Reflection
For the last 25 days, I’ve been helping someone who’s been going through a tough time. I’ve held his hand day and night, listened to him without judgement and witnessed his suffering first hand. The person I’m talking about is of course, myself twenty years ago.
This is one of my longest rituals. I’ve been up until 3am every night reading my diary to find out what I was doing on each day, 20 years ago. Going through archives of photos and notes to add to the chapters in Substack has been wild and wondrous. Stepping into old shoes and experiencing rehab and treatment was…mindblowing.
I’ve read through most of August into September this year of my 28-year-old self in 2003. I send my unconditional love back to him because, my goodness, he wasn’t a bad kid, but he didn’t half beat himself up about not meeting his own expectations.
Maybe that’s what he felt when he was writing about feeling a guardian angel. Maybe future-Tim managed to touch past-Tim. If you are one of the dear readers who followed us day by day on the journey, thank you for being there for him too.
It was the most transformational 3 weeks of my life.
Post Treatment
I did move back to Thailand, I did go to Stonehenge and capture the music from the stones for my master, I did make my first album in the monastery, I did, eventually, find a way to live a life without doing damage to myself, I did set up a charity which funded several addicts from the UK to get treatment, I did meet my father for the first time and I did manage to reignite the most important relationship of my life; my relationship with music, making 25 more albums over the years that followed.
I never did find a special relationship with a record label, manager, agent or even the legions of imaginary fans I was writing all those songs for. I think I was still trying all the way up until 2015 when I released my 14th album, The Soho Hobo; a love letter to London and concept album that developed into the Save Soho campaign which I ran with Stephen Fry. The album also landed me with the chance to play Ronnie Scott’s. I finally made it to the other side of the road!
I didn’t know it then, but my successes were possible because I wasn’t tied into the music industry. And that’s something I always say to young musicians starting out:
“Don’t wait for permission to begin your life’s dream. Begin.
As long as it can hear you, the rest of the universe will play along”
After that, I moved out of Soho, worked on the peripheries of the industry to rebuild my self-worth, and made 12 more albums, including my most recent, and most successful album to date, Super Connected.
I am trusting there are reasons for this strange journey I’ve had that involved a prolific output of music, with no music industry infrastructure. Perhaps my faith is being sent to me from a 68-year-old version of myself. I look forward to meeting him so I can find out, because I still don’t know why things have been….as they have been.
Addiction
Depending on your perspective, an addiction can sometimes provide a key for a deeper understanding of oneself. I wish I could have opened that door without addiction, but I’d forgotten that door existed until I stepped onto the downward spiral. I have many to thank for my journey, and addiction is one of them.
This is certainly not a recommendation to pursue downward spirals to find some kind of enlightenment in one’s life. More an invitation to faithfully believe, that if you do find yourself on a downward spiral, it’s because you’re being given a rare and, at times, painful opportunity to meet yourself face to face, in such a personal way, that your only available next right action is to begin becoming your whole self.
I’m still becoming that. But I may never have got started without Thamkrabok.
Addiction and The Music Industry
The album I made in 2003 was assisted by the community in the monastery, a producer from the UK who went beyond the call of duty in his care for me, and Phra Peter who has become one of my best friends, working on most of the music I’ve made since Thailand in his pre-monk profession as a drummer. The album was a success in so much as it made me realise that, with the help of professionals who are also friends that care about you, it is possible to make an album even when you don’t have a record label. In the true sense of the word, I have always had a company. A company of creatives and collaborators. This meaningful approach to making music never penetrated the music industry. It sidestepped the mainstream at every turn.
I was published by Universal Music in 2003 when I returned from the monastery, and they terminated my contract shortly after I disclosed that I had a successful recovery.
I got the song rights back from Universal last year, which it must be said, felt right. Thamkrabok also incubated what has become my trademark approach with ambitious community collaborative projects, far away from the competitive DNA that dominates so much of our pop culture. To regularly bring large groups of people together for positive social impact in music and film is what I do, and in a way, may not have been possible under the scrutiny of major labels who only invest in measurable outcomes.
However, 20 years later, I heard last week from a friend that Universal now have their own ‘well-being’ department, and are embracing the idea that the industry needs to protect artists suffering with personal challenges, not exploit them. Things have changed since the UK music press were making glib jokes about monks and cleaning up stories. As a mentor to young musicians, this news gives me deep joy and optimism.
But someone who would be even more overjoyed to hear this news is Tim Arnold in 2003 when he was promoting this stuff with a full heart and few who would listen.
He had a burning vision that the world might embrace the idea that, leading a spiritual path and a career in music were compatible. That condemning addicts could be a thing of the past, with compassion replacing condemnation. That listening to the Earth and hearing what the earth is communicating with us, is actually important.
Reception
All of the publications that reviewed the album ‘Lokutara’, when it was released in 2004, gave it 7 or 8 out of 10. It did well on scores. But there wasn’t a single journalist who didn’t refer to the work in context of ‘hippy counterculture utopian bullshit’. The NME’s favourable review began with the line “No one much likes drying up stories”.
Many of those reviews came from talented music writers whose work I love. But their need to apologise to their readers for championing music that included a ‘healing’ element in it’s creation, says more about that period of time than my album.
So I became ashamed of my healing journey. I’m a rock musician. Apparently, searching for healing in that genre was not supported. People want their rockers to be, well, a bit…rocky.
Which left me wondering, what am I if I want to make my music rock, but make my life mindful? Ah yes. I am theatre. I was 40 when I realised that like Bowie, Ian Anderson and Peter Gabriel, I wasn’t into an edgy lifestyle. I was into edgy music. But while I have acted role to role from album to album, I began my career in Brit Pop, so industry folk have that version of me preserved in the aspic of their mind.
I hid Thamkrabok for many years and hid it from myself too. For an undiagnosed autistic suffering with severe literalism, I read “No one much likes drying up stories” and took it at face value. So I stopped telling my story. Which hurt. Until now.
Because I kind of think that today, the world could do with a large dose of ‘hippy counterculture utopian bullshit’.
Whether you work in the NHS, mental health sector, social services, life-coaching, education or addiction treatment, these are the sectors where real rock stars work in the 21st century.
The transformational work happening in these sectors every single day is effecting change in the world – the original motivation for those cats in the 60’s who chose a life in music - to effect change!
The three organisations that I have included in every chapter of this book at the bottom of the page are among those who I believe have the power to turn the music industry into an ecology that transcends the goals of profit, growth and exploitation, and actually make the world a happier, healthier and more sustainable home for us all.
The first lyric of ‘Laughing’ (the first song on my very first album with Jocasta) was:
“Please, can somebody tell me what is happening to all of the people? I can’t take it anymore, I’m sick of the cynics. And I’m seeing it in more and more people”.
Coda
Today, I’m happy to report that I am seeing less and less cynics. Because barriers are being lifted between us, wherever we look. These are magical times. And I really know it, because I’ve been waiting 20 years for it to happen!
Walking Through Walls is possible. All kinds of everyday miracles are happening all the time. I hope you get to walk through yours, as I have walked through mine.
Thank you for reading through this journal with me. If you missed it, you can catch up from the beginning here. Please share this Walking Through Walls blog where it can do the most healing. You’ve got to share what you’ve got, to get back what you’ve lost.
Tim Arnold
P.S. Next month, I’ll be sharing some of the short films from my time in Thailand. If you’re on a paid subscription, you’ll get an email when they’ve been published. Stay tuned! Subscribe!
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