head or even a shoulder if boldness struck. Reality fell away as the rhythm of the ball became hypnotic. The music in my headphones took on a new life. Burial’s twitchy dubstep off-beats and ethereal samples wrapped themselves around the ball. The metronomic sound of each kick freed up the parts of my brain that the album had not touched before; a good number 10 making a decoy run to draw away defenders and create space for his strike partner. The 2-step, garage-y metre of tracks like Archangel and Near Dark ricocheted around with every thud of the ball. Right foot, left foot, knee to knee. The music conjured feelings of isolation yet found solace in that state; unburdened by the need to conform. The pounding, ambient waves of Endorphin and In Mcdonalds felt simultaneously nostalgic and modern. In that moment something old was new again. Decades of UK rave culture came to life with every keepy up. I have no idea how long I spent there, juggling the ball and hearing one of my favourite albums like never before. I headed home with a rare clarity of mind.
I would do this every now and then when I felt a bit overwhelmed. I’m almost certain people in the nearby flats started noticing. Suspicious onlookers peering out of dark windows.
“That boy with the ball is back.” They’d say.
“What’s he doing?”
“Well, he’s sort of looking like he’s wrestling with feelings of boredom and anxiety that he won’t fully be able to articulate until much later in his twenties.”
“But does he at least seem like he’s doing it to the soundtrack of some genre defining minimalist dubstep?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well that’s something”.
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