Ruben Madila

It is not easy to perform in front of complete strangers. We all know that. But when the people that offer to lessen that burden end up costing you more nerves, the mountain becomes unsurmountable.

It wasn’t an easy blow. That same argument was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I decided to cut everyone from my life that was somehow, more obsessed with creating drama whenever I tried to spread my wings and showcase any talent I might have, than to support it. As a consequences, and because of the narcissistic traits I had ignored for years, I failed to see how she started a smear campaign to remove any other support from my life as well. Until I was completely alone.

But surprisingly, that was the moment when all shame, all fear of what others could say, was gone. And after mourning their loss, getting used to that new found loneliness and understand that I couldn’t let a saboteur destroy my life, all that was left was myself, the few clients left and my music.

My music. The one I could do myself, without interference, and with full input in the safety of my own room. Until not even my room was safe.

The new housemates that moved in after my sister and niece left the house we were sharing, ended up being connected to them (at least one of them), and they used the year long contract we signed to group up, humiliate me, disrupt me, get information from me and listen while I rehearsed and made new music, all with the cover of being simply nice neighbours. I already covered this on a previous article, but half way through 2025, I had the need to break from my isolation and explore. Instagram showed me an ad for an open mic in Balham, in a place called The Wolf. Like serendipity, I ventured on my own with my camera to see if I felt comfortable enough to sing one night.

The first night went great, I recorded most of the performances, took photos with the cosy and warm backdrop of their venue, made new friends, and ended up having heartfelt conversations afterwards with two of the artists, talking about the industry, our experiences in it and feeling energetic and hopeful that at least I had found a place to make new moves within my passions, either signing or helping others with photography and video.

I went the next Thursday, as it was a weekly event, and the experience was even better. By the second week, I had so many tracks recorded that I created a new Instagram channel, so I could tag the people and the venue and hopefully help promoting the night. It did work, some of the videos got thousands of views and the performers were incredibly thankful for the effort.

But as was, and still is, the case in my life for a while, the moment that recognition started to appear in a meaningful way, things started to go haywire.

By the third week, the people approaching mestarted to treat things differently, as if they had been hijack by rumours of whispers of what I was and what I wasn’t. At first it is easily dismissed as they usual caution when dealing with people in London, but it you can’t stay in that grey area forever, the choice is always yours to distance yourself, or get closer, to anyone that comes your way.

That’s when the owner, Tallat, introduced herself. The drive to make the venue work, even though it had only been running since May that year, was enough to get my hopes up alongside the photos of artists filling the walls and the guests talking fondly about the place.

I went knee deep in helping it thrive. For two months, I went regularly, editing the video in my spare time in the hope of building enough portfolio to get paid gigs.

I have never been a fan of charging upfront for things I haven’t developed a pipeline of work for. When the purpose is to train yourself to a professional level, working with people that are not stressed with budgets but making sure it benefits us both, is worth it. Asking for what is always going to be a small fee, for relative strangers, just to end up constantly negotiating what goes in and who has control and input, to the point where it becomes the focus is the biggest distraction I had in my early twenties when starting up professionally making websites. I rather make three projects with the freedom of collaborating as equals that will guarantee new paid clients in the long run, even if the payment is just a beer or a free meal or two while polishing that very same output.

I also saw how some newcomers, first-time singers, had the chance of shining without having to pay for it, and I loved it. That was enough reason for me to care, as for all the clout London gets as a famous music hub, no venue had professional videography, albeit humble and with no fuss or costly edits, without making a huge deal of it, all available for anyone that comes. Creating those places that we always wished we had, for us and others, is an amazing thing to help built.

I tried to explain this, to the few that showed interest in my work, but the response seemed to be one of initial agreement, to end up levelled into a vision of me being just another dreamer full-of-it, an idealist, that doesn’t see the value of money and just does it for the art. It was incredibly weird, to show that attitude to someone that is offering to do a project so we can both show our best side, leaving any money they might have to be used to make that happen or why not, promoting it after. Again, my logic brain knows enough about the art industry to know that marketing budgets tend to be 1.5x the cost of production. So when you operate with next to nothing, but with the right equipment and talent, then do your best for free and use it all to put it in front of as many eyes and ears as possible.

By September, a month later, I had conquered my fear and started performing myself. The reception was ok, but I wasn’t looking for compliments on my voice or stage presence. I was coming out of my a period of devastating loss, years of apathy about my art, to convince myself I could overcome the fright of years not thinking I was deserving of at least the chance to do it. And that I did.

By the time I had published 30 odd videos, I started to even branch out to other events, such as The Loft Sessions, inviting some of the people I met, visiting the famous Dublin Castle (Amy Winehouse performed there amongst others great artists) following a rock artist that approached me on Vampr. We also tried Dingbats 2 in Camden and I was asked to cover a Grunge night in Finsbury Park. The mixture of styles, genres and opinions were the stimulus I was in so much need of.

After some talks with three of the artists I met there, we decided to plan an event ourselves, to help the venue drive different types of audience and test the waters.

One of them, Grey Weeks, even asked me for a coffee as he also was involved in marketing and web development. He gave me good advice, but I could feel that the interest was influenced more about knowing my short-term plans (something that I am 100% sure he didn’t keep to himself ) than to really partner up with me. Intentions were set that never translated into reality, the usual future-faking for a bit of information.

