Things are coming along!

Det Kongelige Teater - Oslo

Once upon a time, I had the comfiest pair of shoes in the world. Then they broke. Because I er, decided to put them in the washing machine.

What would you do if you found the same pair of shoes in another shop? Why, buy all the remaining pairs in your size, of course. Then make the shop clerk call all the other store locations to see if you can snap up any OTHER pairs.

Total damage : 3 pairs of the same. exact. shoes. Haha!

For Amy Winehouse, from Russell Brand.

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

This weekend in my mind.

Have you ever wanted something to the point you couldn't even think of the devastation you'd feel if you didn't get it?

That feeling pretty much summed up my week, chasing something I wanted so badly that I cut myself off from all contact with the outside world so I could focus. Because even if I didn't get it, I wanted to be able to say that I tried my absolute best, and that there wasn't any more that I could have done to better my chances.

Friday was both the culmination and test of my efforts, and I can only hope I passed. More details to come!

To sum up my weekend on the other hand, I post this picture. I spent the last two days with my mind on vacation, in a very sunny place. It felt good! :)

Shangri-La hotel suite 701 in Paris.

everything to gain.

Too often we are scared.

Scared of what we might not be able to do.

Scared of what people might think if we tried.

We let our fears stand in the way of our hopes.

We say no when we want to say yes.

We sit quietly when we want to scream.

And we shout at others, when we should keep our mouths shut.

Why?

After all,

we do only go around once.

There’s really no time to be afraid.

So stop.

Try something you’ve never tried.

Risk it.

Enter a triathlon.

Write a letter to the editor.

Demand a raise.

Call winners at the toughest court.

Throw away your television.

Bicycle across the United States.

Try bobsledding.

Try anything.

Speak out against the designated hitter.

Travel to a country where you don’t speak the language.

Patent something.

Call her.

You have nothing to lose

and everything

everything

everything to gain.

Just do it.


-Barry Sanders

Running.

Sometimes, when I feel like the threads that bind my world together are about to come loose, when I feel like I'm walking on eggshells, when I'm afraid that my dreams and goals might be inaccesible in this lifetime, when everything generally seems to be in pieces, I go for a run.

When I run, I think about the people who live with a smaller slice of hope than I've been cut.

When I run, I think about the people who have lost more than I can ever imagine losing but still manage to achieve more than I can ever imagine achieving in this lifetime.

When I run, I think about the people who have given themselves up for others, for a cause that is bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than us.

When I'm done, I come home. And then I soldier on. 'Cos somehow, things don't seem so hard anymore.

How 2011-07-04 is done in Montreal

"If you dug my music send me a text and I'll just give it to you in a .zip file"

Listened to some bangin' music tonight! Check out Rich Aucoin.