Listening to the B-Side

I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for a busy week and very grateful to slow down. I’m grateful for the sunshine-y sky. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

The song of the week always produces a lot of internal debate for me. Should I try to be educational, shine a light on an obscure gem? Should I try to play on people’s nostalgia and keep going back to the inexhaustible well of kind-of-groovy 1970’s music? Should I try to match the Friday vibe or spin the wheel of musical destiny and see what the Big Guy thinks should be playing?

Yes. You may not know this, I was briefly a professional dj when I was in college. I went by the name of Wilson St. Croix (also a pseudonym) and had a gig at the campus radio station. I was professional in the sense that I was occasionally paid modest amounts of actual cash to lug my stereo and albums over to some dorm or frat house somewhere and crank the tunes for yet another crazy party.

I had such lofty aspirations as I would begin each night, I had a pretty good playlist, but keep in mind, this was the days of actual records and cassette tapes, so there was some magic involved. In my professional opinion, “Celebrate” by the already honored Kool and the Gang was the most played song of the 1980-82 time period. Second place, for me personally, would go to “Apache (Jump On It),” which the football players who lived across the hall from me had on continuous play for the entire spring semester. People often say, “Apache (Jump on It)?”

I’m not going to list all of the historical inaccuracies, it was the 7th Cavalry Regiment fighting the warriors of the Sioux Nation at the Little Bighorn, but “Custer, Jump on It,” is kind of catchy.

Anyway, I would dutifully play “Celebrate,” to get things rolling, maybe even a second time, but then it was off to the musical education of the other sophomores. Soon, while Wilson St. C was kind of grooving with the headphones on and maybe playing Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Oh wait…

Anyway, there would be a tap on the shoulder, usually one of the football players, who would urgently whisper, “Can you play “Celebrate,” man? The girls dance when you play ‘Celebrate’.” I might try to offer a brief defense, but it was usually then that I realized that people weren’t there drinking semi-warm Old Style beer from dented kegs in a too-warm, drab dormitory rec room with impossibly sticky floors to become acquainted with the musical stylings of Echo and the Bunnymen or Reflx or Bow Wow Wow or even Gang of Four.

Maybe the 2nd or 3rd time the request was re-asserted, I might play “Take My Heart” instead. While “Celebrate,” still provokes a little irritation, this song does not and I regard it as Kool and the Gang’s maybe finest song. That’s semi-high praise for me. This song, in the estimation of this alcoholic, is also a pretty groovy Friday song. Check, check and check.You’re welcome.

When I tell that story, it’s funny how the sense of irritation still comes through. “People, this is music you should like!” I’ve always gotten easily frustrated when I’m unable to convince people of the general superiority of my views. This would be a significant component of my alcoholic persona, the grandiosity and feelings of superiority battled tooth and nail by self-loathing, doubt and fear. If you weren’t that type of alcoholic, you definitely know at least one.

Bill W was definitely that kind of alcoholic, not needing to study in law school (also not passing the bar), thinking that his every idea would revolutionize industry, even placing himself in a position to say about the Lord Jesus Christ, “He’s a heckuva guy.” Ok, the actual quote is this:

To Christ, I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him.

Big Book, p. 11

Against this back-drop, the need for humility and recognizing the prospect of a power greater than himself as part of sobriety is pretty obvious. My own view is that one of the things accomplished by The Twelve Steps is finding one’s correct spot in the Universe, finally getting the org chart right. The aspect of my personality that gets irritated when people don’t see things my way is a reflection of that component of my alcoholic ego.

This same trait shows up when alcoholics tell each other how to recover, or when they loudly proclaim that there is only one true path to recovery, even threatening sponsees with dismissal for reasons of ideological impurity. Obviously, this is not found in the Book.

Like the records I used to spin, for upwards of $20 dollars sometimes, there is a flip-side. I’m not going to call it the “B-Side,” because that seems disparaging. The other thing that was going with Wilson St. C on those festive evenings was him feeling a desperate need to be seen, understood and appreciated. He longed for someone to say, “wow, that is a cool song, where did you hear it?” Or even just to see people dancing with a kind of surprised look on their faces.

This need is an expression of that great, dark hole that sometimes resides in us. The current of self-doubt and fear running through me needed too be dammed up and that could only be accomplished via external validation and copious amounts of it. This put a huge burden of expectation on the people around me; They didn’t understand the importance of liking my songs or my opinions, how even neutrality was enough to send me off in a tail spin of self-despisal. It made relationships very hard, the burden of expectation crushing the beauty of what is.

Here’s the big problem for an alcoholic like me: Alcohol not only works to scrub away those exact bad feelings, it’s way more reliable than you “people,” what with your own lives and feelings and such. It’s why alcoholics often describe their relationship with alcohol as a love affair, it’s the thing that finally makes them feel exactly the way they wished other people could make them feel.

This is why I think creativity is such an important part of recovery. Just as every alcoholic has an ego that needs to be humbled, they also have great beauty within that needs to find a way out into the light. Finding a way to share what’s inside is critical, but then comes the really, really hard part: Understanding that having an audience of one can be more than enough. Sure, external validation is lovely, but what’s even lovelier is coming to appreciate what’s within.

Restoring relationships with the people I love has been a great gift of sobriety. The greater gift has been the relationship I have with myself. If I’m the only one listening to “Damaged Goods” on the subway, well, that’s pretty cool for me. Sharing what’s inside makes the world feel less lonely, even if there aren’t 108 likes next to it. It’s important to remember that it’s self-expression that is the goal, not generating validation via self-expression.

That’s another gift of sobriety: The knowledge that the things that are supposed to happen generally will happen. If I express myself honestly and without self-seeking, I have come to believe that the right people will come into my life and the right things will happen. “Right'“ in this context not always meaning rainbow-y and unicorn-y feelings.

That’s what has happened to me and that’s an actual fact.¹ Expressing myself as honestly as I can and not expecting anything in return maybe seems like a bleak way to live—but it’s the exact opposite. My ability to be satisfied with myself, to love myself, to enjoy my own quirks and oddities and to show them to others, maybe very hesitantly at first and a little bit at a time, that has helped drive the obsession with drinking from my life. Oh, and I’m also pretty happy, too.

It’s right here and you can have it, if you want it.

Happy Friday

1. Also, a song lyric.