I’m grateful for the lightness that comes after making the right decision. I’m grateful for seeing what is. I’m grateful for living in what is. I’m grateful for a sunny morning at home. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
Every week, I say pretty much the same thing with regard for the song of the week1, and that is this:
Why didn’t we do this before?2
I very much like a lot of ELO songs—I could put together quite a list and whenever I hear a song, I’m reminded how much time I spent listening to them as a young teenager. In a funny way, ELO songs have served as touchmarks for different parts of my life—if I had to pick one band to put together the soundtrack for my life, it would probably make sense to have it be ELO. I mean, I love the Beatles, but doesn’t everyone do that?
I had a round Panasonic AM/FM radio in my room in the middle-1970’s, purchased with hard-earned paper route money. I would sit in my room and listen to the radio for hours, keeping track in my head of when I heard songs I liked, so that I could start listening again in a few hours when the playlist finally recycled and I could hear it again. This is what listening to music entailed in the 1970’s, there was no Spotify or search function or even the title of the song or the band.3
I remember listening to this song—I loved the cool, spacey-shippy vibe coming in and the whole lonely urban desperado image had already been pretty firmly planted in this noggin. I loved listening to “She’s Gone,” by Hall and Oates, and imagining a solitary life, slightly heartbroken and letting the carbon and monoxide choke the thoughts away."4 “Turn to Stone” had the same feel,
The city streets are empty now (the lights don’t shine no more) And so the songs are way down low (turning, turning, turning)
Nevermind that I was a 13-year old living in Iowa City when I settled on that template. Note: Why isn’t the searching exploration of people’s musical preferences a part of therapy? It may sound silly, but these songs helped me imagine what I thought my place in the world was and was maybe going to be. I think it’s really striking that even back then, I kind of imagined myself going through life alone, a little bit of hidden remorse and sadness, but generally true to my happy-go-lucky nature.5
I realized I was an alcoholic while listening to an ELO song. I’ve written about this extensively, but “Strange Magic,” was playing on the jukebox the night in 1980 when I realized that how firmly rooted alcohol was in me. I maybe have described those feelings as “realizing how much I loved drinking,” but it was already complete dependence, even way back then. I may not have had shaky hands in the morning back then, but the prospect of not drinking pretty regularly shook me to my core.
And the last chapter that has an ELO song pinned to it might be “Evil Woman,” another song I had loved back in the 7th grade, but now had a much more palpable connection to. Again, another story, but in the early days of my divorce, I made the decision to house an improbably large piano in my fairly confined DC townhouse; a decision rendered more mysterious by the fact that I didn’t play the piano. I very much liked the idea of playing the piano part at the beginning of this:
You’re immediately going to be like, “wait, you’re freshly divorced and you keep a piano for the express purpose of playing the piano part at the beginning of “Evil Woman”—Doesn’t that seem a bit theatrically bitter?” Yes, when you put it that way, it sure does. However, this would be another equally plausible reason: The supercool way the piano chords get overtaken by the drums. It’s definitely a precursor to Phil Collin’s fantastic “In the Air Tonight” drum solo (the best part of Hangover is when Mike Tyson plays the air drums to this).
Anyway, isn’t true enlightenment about several things being true at the same time? So this would be like that. Anyway, I had this piano and started trying to learn how to play those chords. I had inherited a bunch of the kids’ old lesson books and tried to start teaching myself. I can read music and have played instruments, so it seemed possible, but progress was difficult to observe.
I did what one did in those days and sought help with a stranger on Craigslist. This is how I met Min, a graduate student getting an MFA in piano who gave lessons as his side-hustle. He started coming to my house on Sunday afternoons. We began working our way through scales and beginning chords, we did lots of exercises and I got very impatient about when were we going to get down to business. There were other songs I wanted to play after “Evil Woman.”
Those were really hard days. I was newly single, in and out of sobriety, trying to maintain a relationship with my kids, which had been pretty seriously fractured by a pretty contentious divorce, trying to the keep boat floating, mostly. The days when I wasn’t drinking were sheer torture. Lurching from meeting to desperate sponsor phone call to another meeting to a long walk with music and cigarettes, more desperate phone calls, maybe even another meeting. Most of the time, that didn’t work. It was like trying to pound out a handhold on a face of sheer marble. When I think about those days, there is always the sensation of falling. I still get the familiar lurch in my stomach, reminding me of our general direction back then.
