Difficult Freedom

I haven’t had a drink in 4 days. I know it impacted in some small way, some of the small events of today.

First off - the extremely small. I was tuning my 12-String. The 12-String I have only had one G-String on for about a year and a half. I really wanted to play it because of the ludicrously crisp sounding 12-strings on all of the Jeff Lynne produced albums of the late 80′s and early 90′s, especially Tom Petty and George Harrison. When you hear that sound, you feel like you can shit out huge songs, and thats what I intended to do. The only tuner I have at home is the crappiest, dinkiest piece of garbage that I got online. It took forever to tune and the guitar still sounded out of tune. I normally would have beat the crap out of myself for this (I can feel how easily diagnosable my bouts of self-hate and self-doubt are as I write). I would have asked: “Who that actually cares about making music would even bother with a crappy tuner?” “If you were a real writer, your guitar would be in tune already.” These thoughts came to me this time, but I kind of just let them pass. I got the guitar in decent shape and played for a bit. I also bought a top of the line tuner, and I won’t deal with this frustration that I have been aware of without actioning and fixing. What an insane thing... The jar in the fridge that you know is past its freshness date and you have a brief, almost ambient acknowledgement of it, but it doesn’t cross your mind that it is worth dealing with. I hope this change of attitude continues. 

Secondly, and for once, my partner was the one who had a little too much to drink. And when I say “a little too much” I actually mean just that. Not like me recounting having 18 beers and saying I just got a little tipsy. I was able to help her into bed, get her water and put her to sleep. 9 times out of 10 that is me that is requiring the help. No, not 9 times out of 10. 29 out of 30ish I’d say, honestly. Being able to give, even in this small way, goes miles for your personal investment in a relationship. If you’re only receiving from your partner and not giving, you don’t have any accountability - you’re a leech. I watched her fall asleep while I was playing with her hair and I had an overwhelming sense of ‘I have more to give her than I have been’. I don’t think this is what I’ve heard described as ‘Pink Cloud’, but its an optimism about the future that is making me feel pretty great. Just for Today, it feels really good.

Here’s a great tune from the 12-String heavy Harrison album that was doing it for me musically, and lyrically is pretty appropriate.

1. John Mulaney

2. Tom Brady

3. Norm MacDonald

4. Tom Petty

5. Bruce Springsteen

6. David Bowie

7. Jim Carrey

8. James Hetfield

9. Brandin Lea

10. Gerard Way

11. Alecia Moore

12. Marc Maron

13. Stephen King

14. Jeff, Matt and Chris

15. Neen Williams

16. Al Pacino

17. Miley Cyrus

18. Andrew Reynolds

19. Josh Zitta

20. Grimes

21. Colin Farrell

22. Demi Lovato

23. Eva Mendes

24. Sarah Silverman

25. Max Cavalera

26. Jonathan Davis

1. Get my teeth clean. There is always the stain of missing a day of brushing here and there. 

2. Grasped the Concept of Phenomenology in a way that I could explain it to someone else. This goes for a lot of other ideas / concepts / things as well. I float around their biographies and never get at their essences. I know what I want to be / do / explore, but not how to be / do / explore with consistency.

3. Visit my brother more than once in the last three years. A guy who has actually needed help I can’t provide right now.

4. Keep up my family relationships. Living away from home, I am overcome with the sense of a void being filled everytime I visit Boston. I swear to call my parents twice a week, my grandfather once a week and my brothers regularly. This contract may as well be signed in blood on the bus rides and train rides home, but within days of getting back its slipped my mind.

5.  Maintain a healthy band situation. About 12 bands in the last 12 years. Same guys, same issues. How can you know someone you see so often so little?

6. Listen to music on the subway. I’ve gotten to a place where I need to hear people talk to be able to commute at all. Fear of being alone with my thoughts...or maybe hoping for ambient passive recuperation.

7. Wake up at the same time every day. Or go to bed at the same time for that matter. I have avoided consistency here. This is tied to what makes a day contented, which is tied to what makes a life contented. 

8. Concentrate. While I have thought about writing this down for about a year, I am just now finally doing that. And even then, I had to toggle back and forth between Always Sunny Bloopers, a Celtics Practice, a song from the Jawbreaker soundtrack that I’ll post, Facebook, Soundcloud and Twitter.

9. Create without the dread of starting again. Always Beginning Again Again. The days, the ideas, the thoughts are not strung together.

10. Drink without it causing difficulty in my life. Drinking has affected to varying degrees #’s 1-9. Most days I don’t. Then I’ll have a weekend bender that I stay relatively in control. Then I think I can drink all the time. I love the haziness, the ambience, the general vague warmth of drinking, bars, and the enthusiastic and uninhibited conversation that comes with it. But invariably I will have a day that I don’t remember. I drink before I meet up with friends, even in the AM hours now. I neglect to communicate to my girlfriend. I don’t recall everything I say. I don’t recall how I get home. And I wake up the next morning with a sense of dread that worsens problems 1-9. The relief has been temporarily brilliant, but the issues are not going away, they are creeping closer. 

I need a change. I don’t know what it is yet, or for how long. But I know that freedom from this will be difficult. I finally think I am ready to chip away at achieving a better, more fulfilled life. This is a start.