Dry January 2025.
Which became mostly dry February.
I was inspired to take a dry month because I’ve needed to for about a decade…and because a new friend wrote one of the most captivating pieces I have ever read (it happened to be on a relationship to alcohol).
Cheers to new friends and Substack I suppose.
I had never experienced that before, where something I read struck me so deeply that it would motivate immediate action. This felt like a magic tap to help a needed change, much like the magical realism books I find perspective and solace in. Hope can have a surreal sense when you’ve been sleepwalking.
-Wings spread, dread fed the breeze-
A few weeks into the new zone, I had been distracting any overly intense emotions with activity. I don’t think there’s much wrong there. Oh, wait, repression can happen while making good choices too?
Exhaustion would come after I completed a bender of what makes me feel like I’m proving I’m worthy of life; performing, intense swimming, creating, absurdity, side hustles, connection, new forms of avoidance, extended reading in a sauna.
-engaging in nonstop-engaging is a great way to avoid dreadful waves of dangerous despair-
Of course, those activities do not make me worthy of being a being, but it feels like they do so I’m still reckoning with that outlook. Buddhists and Eckhart Tolle share something contrary to the way I perceive ambition and my ears perk, but the rest of my body doesn’t quite respond in the way it does when I’m laughing at myself or racking up productivity points. I just heard my sister say to those sentences; “Dude, you sound pretentious.” My sister’s voice, my rock, is both welcomed and grounding. She works with the Court System as a victims’ advocate. I’m, e’hm, a musician.
*two piano chords*
For the majority of my 20s, I was completely internally depressed. What a bust.
All while externally (mostly) fooling people around me as if I had achieved an American brand of stability and normalcy. Awful. I had yet to see that people-pleasing is self-destruction and overthinking is self-torture. Meanwhile, I’d watch friends become successful artists or some caricature of what I desired. Alcohol helped ease the cognitive dissonance and my insides would fall to pieces at my jobs, hungover and confused. Very lonely, surrounded by people. A brooding, gregarious, idealist. How many disparate parts can we bond together over a round?
On occasion during those years, my big sis would ask me after a few drinks; “How are you?” with the tone of “I know you’re not okay.” She’s the same one now who traveled 800 miles to come to a recent show.
After that show that my sis came to I, for the first time in I’d guess 50 shows, did not drink afterward. Whoa, this new afterparty is into uppers (I’m talking about adrenaline, don’t worry).
After shows, my brain floods with lofty swirls of volatile thoughts. I assume most performers do? My drummer said; “Meh all I’m thinking is don’t slow down, don’t speed up.” An unquiet mind surprised at the stoicism of those around me. I’d grab a drink faster than putting my instruments safely away to ease the onslaught. I felt embarrassed I couldn’t be as cool calm and collected as it seemed many pros around me were.
But, what struck as a panicked dissonant chord then, now struck as a bittersweet chord to be explored. A major 6 chord potentially.
Whether feelings of grandiosity or doom post-show, I can accept the adrenaline may need to release steam like a pressure cooker valve. Questions like; “Did you fulfill the sounds you’d like? Did you sing with conviction and execution? Do you believe in the music you’re playing? Where do you need to improve?” are not questions to be feared or avoided. Uncomfortable and self-absorbed sure, but, at least clear-headed enough now to see it for what it is.
This is part of the reason I’m still in a relationship with my first love, music. Simple, crazy.
With all of its anticipated and unanticipated tension and release music mirrors life; When I’m creating I often start with an emotion and a chord progression, and if the vibe is right, we open the next door that progression leads to. Progress(ions).
-repression, confronted, interrupted-
Within the past few weeks, my emotional faucet which was set to dripping just so the pipes didn’t freeze to death was ripped fully open, the cold water side. It felt mostly refreshing, but it became confusing when the confusing emotions couldn’t be confused by quality pints. Confused³
“How can I be the more ideal hypocrite?
Feeling love and life not fully living it?”
That’s a line from our song “Warning Shot.” I wonder if it’s more acceptable to quote your own song if it’s a known song or mostly an unknown song? Cringe or not, here it comes.
Realizing now that the number one thing in my way to becoming a more ideal hypocrite is alcohol humbled me in a way I’d rather have reckoned with many moons ago. I believe more acceptance will lead me to look at the past only to inform me how to live more fully now. I have missed many moments to a haze, but, I am here now to see moments more clearly.
The fog settled with the street lights aglow, it was comfortable, and beautiful in the misty mystery, but I was not fully seeing the street in all its violence and vibrancy. Shine sweet signs of green, tell me where to go, tell me who to see now that I can see.
I’m expecting I can enjoy a drink on occasion, with a close eye. A deeper integration of my head and my heart is the only way forward. Alcohol will distort that internal deeper awareness and consciousness, and I’m yearning for clarity.
When I had drinks the other night with friends I enjoyed it, but it was with trepidation and that’s good. I can feel the loving grab of my shoulder from my Uncle Tommy with his thick Scottish accent; “Ah just fuckin enjoy the pint lad!” Easy for you to say, Uncle Tommy, you’re a rich owner of pubs.
With a touch of fresh perspective, some days I feel like a walking wreck in progress.
I desire that progress walk to be a sprint with an immediacy that is quick to produce overwhelm, but I’d rather have that desire be the gas in my engine currently. I should be patient, the engine is in repair.
The days now feel like a break in a choppy ocean. In some moments when I’m hit with a sudden undercurrent of melancholy, I just swim harder with frustration. You can’t swim against a rip tide though.
In parallel, I swim frenetic laps at the YMCA like a dolphin in captivity to stave off the undercurrent. Sometimes I’ll even do a little dolphin flip out of the water to prove myself; “see how can I be struggling if I’m doing tricks in the air!?”
Basic metaphorical musings aside it is, in all of its glory, a new beginning. I feel gratitude more than ever, which I’m er, grateful for.