Min was one of the bright-spots in my life. His visits on Sunday afternoons became something I very much looked forward to. He’d arrive around 1:30 and would say hi to the dogs, Kayla and Buddy while I made tea. At some point, we had expressed a mutual taste for cigars, so he often presented me with gift cigars. I talked Min out of doing more little-kid exercises and moving on to the big stuff. The lessons became this lovely and funny set of musical banter. We’d often start by trying to dissect some song I was currently obsessed with kind of playing. These really had to be more “arrangements,” as my piano-playing skills were kind of not so strong. A few chords here and there and I could make it sound pretty intentional. Anyway, I learned a lot about music as we bickered about chord progressions and tonics and sub-tonics and what not.
Min hated jazz. When I asked to learn some Bill Evans songs (“You Must Believe in Spring”), Min looked like he had just discovered a slimy worm in his mouth, and after making sure his expression had registered with me, sniffed, “Jazz is lazy music.” We had many arguments about this and when Min relented and would show me his “Bill Evans chords,” he would theatrically play like the effort had completely drained him and left him hunched over the keyboard, smoking a cigarette for dramatic effect. So we didn’t play much jazz.
We both liked classical music, so that’s where a lot of our energy went. There was a Bach prelude that we worked on for a long time. I couldn’t possibly play it at the intended tempo, my fingers are just too clumsy for that. So I played a more expressive version, let’s say. It’s funny, I really loved practicing that piece.I would dutifully plow through my scale exercises on a daily basis, knowing that I could then start working on the prelude. One thing I loved about playing an instrument was how intimately you come to know a piece of music when you play it—when you actually have to play the notes and keep the tempo.
I was sober in three-week increments back then, or maybe less. There was a stretch in 2012 when I put together 4 months, and was very proud of that. I know there were 16 or 17 piano lessons in there. When I started drinking, the first thing that would go would be the piano lesson. I’d text some excuse to Min and apologize for not being able to do the lesson and promise to practice and see him next week.
When I stopped drinking, or was trying to, it’s weird, but I’d be drawn to the piano. I’d sit down and plunk away at the prelude or one of the other pieces. Don’t get the idea that I was good, I was at about an undisciplined 5th grade level. But when I’d see Min, we’d work really hard. I would sometimes make more tea ( we always made and drank tea together) and keep my seat at the piano for the rest of the afternoon.
When I moved here to New York, I didn’t know how the piano was going to fit in my life, or in an apartment. Somehow events transpired such that it sits in my living room, occupying a spot where I might have a more formal dinner table (which would be nice), but when I even consider parting ways, it just doesn’t feel right.
Keep in mind, I haven’t really played it in any sustained way for years. Also, that I live in an apartment in New York City. But the idea of not having it just seems really sad and dark, like I’d be giving away something really important about myself. Except, like I mentioned, I haven’t played for years; it’s not even adjacent to my daily routines. Of course, I have an idea about a potential explanation for this weird attachment.
I think creative expression is a critical element of recovery and for general happiness and well-being also. I’m not sure how it works, and it works differently for everyone, but it seems to have the Rumpelstiltskin-like ability to spin straw to gold; desperate, lost, can’t go on feelings into a bit of hope and brightness and a brief respite from the fear. I think, when accompanied by proper reinforcements, that tiny bridgehead of creativity can expand and the bright hopeful energy will began to occupy even more of my life. Or something like that.
I toy with saying goodbye to the piano, it would be nice to have a dinner table. But somehow that seems pretty impossible. I toy more frequently with the idea of starting to play again. Just the idea gets me me a little emotional, which seems completely out-of-whack and -proportion. But it’s also a pretty solid signal to me; One of ways my life has changed is that I try to let my heart be my guide through life and somehow the piano is very connected to that.
I started out wanting to play so that I could wallow in the first few gorgeously bitter measures of “Evil Woman.” That’s not the feeling I have these days. Don’t get me wrong, it would still be super cool to play that again. But I don’t think that’s why the piano is still there. Dross to gold, chaos to music, drunk to sober—I think that’s what it actually means to me. Maybe it’s finally time for that, too.
Happy Friday
Here’s an actual joke I tell almost every day in real-life. As I’m apologizing for being late, I say, “You know, I think I say the same same three words at the beginning of every meeting, "‘Sorry, I’m late.’” Maybe you had to be there. Trust me, it kind of kills in person.
This question is kind of a general purpose question and could be applied to other aspects of one’s life.
Often, one would hear a fragment of a song and then there would be another two songs and then the DJ wouldn’t always go over what had just played, so it could take days to even figure out the name of the song or the band.
See the question at the beginning.
-ish.