The more I felt satisfied by the output, the more my housemates at home were interrupting the newly found routine and the artists were slowly turning arrogantly defiant with me. Some kept spamming my Instagram with messages, other were asking for quotes for videos with really weird demands that were difficult to understand, just for then to postpone the payment and publish a similar video made with someone else, mocking those same requirements they were so eager to demand before, in one case a Bible, held in a tunnel as a prop, no meaning, no intention.

The day that we recorded the promo videos for the event, in Richmond, the air was already weird. One of them, Ben Parker, decided the best approach was to not overthink it, and gave me no time to set things up for good takes, testing audio and lighting before we started a two camera setup under a windy bridge, and simply went for it within 5 minutes making us improvise on the spot.

That translated in what I still think are amazing pieces of live music, but the wind, the lack of planning, agreement and thought made it harder to post-produce and an experience that for free, I wouldn’t have accepted in retrospect.

I was suspecting foul play, sabotage, but I am not one to act on hunches, I just absorb the information to adapt my foresight so I can see the multiple possible motivations for people to act the way they act and make sense of what they themselves want to keep obscure.

After that, the interest started to wane, after Ben quickly took on the task of making the poster, but left the job of ordering and paying for them to me (Grey Weeks had to remind everyone to even out the tab weeks later) just to then postpone it due to last minute scheduling issues, once they were hanged and the event advertised. The cherry on the top was Ben’s behaviour, as if I was overstaying my welcome after I saw myself having to deal with refunds on Eventbrite, making a new poster, amending all the information and rethinking the promo without a proper conversation to decide what to do next.

In reality, I was doing all of it for free to give Tallat a good workflow to make and promote the events and to recorded it myself for further promo for everyone and the venue. Why make an event if you are not going to take it seriously enough for it to be a success? And why treat the guy helping everyone as if he is bothering everyone by running around taking as much as he can to get it running smoothly?

If felt that the risk of it actually being anything other than failure, was making HIM scared. And that attitude push me to remove myself from the project using Ben’s words as the excuse. Paraphrasing him: “Relax, mate, we don’t need you to do that much.” Ok then. The event never went ahead without me. But the story they told about my involvement was no longer mine to tell as one versus 4.

Once the disappointment of spending my time planning an acoustic evening for nothing was set, I started to also noticing some artists that had profusely thank me for my shots removing themselves from them, hiding them from my feed until only 10 or so videos were visible, something I only realised looking from my usual account, randomly says later.

I still went ahead an covered a comedy night, asked to by Tallat, with famous and up-and-coming comedians joining in, noticing how the main act had a dig at me because of my accent, that didn’t go unnoticed to me or the laughing audience.

Imagine how I felt seeing that the place I had tried to help promote, even helping them manage their website and helping them with 50+ videos for a glass of wine when I visit and £100 all-in-all, turning on me just when things seem to actually start to work to their profit.

By the time Halloween was approaching, the next big planned event, another bombshell comes in. The landlord is refusing to renew the lease, which means that even if things are successful, it will all be for nothing.

I also noticed that the stories the owner was telling me, about being betrayed by her co-partner leaving her alone to manage it all, her neurodivergence and struggle with people, didn’t translate in real empathy and help when I told her about my own issues with abuse and harrassment from my housemates, that by them were at their highest.

It seemed, that for some reason, I wasn’t allowed to have sympathy unless it was through humiliation or success even in keeping the proof that my work made a difference.

Some of the artists even when ahead and used my photos for their promos without giving me any credit, by sharing them with me for maximum trolling.

They kept asking for my help, sending videos of the landlord supposedly being abusive to them (although in the video you could only see him raising him voice saying non-sense at the door) to try to isolate the audio to understand what she claimed were full-on threats.

None of them offered help in return, and when the news that the venue would indeed close and that Halloween wouldn’t happen, I decided to give it up and focus on healing from the disappointment, not in pushing myself further.

It wasn’t all bad, of course, I kept performing and pushing myself and that is the one thing no one can take away from me.

But what was advertised as a safe-place, with all types of labels and emojis on Instagram to bring people in, ended up draining me from me energy, my work, my time, my hope and keeping me from making real longstanding connections with people.

I realised that even though something might be start great, anyone can start poisoning the well until everyone drinking from it is losing health without realising.

Months later, I went back to their Instagram just to see them make freestyle videos with some new artists, on the street, with pigeon helmets. Nothing was left of the diversity, enthusiasm, artistry that drove me to come back week after week. Now it was just a clique of 5 people continuing something that had long lost the spark, after everyone that seemed enchanted by the atmosphere was gone, and the air was thick with unspoken rumours and hearsay.

Some of the videos can still be seen on my Instagram, and the raw footage still sits on my Dropbox, as the proof of concept for a dream that I wish one day I will fulfill.

It was another piece of the puzzle that the previous years had been. To always be close to something, but to see it crumble as the weeks go by and people get offers that come out of the blue, promises that months later don’t translate in success because the only intention was to keeping us all from it. The difference is that they believed in those promises and illusions of money and fame, and I chose to believe in me, and us, instead.