I feel that it’s time for a fresh start in various aspects of my life; dragging this blog off the subject of me and onto the subject of recovery, I suppose I could say that whatever addictive behaviours we pursue, they are always trains with ultimate destinations. Bleak places. Just because that’s where we are going, it doesn’t mean we can’t get off at an earlier station.
In addition to my new-found addiction to Beach House, I’m also probably late to the party that is Wild Nothing, the nom de guerre of Jack Tatum from Virginia. Much as I don’t like to give the little-known blog Pitchfork publicity, there’s a spot-on review of new album “Gemini” which you may care to peruse. The review, enlightening though it is, doesn’t single out my favourite track on the album, “Bored Games”.
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You want a report from Primavera Sound?? All the gossip, backstage stories, hot bands to watch?? Top ten lists? Whacky anecdotes? Well, buddy, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place… for reasons far, far too turgid to recount here, my little trip to BCN for this festival was a bit of a disaster, and I spent much of the time hanging round airports, eating late “American Breakfasts” at the Philippino cafe, and just basically being a mopey dick.
So of course now I’m having my own, personal, internet based Primavera Sound post-festival, with no massive crowds of gap year Rahs (where did they come from) and Refrescos that were all ice and no Fanta Limon (gotta love the Fanta Limon). My personal discovery (yes, I realise after 274,903 other Last.fm listeners) of the festival was Beach House, whose amazing album “Teen Dream” is on constant play on my Spotify, and this track, “Walk In The Park” is on constant play in my head, with its less-is-more combo of drum machine, pulsing organ, cascading guitar tremolos, and Victoria Legrand’s incredible husky, sexy, almost masculine vocal. I know I’m coming to the party late, obviously if you want to read a professional and knowledgeable review, I’ll hand you over to the good offices of my closest rival in the blogging trade, but if you haven’t heard of this band, I’m encouraging you to give them a go.
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New Sambassadeur album, European (on Labrador), and I love it. Listen to it on Spotify, buy it, improve your life. Pitchfork, as usual lagging behind the cutting edge of cool that is higherpowermoment.com, have of course jumped on our bandwagon, and say “the Gothenburg, Sweden-based indie pop band demonstrates the virtues of cosmopolitanism, craft, and restraint.” Three virtues that Sambassadeur and higherpowermoment.com share, although I think it deserves more than a 7.0.
Here’s the closing track, a cover, Small Parade, and the Tobin Sprout original (Matador). Tobin, for people who don’t know (a category of which I was a member of until about 5 minutes ago) is a member of Dayton Ohio’s Guided By Voices. Tobin’s recently written a children’s book about a rabbit, called “Elliott“. As I have young godchildren, I’ll be purchasing this and will update you as to whether it’s much cop in a future post.
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More Wayne’s World quotes, more Spotify catching up on music I was too wasted to notice the first time around.
I chose this Pavement track rather lazily because it references a well known corporate entity. I’ve been thinking that it’s better to put out loads of brief posts rather than nothing for weeks because I can’t think of anything sparkling and exotic to say about the programme. But of course coming back to post it I realise that there’s a 12 step reference there too. Like much of recovery, my relationship with my sponsor has been something of a journey. Obviously, being a perfectionist maniac I had to have the best sponsor in the whole of my fellowship. And my Step 5 was going to be the most mind-blowing one of all eternity. And then everything he said was obviously going to be the purest wisdom in the world. So why not put him on a big pedestal? Turned out he was a normal, nice guy, with all the qualities and defects of all other normal nice guys. Ha. I should call him more often. Here’s Pavement’s “Date With Ikea”.
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Well, I’ve bought a new car. It’s frankly ridiculous, it’s so big it has its own gravitational field. A massive old Merc. But I love it, no matter what everyone else says. It’s one of those “beyond your wildest dreams” things, I would have never have considered driving an old fart’s car like this when I was a hyper aggressive arsey mad dry drunk phase. But I sit there in double glazed splendour, tootling along at 70 (I can’t afford the petrol to go much faster) and lapping up tunes on the amazing stereo that the millionaire who bought this car in 1996 selected. There’s no iPod connection, I’m not sure whether to put one in, but for the moment it’s CD’s. And you get to listen to CD’s over and over again on big trips, as the changer is in the boot (or “trunk”, for our North American readers). The signature CD for this car appears to be Levy’s 2005 debut Rotten Love. What can I tell you about Levy, fact-fans? Not a lot. It appears to be the working name of James Levy. He used to work in a Jewish cemetery. He’s from Brooklyn. ANOTHER great musician from Brooklyn! I can’t now remember where I heard this track, but I couldn’t find the mp3 to steal anywhere, bought the CD, and the whole thing is great. It’s pretty breezy, pretty slick, some big sky sounds, dare I compare it to, hum, Coldplay? Well, maybe there are hints there, but there’s some Smiths in there too and it’s sufficiently quirky and dreamy and intelligent and knowing and assorted not to be too hideous. And I really should confess to having a soft spot for “Yellow”. Anyway, enough confessions. Here’s the title track.
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Yes, I know I promised you a post on “Have I ever done anything I could have been arrested for if only I were caught? What have those things been?”.
Yes, I know this isn’t the topic.
Yes, I know it’s been over a month since my last post.
No, it’s not true that the reason I haven’t posted it is because I don’t want to answer the question “Have I ever done anything I could have been arrested for if only I were caught? What have those things been?”. Although I don’t really want to answer that question.
In fact, the programme and I have not been getting on very well recently. I’ve been going to meetings and thinking, well, I’m hating this, why am I here? And I’ve not been talking to people in the fellowship, or using my sponsor, or really doing anything of the stuff that’s suggested. And it felt, well, pretty hypocritical to be writing about the 12 step programme when I’m not working it.
