Alone Together: building for depth over reach, and what it finally felt like in the room
Looking back on the day an idea I'd been working on for months became a room full of people ready to lean in.
So here I am, a couple days after Alone Together, after such a long build-up of trying to pull this thing off, and it’s strange to finally be on this side of it.
One of the odd things about being a creator, or anyone who pours themselves into a project, or an album, is what happens once it’s done. You put all your energy and time and passion into something, you push yourself as hard as you can, and then the moment you’ve actually done it, it turns out to just be the start of the next step. There isn’t really a finish line. So before I get pulled into, and typically obsessed with working on what comes next, I wanted to write up the day from my point of view. Partly to help me process it all… but also to say thank you to the people who made it what it was.
Although I woke up early and couldn’t sleep due to excitement I did my best to give the team some time and I turned up at eleven. Seeing the immersive screens going up and the video team setting the space, it became clear this was going to be a scale that was hard to imagine until you were actually standing in it. And straight after the doors opened people started arriving, on time, coming in and making their name tags, the welcome desk team chatting with them, helping them feel comfortable, talking through what they wanted to put on their tag and what they wanted to talk about. Just welcoming people in.
We opened with a performance from CLYMA, with the SCENES visuals on the walls. Those are the questions and memory prompts from the SCENES project, the submissions created by the audience who took part, projected around the room. People came in, sat on the cushions, some lay down. CLYMA took stems from the SCENES album and rebuilt them into a new piece of ambient music, live, on the spot, using modular hardware. It was incredibly beautiful. People zoned out and listened. Afterwards a few of them told me it had brought tears to their eyes.
I think until you sit in that room and let those SCENES images flow past with the music, you forget how emotional some of them are. You’re unprepared for what comes. Some of them are deep, some are very personal. And the whole idea is that you don’t know which ones are going to land for which people. So it becomes this quiet, interactive conversation between the space and you. It was really something to see a whole floor of people just sitting, thinking, watching, taking time for themselves. I found myself getting lost in it too. A few people compared it to therapy, or to a sound bath, those rare spaces where you actually get time with yourself to reflect on what matters.
Then we moved into a performance from Nica Albertson. She takes memory fragments from her life, growing up between worlds as a queer woman from an Iranian-American background, and embeds that experience into the work. I got to sit with her afterwards and talk about the piece, and it tied so directly into the themes of the day, memory and connection. That cadence turned out to be one of my favourite things about how the day worked. Something to walk into and explore, then a performance to sit around, then a chance to actually talk to the person who made it.
After that we brought up the conversation cards. We put on some more vibey music and encouraged people to start talking. Everyone responds differently. In the first session everyone was sitting down, so what happened was these little groups formed naturally, people turning to whoever was next to them, asking if they wanted to answer a prompt, starting to share memories through the cards and the music. They worked so well as a way in. I heard so many amazing responses.
We kept the daytime chill. I did a special ambient performance of my songs as the next crowd came in, and then we started the conversations again. I ended up getting on the mic to say hello, explain the project, invite people to talk to someone new. I wasn’t expecting to be the host, but I think it broke down a lot of barriers. It meant I could talk to people and they felt comfortable talking to me. I had conversations with people who’d walked in off the street with no idea what to expect, who told me it was one of the most meaningful things they’d ever been to. I met people who’d been listening to my music for seven years who I’d never met before.
Then we set up for the evening, opened the doors, and CLYMA performed again, this time standing, so people gathered around the visuals as a whole new crowd came in. That was one of the beautiful things about the day. It kept evolving as more people joined. People who’d never heard the music, people who knew it well, people who came alone and made friends by the end of the night. To watch those connections actually happen in front of me was amazing.
Thoughts On Elvis DJ’d, the tempo lifted, and the room was just bubbling. People talking everywhere, inside and out at the bar. Me and the team moved around, introducing people, and if we saw someone on their own who looked like they wanted company, we’d bring them into a group. One of the most amazing things was how open everyone was. The space seemed to give people permission.
The memory prompt cards let you skip all the small talk and share as much as you wanted, no more. The questions are often about music, so the answer might be that your first record was a Vanilla Ice single, or it might be a song that reminds you of someone you lost. It opens the door for you to take part at exactly the level you want to.
Then my debut live show as the climax! I’ve been working on this live show for a while now and can’t wait to take it event further. I was joined on stage for one song by AV artist CHAU who VJ’d live from touch designer for a new updated version of my song Let Go, which you’ll be able to hear soon on the Alone Together long form piece we are working on for Youtube.
Getting to dance, let loose, and build a whole visual world around the music was exactly as i had hoped. Different visuals for every song, special visual moments and stories matched to the emotion of each one. I think that really worked in the room. People didn’t feel they had to just stand and watch the performer. They could get lost in the visuals, dance, or connect. I watched people going round handing out popcorn, passing the conversation cards between them. And when the night ended, they didn’t want to leave. There were so many people outside, just talking… no one wanting to go home is the best sign you can ask for.
Some of the feedback afterwards was so beautiful, and the thing that meant the most wasn’t “you were amazing.” It was “thank you for creating a space for the things that happened to happen.” A place to feel safe talking to people. A place to lean into an experience however and how much you wanted. That’s depth over reach landing exactly where it was meant to. All the things I’d hoped it would be, it was.
There were technical difficulties, of course. As a musician you always fixate on those. But it was really freeing to be part of something where that genuinely wasn’t the point. They worked out in the end, and even if they hadn’t, the day as a whole, the ethos of it, was the thing. People came from live coding, from immersive arts, from years of following the music, from no connection to it at all. People who wanted to meet others, and people who didn’t, who just wanted that individual immersive time with the live music. Both were welcome. Both belonged.
The thing I keep coming back to is that giving people permission and invitations to connect turned out to be a completely different way of bridging the gaps between moments than a normal music event. And I think it mattered that the artists were in the room going through it too. There was no wall. We were doing the thing with everyone else, not performing at them from behind a barrier. The event team, and Carol facilitating the process, helping people feel comfortable, were also having their own experience of the space, and I think that made all the difference.
So, thank you. To everyone who came, who shared something, who talked to a stranger, who lay on the floor and let the music move through them. To CLYMA, to Nica, to Thoughts On Elvis.
A special thanks and credit to the team who held the whole thing together. You made it exactly what I hoped it could be… and you all went above and beyond because you believed in the project:
C.Y. Lee for coming on as executive producer, being a mentor, a friend and providing crucial grants as a patron to make it all possible.
Carol Keating the creative event producer who was with me every step of the way and produced both the pilot and main event. You are a legend.
Alex Watson and My Perfect Cousin for filming and capturing the whole event at such a incredible professional level… and being one of Alone Together’s biggest champions!
Tesni Kerens and the whole team at CT Group UK for setting up and running all the visuals on the day, and supporting the project in kind (Extra shout to Jem on the visual controls!)
The event team of incredibly talented young music professionals who ran the welcome table and merch: Noah Jackman, Harvey King, Deni Vassileva, and Nica Abertson (if you are hiring then you know where to come!)
And now, like always, it’s just the start of the next step. More visuals, more performances, more stores.. more events.
Jamie x
Beautiful!!
This sounds incredible! So refreshing to hear about music and art bringing people together in such a deep, meaningful (and probably lasting) way. Especially in the context of what can feel such a fragmented world! Congrats ✨