Komby in 14 Steps — Step 6: London Lights, born French, becoming British — without belonging

London shines — millions of windows, neon, taxis, shopfronts — and you, in the middle of it, alone, with a French passport in one pocket and, later, British naturalisation in the other. London Lights is not a tourist ode, and it is not “I became British, full stop” either: it is the track of someone who was born in France, who never belonged to that country, and who took years to find his voice as an entrepreneur because he was pointed at again and again — as an employee.

The trial: French by birth, never a believer

I am French, and I am also British — naturalised — which is not the same as being “British instead of French”: both exist, both count, one is the country where I was born, the other is the country I chose long enough for it to accept me back. But the trial is not administrative; it is internal.

Born in France, I felt early on that I did not belong — not in the sense of a political slogan on a poster, in the sense of daily life. The day I became an employee, I discovered a country that loves boxes, that tells you what to do, that watches you if you go too far, that corrects you if you improvise. The guy who does not do exactly what is asked, the guy who is too much, too much, the one who disturbs the frame — I was pointed at again and again, not always with harsh words, sometimes with silence, a tight smile, a remark in a meeting: “That’s good, but stay in scope.” “Why are you doing more than asked?” “Calm down.”

It took me years to find my voice as an entrepreneur, because as long as you are an employee in a country that keeps reminding you that you are “too much”, you end up doubting your own amplitude, wondering if the problem is you, if you need to shrink to be acceptable. I never bought into that: I remained French by birth — I do not deny where I come from — but I did not buy into the implicit contract of obeying, falling into line, not being too much.

London: the light, the loneliness, the space to be too much

I left France for London thinking — naively, humanly — that changing country would change what was inside, that the megacity would bring the energy that was missing, and the reality was harsher and fairer at once. The first winter condensed everything: the studio, COVID, empty streets, closed pubs. You walk through Soho at midnight, you see lights and laughter behind windows, and you go home with that feeling of being invisible. London loneliness is not desert loneliness: it reminds you that life exists, elsewhere, not with you.

And yet, in that loneliness, something opened that salaried France had closed for me: the right to be too much without a manager serving it up as a flaw. In London, you are often alone, but you are not necessarily “too much” — you are simply building. I told the story of the move in Leaving France for London: credit score, Brexit, rebuilding, naturalisation, and a business fact people forget too often — by leaving, I did not lose my French Digital CHR clients, I kept them. The agency left French territory to become a British company, the UK structure already existed in 2019, opened one month before the French SAS, and what I hold onto here is the light — and dual nationality as truth, not slogan.

Naturalised British: not a replacement

When people say “British citizen” too quickly, they erase the French, and I refuse that. I was born in France, I have the blood, the language, the childhood, the battle scars of that country, and I became British by naturalisation — through time, work, life in London, the choice to stay. Both coexist; one does not cancel the other.

What naturalisation changed was not my DNA, it was my frame — a frame where the entrepreneur is not automatically the suspect employee, where “too much” can become founder energy instead of an HR reproach. Komby grew in that frame, bootstrapped, without a safety net, across time zones, after the breakup, after Digital CHR, after years of learning that my problem was not being too much but being too wide for the mould they offered me. The “too much” employee became the founder who owns his amplitude: this is not revenge on France, it is stepping out of the frame — with one more passport, not one fewer.

Why I had to release this track

London Lights was born on a night of walking, when I could not sleep — coat, street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, lights everywhere, people in groups, and me alone with a melody that had been turning for weeks. I went home, studio, and the track came like a sound photograph of that night: the city cold and warm at once, lights visible but not for you.

Composing was releasing two fights at once — the loneliness of the megacity, and the older one of the French employee pointed at — and sharing London Lights was asserting that London was not the Instagram dream, and that France had never been my belonging, only my origin. Months later, the lights no longer hurt the same way, not because loneliness had disappeared, but because I had named it, because a track carried it — that is the pact of the autobiographical album.

Freeing the thought

The Komby album documents my battle scars, and London Lights is the one of urban exile — and dual identity. On France Je Te Quitte, I have told other solitudes — France left behind, courts, sleepless nights — ; here, the megacity is the backdrop, and the trial is also being born somewhere without belonging there, then finding another ground without denying the first.

In the background, going “global” does not heal what is inside: it changes the address. The building continued because I had learned to turn trial into music — and because after being pointed at as an employee again and again, I had finally understood that my voice as an entrepreneur would never be born in the silence they demanded.

London Lights. Sixth battle scar. French. Naturalised British. Alone under the lights — and finally wide enough to be too much.

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Alexandre Auger — CEO of Komby *Step 6/14 — Previous: Journey (05) · Next: Underdog Man (07)*