The good news, for me, for today, if anyone is interested, is that whatever low-level malaise that was affecting me over the past few months seems to be lifting. Tonight a Daniel Johnston song came on Spotify (don’t you just love Spotify?), and for the first time in a long while I got the kind of spiritual lift that sometimes it seems that music can give me. Here’s the song. I can’t talk any more as I have a meeting to get to.
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This question in the Narcotics Anonymous “Step Working Guides” looks, in the context of Step 1, at how our powerlessness over our addiction overrules all innate morals or standards we might have in order that the addiction be fed. I think this ties in quite well with the process in Steps 4 and 5, when we take a moral inventory and admit the exact nature of our wrongs. There is (or certainly was for me) a fear about Steps 4 and 5 that there were these terrible admissions to be made. The process of Step 5 normally reveals that many people in recovery have made similar admissions, and done similar things. The connection is that we are all addicts, and our addiction, and in particular our powerlessness, has this effect of overriding what we know to be right. We find ourselves doing things that we would never do if it weren’t for our addiction, things that make us shudder with shame when we think of them.
So, in “sobriety”, when I find myself doing stuff that I normally wouldn’t dream of doing, my experience and the experiences of others tell me that I’m in a dangerous place. And so the tenuous recovery link to today’s song: Brooklyn’s Matt & Kim’s new single “Lessons Learned”, a rare (and very welcome) vocal foray by Kim, from the excellent new album “Grand“, which comes complete with a new video featuring Matt, Kim, Times Square, and lots of public nudity.
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Quite a lot. People, places and things. Most addicts’ lists feature things like alcohol, drugs, sugar, sex, love, relationships, nicotine, work, shopping, computer games, the internet, gambling, etc etc etc.
And, for me, any track with firework effects. I’m powerless over my instant obsession for it. Here’s a remix by Delorean (a new obsession following last weekend’s concert) of a track by L.A.’s Glasser, “Glad”. The blog that I stole it from, Gorilla vs. Bear, rightly said that the fireworks were “perfectly placed”. Here’s some (rare) value-added from higherpowermoment.com: the fireworks come in at the exact point of the Golden Ratio. I worked that out myself, with a calculator. Gotta love that Golden Ratio.
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When I first came into recovery I was told to “listen for the similarities and not the differences”. Of course, being intelligent and resourceful, I decided to listen for the differences and not the similarities, and lo and behold, I heard a bunch of people who seemed to have been to worse places and done worse things with worse people than I had. So their addiction was worse, see? And therefore I wasn’t as bad and didn’t need to do all of the things that they had to do for their recovery.
One horrendous relapse later, and it became painfully obvious that my addiction was progressive, and that just because there were people who had been to worse places and done worse things with worse people was no guarantee that I wouldn’t end up in those places doing those things with those people sooner or later. Saying “at least I’m not in the gutter” does not mean I am not an addict, and it does not mean that if I pursue my addiction I’m going to remain out of the gutter. And gutter or not, and in my case it was emphatically not, it was the mental effect of my addiction that became completely intolerable. In the end, I just couldn’t go on with it.
It’s often said that recovery is “a life beyond your wildest dreams”. My wildest dreams were Father Ted-style fantasies of disco dancing with dolly birds with the Ferrari parked outside. The reality of being comfortable in my own skin didn’t feature, but the reality beats the fantasy. And some amazing stuff has happened in recovery, stuff that I know wouldn’t be on the radar if I was drinking. Today’s amazing event was I got sent a song by my dear friend Jeremy Jensen of Boise, Idaho’s The Very Most. Jeremy had a mildly insane idea last year to write and perform a custom song for everyone who bought The Very Most’s fantastic CD “Congratulations Forever”. I ordered my song and asked for words about my friend Patrícia, who does the great art for higherpowermoment.com, and well, here it is! Thank you Jeremy and Patrícia for being my friends. And Jeremy, this is insanely good - surely the next single?
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Our leisurely stroll through the Narcotics Anonymous Step Working Guides continues, and we’re still working through a series of questions designed to get you to think about the disease of addiction.
When I first came into recovery I thought my problem was a specific drug, in my case alcohol, and my use of it. Sort out my alcohol problem, I thought, and you have sorted out me. But, as I was subsequently to discover, the alcohol was just a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself. Take alcohol away from an alcoholic, and you’re left with an alcoholic. My addictive nature manifests itself pretty constantly in one way or another.
Sometimes I get completely obsessed with songs, and will put them on repeat, often listening to them to a point where I’m completely sick of them. I wonder if I might be an addict. Sometimes it’s just fractions of songs - in the early 90’s I had an obsession with the cinematic intro to the Pet Shop Boys’ “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money“), even though I hated the actual song. It was hard work playing a 5 second intro over and over again on a cassette playing Walkman. I think the whole world thought the opening bars to Babylon Zoo’s “Spaceman” as heard on the Levi’s advert were fantastic, and then all thought the actual song was a crushing disappointment. Or, if you prefer, shite. Where is this nostalgic clap-trap heading? Oh yes, the song for the blog: The New Pornographers‘ “Sing Me Spanish Techno”. The video’s really good too.
The hourglass spills its sand
if only to punish you
for listenin’ too long
to one song
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Higherpowermoment.com is an mp3 blog devoted to music with a connection to the 12 step recovery programme. Rather than focusing on songs specifically about programmes of recovery or the illnesses which they concern, the mp3's posted are ones that the editor happens to like, which are spiritually positive, and which have some resonance to an element of the 12 step programme.
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