Chapter 4: Walking Through Walls
A Journey of Addiction, Music, Healing, and Rediscovery
Day Four: Tuesday August 19th, 2003
I’ll take the sun
I won’t feed the darkness
I will feed the light
But I have just bought another packet of cigarettes
12.30pm. Maybe I am looking for them, but I keep stumbling on weird coincidences today. First of all, the songs I have written over the last five years that at the time of writing made no sense, suddenly become very relevant. In particular one of the last songs I wrote for Jocasta, “Hide” had lyrics about medicine and opiated tea as well as the line: “Got to find another way for us to get in touch”. I think it was something about communication and connection that I was reaching for, but didn’t really know why I’d written it. But it feels like it makes sense now. It is all very freaky.
I can’t believe that song was never released. Maybe one day.
Also I just discovered that it is the practice of the monks here to bake bread at 3 o’clock in the morning. This is strange because for the last two years, whenever I finished the last of my drugs, I would get out the flour and start making bread, pizzas, biscuits, chapattis, or whatever else I could think of to fill in the void after a binge. It was always at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. I don’t know if it means anything. I feel it does. Something is going on. What is God up to?
I know before the end of my stay I will meet the Abbot, who apparently never looks people in the eyes but looks where your heart is and sees your soul/spirit.
I hope he can offer some wisdom for me to finally find the thread that has woven my life together. Although I still know it’s only really to be found by me with my own tools, I wonder why I can’t see the purpose of my existence already. I have a rough outline, but it’s the details I need to identify the complete picture.
MUSIC-MYSTICISM-AMBITION-COMMUNICATION
As far as outlines go, this is really, really rough. Although I have details that lace those four things together, it’s a fucking massive jigsaw puzzle, and for every five pieces I find, I forget one I found the day before. I am a punctured recipient. There are holes in me and that’s why I can’t hold anything together. Maybe I have patched them up over the years but they soon start to leak. I visualise that being here is a way of stitching up these holes in my aura forever. I picture it and hope I am right.
3.30 p.m.
I am extremely lucky. A new patient has arrived today from France (he is Armenian). I have been criticised on quite a few occasions lately about my French accent when I sing in French, but this guy seems to understand the little French I can remember when we speak. He is here to detox from ecstasy and cocaine. He told me that he had a girlfriend who was addicted to crack and one day after injecting it, she got on a motorbike to venture out into the streets of Marseille and ended up killing herself. Everyone around the table at the food shop in The Hay understood what he said. We were all shocked. As I said, I am very lucky.
I have an hour and a half until my third ‘vomiting’ and I am not really looking forward to it. I don’t mind it, it’s just that I am not very strong and it takes more strength than I really have, to do it. I keep wishing I had got myself fitter a long time ago, but my body is like the rest of me; a bloody mess. If I got into shape, I could probably look vaguely handsome and maybe even manly, but as it is I have let myself go, inside and out. I am getting obsessive about my fat tummy. It is fucking ugly, and like my mind, if it were toned up, I’d probably be able to sprint through life instead of crawling it all the time.
I have just done 30 sit-ups. I am in agony. Pathetic. But I’ll do it again tomorrow. Jesus, the waves of “New born Buddhist ex-junkie” are wafting through the air and I feel like I am ready for Oprah Winfrey. Never again.
7.30 p.m.
REMEMBER THIS FEELING: I think I have underestimated my addiction. I don’t feel the need to do drugs, and I don’t think it will make me feel better, but the only explanation for this unbearable sick feeling must be the result of not putting something in my body for eight days, after doing it practically every day for years. Sweat, shit, snot, piss, headache, burp, fart, and tingling like pins and needles.
What the fuck else can it be?
I am scared that I am finally facing myself and it’s made me feel more lost than I’ve ever felt before. What a prat I am to think that living with this clichéd private horror could have escaped me. It’s always been there, I just thought I was better. “I don’t inject”, “I am not that bad” “I AM A FUCKING GENIUS. IT WON’T GET ME”.
I feel like something is sucking my skeleton out of an ear hole and it’s taking forever.
My insides are a cemetery of broken promises, but the thing is, I buried them alive, and as long as they remain inside, I am feeding the fuckers just enough to keep them breathing.
Get out of me you fucking cunts and don’t come back.
I had a laughing fit today for an hour straight after feeling down. It’s not serious or anything but I think I’m slightly deranged. Not insane, but a bit mad. A bit different. My routines are completely psychotic. Not dangerous, but non logical and a tight rope walk that only just makes it, whenever I start putting plans into action.
Many have been happy to indulge me in my precarious balancing act, but luckily for me there are some who love me enough to shout “there is a bridge next to the tight rope, use that instead!” I miss my mother, June and Toni.
8.00 p.m.
I feel a lot better, even though a mosquito has bitten my ankle. Bastard.
I pray to God that this is not a moment of self-delusion. No more tricks, no more Chinese whispered translations of truth. I feel clarity. Please let it be real.
9.30 p.m.
After going through that weird trip (that was pure pain incarnate) and then saying good night to the day, I was visited by a dear old friend. She didn’t stay for long, she just wanted to pop by to reassure me that she had not forgotten about me and was looking forward to us spending more time together. She gave me a lovely gift, and for someone like me, who grapples with discovering the ‘unheard of chord sequence’, a hat full of them that move with magic arrive in my brain out of nowhere. There could not be a better gift. She says she will be back soon but recognises I have a few things to do before we can really spend quality time together like we did in the old days. She understands that I must say my goodbyes to my mistress, and do it gently, but my muse is waiting to touch my heart again and I am waiting for her.
Thank you for the gift.
10.30 p.m.
‘Tis a strange thing indeed to bond with people by sharing pain and suffering (and vomiting) but that is what has happened. In my very idealistic way, I would love for us to know each other when we return to England, but I know what is important is that I feel an intimacy now and appreciate it now. They are all such lovely special people now.
It always makes me scratch my head to think how many junkies are so intelligent.
Obviously, junkies are lost and foolish but I have met many who are very aware of the course that their spirit is taking. More aware than anyone I know who has never experienced dependency to drugs. It’s only in my experience though, it isn’t a generalisation. Although it would make sense to say that those who have been to Hell and back have a clearer picture of what Heaven might be, whereas those with lesser scars cannot imagine true light as easily, as a result of their lack of experience of being in the darkness. I feel strangely fortunate for having been so lost.
I realise today that I have become very sentimental in a way that recently would only present itself when I was very drunk or high. I do feel drunk. But on what? I have taken no stimulants for over one week that could change one’s emotions, but I do feel like a slobbering drunkard. Maybe it’s something in Thai eggs? I’ve had a lot of those.
I support these organisations who are shaping a system change to integrate mental health awareness and well-being into the music industry. Please do read about their work.
The Creative Well
Music Minds Matter
Waterbear College of Music