Chapter 21: Walking Through Walls
A Journey of Addiction, Music, Healing, and Rediscovery
Day Twenty One: Friday September 5th, 2003
Well it has been an exciting and hectic day. I got very strange vibes from N. I’m not sure if it was him or me, or if it was the fact that he was leaving today, then coming back as a visitor on Monday. Either way, he was very snappy towards me on several occasions and it gave me a whole new thing to have to try and “let go” of today.
I had arranged to meet the Thai woman I’d met the other day, to record her chanting on tape and, in my new found hard-working attitude I thought I’d gear myself up, but I spent many hours feeling down. I sat and recorded many of my songs on tape for her, which made me feel excited, but straight afterwards I felt down again. I get quite fearful when I get down in case I’m losing the good vibrations here. Miss Rambhai has told me to ask Lunag Por Yai, (the woman who began the monastery who died in 1970), for help. She said if I ask Luang Por Yai for help, she will hear me and take action.
I spent a good 45 minutes helping C with her vomiting again but she just couldn’t get it going. I felt bad, as if there was something I wasn’t doing right in the way I was helping. I know it’s not my fault. She wouldn’t drink enough water. But it’s so frustrating to see someone not take the help when it’s handed here on a plate. She needn’t have endured such a hard experience if she just let the water do the work.
I remember when it was my first day and I drank a bowl of water and then stopped drinking any more. K shouted “You’ve gotta drink more water!” and I replied “Really?” feeling full already and unable to take more. But it brought back a memory of my brother telling me when I was little, something about running or exercise or something. He said:
“Go as far as you can and when you feel you can’t go on,
go that little bit further, and it will make all the difference”.
I trust in that kind of instruction even now, doing my exercises or saunas. I enjoy pushing myself over the limit because for one, I have nothing to lose, and two, if there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that whatever is good for my health, I always have a tendency to take but not to swallow. To embrace, but not absorb.
I just don’t feel comfortable letting anything…in.
It has not changed since I was a baby, when I used to save my mouthfuls of food and not actually swallow them. I think I have changed since I have been here. Somebody with the good fortune I’ve had in my life to be surrounded by books, lots of wise people and a never ending appetite to learn new ideas should not have got into the state I am in. I’ve been devouring the world without really letting it inside me.
I think I’ve learnt (or read) a lot about the universe in my short life, from Satsang to Jung, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Steiner (obviously!), Germaine Greer, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and Antonin Artaud. My mother said I ‘sponged it all up’.
But get me to show you how to make use of any of it and I fall flat on my face.
Every time.
I’ll be honest now, the song I wrote (Let it come, Let It be, Let It Go…) was in part, about the Thai woman I met. Not all of it. But she definitely inspired some of it. I told this to N and although he loved the song, and very sweetly sung my praises, he reckons I am going off on ‘tangents’. This began my paranoia again.
At first it felt like I was being told not to indulge in fantasies. Then I thought he only didn’t want me to play the song to her because he hasn’t had a relationship in over a year and what the fuck am I playing at? Writing a song about a woman I don’t even know. I don’t know what I am playing at either. I never have done really.
But I’ve never stopped myself from writing what I felt. It might have pissed people off in the past and even hurt people I care about, but I have no valve stop on what is coming from my heart. I try sometimes, but I can’t keep it to myself.
I do seem to put women on a pedestal. It makes me feel normal. And I always find it easy to write songs about women, even before I began having relationships, during and ever since. I did before drugs.
Is it me? Is it the drugs? Am I a bad person or is it just part of my ‘artist’ thing? Is N coming back on Monday to check I’m not about to do something silly? Has he not even given it a thought? Are N and Natalie talking about me like someone who is simply a drug addict who has no right in thinking about love at this time and therefore, at all costs, must be prevented from disrupting someone else’s life?
If it is true, is it actually okay? Because I am an artist and this is all part of my ‘work’? Am I using my art as an excuse? Has everyone been told to “watch out for Tim if he is alone with his guitar and a woman?'“
Now, if that is not paranoia, I don’t know what is, and I’m going home in five days.
Jesus.
The paranoid process starts after the first response from N. From that moment every single thing he does is judged by all the above questions. Then, everyone else’s actions are also linked to these crazed worries. I can tell you now, in a moment of clarity, that I know it’s all rubbish and, even if it isn’t, does it matter? But when the next action happens, I’m off again. It’s not the drugs. I know that this is a problem I have always had and the drugs just amplified it at times. I’m sick of thinking; it makes me tired.
I’m also smiling at my own ramblings, pleased to be in possession of a similar madness to my favourite father figures, all crazed poets and lunatic musicians. Am I unjust? Or just letting myself be an ordinary guy to try and deflate the special opinion that I have of myself? This is all terribly egocentric.
But I have spent the day doing things for others. My thoughts have been revolving around myself, but all of my actions have been for others. Or did I set it up like that??!
I am desperate to make sense of all this because I feel like an arsehole. I love falling in love and I would love the idea of meeting someone on the other side of the world. I am shocked at how honest I am being and would have hoped, as is often the case with writing a song, I would have written it all out of my system by now. Shit.
For what it’s worth, I don’t know where I stand in all of this. I’m a recovering addict and, for each conservative thinker who says I should take responsibility and not bring my baggage to an unsuspecting person, there is a radical in me that says “We can change the world we live in and make dreams of love come true!”.
There are two things I know about myself. Everyone always underestimates me. But I also have delusions of grandeur. That’s to say that I’m definitely much better than people realise. Definitely. No Question. But I’m nowhere near as good as I think I am.
Which means I’m just not good enough. And it’s driving me mad.
We did not end up doing the chanting because, as soon as we were ready to leave, a storm broke out. At first, I told myself “it’s not meant to be”, but as it happens, we all ended up sitting with each other, me playing songs to everyone (and her), while the lightning and thunder crashed around us. Yes, it’s just like being in a film here at the moment.
T, a new patient, arrived from London tonight. I talked to him a little to get him to feel more at home.
I’d finally got to bed, full of thoughts about the state of my brain. I’m worried ‘ve damaged my brain forever. I looked at the little picture of Luang Por Yai and as the thunder and lightning rumbled, lighting up the sky, I asked her for help.
11pm.
Suddenly J runs into the room and says Luang Por has arrived in the café and he wants to see me! I am freaked out. And fucking honoured.
Nobody sees Luang Por in the Hay. He is 75 years old and can’t walk far and it’s pouring with rain. At first I think it’s something serious (“am I going to be kicked out?”) so I dash up to the café, bow and cup my hands in prayer in front of him, then sit down next to the translator. I am battling between genuine humility and honest (and proud) excitement. And I can feel the whole room is watching me.
We begin to talk and, as it happens, he just wanted to re-iterate that he’d given me these tapes of his music and wants me to work on them however I wish to. I look around the room. The monks and my fellow patients are gobsmacked that I have been visited by the holy father. As am I. It occurs to me that he could have given this message to someone in the morning to give to me. I realise he just wanted to see me. Maybe he just likes me? No, he’s a visionary monk and a revered leader to thousands of followers in Thailand. Whatever is going on, I feel very lucky, and when I say thank you in Thai, he gives me a loving pat on the back!
He gets up and everyone in the room bows and prays as he leaves. Back to bed.
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 Mind Matters
Waterbear College of Music