Distance

Distance.

I’m guessing you're getting quite sick of hearing that word right about now. In this FUBAR world we are living in who wouldn’t be? We are distanced from our friends and families, from work & play. From gigs, festivals and pinty sit downs in the pub, from tapas, from hugs.

We could all use a hug. 

So maybe it’s a touch of Stockholm syndrome. Maybe I’m starting to identify with my captor a little too much. But I want to write about Distance.

Appropriately this story starts 32 years in the distance and, as is only right for ‘Big Bang’ moments large and small, in silence.

Actually no, more a sort of not quite silence. 

Like the blood rushing in your ears in a silent room. But mechanical. And warm. 

Then the rain starts, a clap of thunder, in the distance the mournful tolling of a bell. 

Then.…

…not what a boy of 11 was expecting when he got out of bed one Saturday morning, donned his headphones and indulged for the very first time in an album that was already 18 years old at that point. It was news to me though.  

I didn’t think it would be like this. I mean I know it says Black Sabbath on the tape but FUCK this is scary. Really bloody scary. And exciting. Maybe I should listen to it again?  What if Mum finds out? Should I? 

I did. 

It would be poetic to say that that was the epiphanic moment that I realised the power of music, but truth be told it was one of many. The problem I’ve always had with memories is that I have quite a lot of them. They are spilling out of my brain all the time and when I jam them back in they tend to get a bit mixed up and cross pollenated. That one is pretty sharp though. I remember so vividly what that felt like - thrilling and dangerous. It felt like I was summoning a demon.

In a way I was.

A demon that would tempt me for my entire adolescence and into adulthood with promises of untold riches, forbidden pleasures and the visceral delights of shouty music played at top volume as often as possible.

But I ended up feeling sorry for that demon. Especially when it realised that I wasn’t in fact, the next Robert Johnson, but just a skinny kid from a sleepy market town in Somerset. They wouldn’t be burying me at a crossroads - at the very best under the roundabout by Great Mills, but that would cause horrible rush hour tailbacks, so pretty unlikely to be honest.

It was the classic story. Boy meets music, falls in love, dedicates every waking moment to listening, playing and obsessing about it. Boy starts band and soon finds every aspect of his life and relationships entwined by it - music knitting it all together like a giant mycelial network. It’s really, REALLY fun.

Boy becomes man, still doggedly pursues a life in music. Has some successes, has a lot of failures. Then suddenly at the age of 30, 19 years and an entire lifetime later, realises that the passion isn’t there anymore. The flame has gone out. The wheels had not just come off, but exploded all over the hard shoulder of my dreams.

What was once a source of meaning and happiness had become a chore. Like an addiction, my music ‘career’ had started taking rather than giving. I’d been beaten into submission after giving every single ounce of passion and energy, only to stay very firmly in the same place. I was watching my life tick by in a meaningless and dispassionate admin job. An office-based purgatory that looked like a dead certainty for the rest of my life now that music clearly wasn’t going to save me. I was, to put it mildly, pissed right off. 

Most horrible of all was the realisation that relationships with band mates, friends and my girlfriend were suffering too. 

So I had the meeting. Told the band that I was leaving. No-one was surprised. Everyone was relieved. Sad, but definitely relieved. The end of an era. 

Problem is, I had no plan for anything else. 

Luckily for me, I have in my wife Kate (back then long suffering band girlfriend, roadie and driver) a persistently pro-active, brave and empowering partner. She coached, cajoled, and cattle-proded my depressed arse into action. Told me to ‘shake things up’, ‘take a risk’. After all ‘what did I have to lose?’.

Obviously you guys will have realised she was dead right. But it took me a while. In fact, not until she asked if I would consider talking to a counsellor did I start to realise what a mess I was in. That was a shock. I started to think things through seriously after that.

One snowy day on a chairlift in Austria we were discussing ‘things’ again. Maybe it was the fresh air, the crisp white snow, the bluebird sky. I glibly said to Kate that if she bought me a chocolate bar at the top I’d move to Canada with her. 

Six months later we were 7506km from my old life and living in Vancouver. Free of the pressures, routines and responsibilities of ‘normal’ living. For the first time ever I’d taken a conscious BIG risk. It felt amazing. What I came to realise was that with all that physical distance came a tangible sense of buffering. It was like a safety zone had been put around me. I was here, now, living. All that other stuff was… somewhere over there on a map.

After a few months of living the dream in and around Van City we decided to embrace the hugeness of the country we were in and travel across it in a van. THE van. The coolest thing I will ever own in my life. Eddie ‘Van’ Halen - a 1986 Chevy G20, plate number 832 HWJ. Blue velour interior, captains chairs and 12 cup holders. Luxury on wheels. Eddie became our home as we aimlessly travelled the highways and byways of the second largest country on earth. Pulling into provincial parks and staying for however long we felt, choosing our next destination based on how cool/rude the name of the place was (Lake Minnewanka, Dildo Run Provincial Park). Every night we camped up I’d take our BCAA road map and carefully draw our day’s drive on it in sharpie. Every night I’d stare at it in wonder at the sheer scale of the place and how far we’d come.

It was all about distance every day. We talked as we drove long distances about how far we’d come. About how far we had to go. The sheer vastness of that landscape started to impress on me how small an entity I was. I began to realise that you can have quite a lot of epiphanies in life. They don’t all have to be heavy metal related either.

Here I was in a country that was impossibly vast. A country where some folks made a journey longer than the distance from Exeter to London just to buy groceries. This physical distance from home allowed me to break free from the ties and expectations that were keeping me in one place. I no longer needed to be a certain person just because I always had been. I no longer needed to act a certain way, dress a certain way, speak a certain way. No one knew me out here at all. If I was so inclined I could write any back story I wanted. I was camping amongst trees that were so old they pre-dated quite a lot of western civilisation and they didn’t give a shit who I was. 

I finally had space to think freely about what was going to come next. Over the next few months of ‘Van Life’ I started to make lists of what I wanted out of life, work, and the future. What job would be a bit like being in a band but with an actual pay check? How could I get paid to be creative? How could I get paid to be creative AND dress however the fuck I wanted?

Here’s where music did me the biggest favour it ever had. It dawned on me that all those years of obsession had been preparing the ground for new growth. I’d been mainlining pop-culture, art and creativity. I’d been surrounded by posters, covers, and t-shirts. I’d created quite a few myself. Maybe I could do something like that? I made the decision to enrol in a graphic design degree course on our return to the UK.

At the age of 31 I became a ‘mature’ student and got down to learning again. It turns out that if you actually apply yourself it is perfectly possible to learn a new skill and make things happen. Why hadn’t I done this before instead of just sort of hoping that stuff would magically work out? Because scared, paranoid, small-town me, the guy from a few paragraphs up, believed in the power of the filthiest word in the English language. The ‘C’ word.

Can’t.

That bloody word had haunted me for ever. Now having seen the distant horizon and having found it to be quite exciting not knowing what was over it, that loathsome, horrible four letter word just sort of lost its power.

Two years later and Kate & I were living in London. After a year of being the oldest design intern that most of the London agencies had ever had to deal with, I was an actual professional Graphic Designer. A job that opened up countless new experiences and sent me around the world to work with all kinds of talented folks. I had lots of beers with said folks. Made great friends and fostered an outlook on life that has stayed with me ever since.

We spent an action packed 10 years in London before finally moving back to the South West in 2017. I’m now the Creative Director of a small and fabulous Bath-based agency. I have a daughter called Polly who blows my mind every day and a scruffy Border Terrier called Monty who licks my face everyday. I also bloody love music. I always did. I always will. 

That’s why Distance is my reason to be cheerful.

Without that physical and metaphorical distance all those years ago I can absolutely tell you that I wouldn’t be here now tapping this out for you to read. I wouldn’t be dead or anything. I probably would just be watching TV, fat as hell and complaining about Tina in procurement. I’d probably have a good pension. I’d probably be miserable. I’d probably have sold all my bass guitars.  As it happens they’re hanging on the wall behind me, opposite the map of Canada with the sharpie lines all over it.

So thank you Distance. Without you I wouldn’t have been far enough away to really appreciate perspective. 

Jamie Saunderson

Jamie Saunderson is a Creative Director, music obsessive, husband and dad living life on the Avon Frontier just outside of Bath.

I’ve made a playlist of formative bangers from the 'early years' that made a huge impression on me. I can remember where I was the first time I heard nearly all of these tracks. If you’re up for a bit of nostalgic 90’s angst then this is for you:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5mz9VPUYKAMvAaW0kevdky?si=boZ4dtxDTh61GEZX9ikhCg

You can find me on instagram @jameridge