TO FLY AND NOT DIE

A LIFE-CHANGING MUSICAL ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF BEING

Photo by Hussain Zidhan on Unsplash

GOOD EEEEEVENING!!! It’s been over a week since last we spoke. A week I spent largely fast asleep. (It turns out that EVERY nap is a good nap, when all your mind and body want to do is recuperate!)

This is, as it turns out, my last night of rest. Because tomorrow morning, I pick up a fresh hard drive full of movie, and will be locked in this room for at least the next six weeks, cutting the first draft of the film.

Meanwhile…

Turns out that today is the third-year anniversary of the day that I finally kicked tobacco for keeps, after a lifetime of looking super-cool with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth at all times. 

Believe it or not, I started smoking at the age of eight, when I accidentally caught my sister (not saying which one!) and her friend smoking out back of the house after school. To keep me from snitching, she made me smoke one, too. And once I finished hacking my way through it – green-faced and dizzy – I decided I liked it. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY ACHIEVED!!!

As the years turned to decades, I happily inhabited the role of “stinky guy who wouldn’t stop making shit up”. All those dozens of books and hundreds of songs, stories, and screenplays? They all flowed on a steady stream of cigarettes, weed, and beer, punctuated by the occasional hallucinogen (though I officially stopped tripping about twenty years ago).

And so it went for the next fifty-six years or so, until midway through the pandemic. At which point, I suddenly realized that I was feeling reeeeeally shitty on a regular basis. That my nightly sit-downs on the smoking porch, where I typically wrote, smoke, and drank till I dropped, were bringing diminishing returns. I knew the end was coming soon. I just wasn’t sure which one.

And then came the week when weird electricity started running through my chest. I didn’t know what it was. But I knew it wasn’t good. I felt like the last squeeze of toothpaste in the tube. Like I was being crushed between invisible fingers, and was only just becoming aware of that fact.

That’s when I discovered that one of my favorite writing pals from the splatterpunk era was currently enjoying quadruple-bypass surgery. And as his girlfriend described the symptoms, I went, “Oh, that sounds just like a amplified version of how I feel right this fucking second!”

So I went right out to the smoking porch and did the sensible thing: smoke thirteen cigarettes in a row, pausing only to swig so many beers I couldn’t count them. 

And when I finally staggered back upstairs, around 10 o’clock, I was in soooooo much pain, and was sooooooo completely terrified, that I turned to God and said, “This is it. If I don’t stop right now, I will die like an idiot, and that will be that.”

Did I want to die? It was an interesting question. Fact is, up until that moment, I didn’t care much either way. Death was inevitable, and every day was a roll of the dice. I thought my job was to just push through it. Keep doing what I was doing. Making art until I dropped.

Now, suddenly, the equation changed. Now it was either STOP what I was doing, or I would never get to make art again. My art days would be over. ALL my days would be over.

So I went to bed, tossing and turning, while the weird electricity crackled through me. And when those final Guinness Stouts engulfed me in blackness at last, and my eyes squeezed shut, I had no idea if they would ever open again.

But the next morning, they did. And the message was clear.

So I went downstairs, gave my last packs of American Spirit Yellows to my still-smoking housemate, came back up to my room, and fired up my recording studio.

Then I spent the next ten hours writing, performing, and recording the following piece of music. I think it’s one of the best, purest pieces of pure music I’ve ever done. A massive breakthrough on piano for me, over pounding 6/8 drums, with some of my most inspired guitars and bass. Just me and the machine, pouring our souls out.

I include it for you here, exactly as I recorded it. And exactly as I released it on my next album, Cry Me a Rainbow:

So tonight, I celebrate my third year of continued survival on this Earth. Needless to say, I haven’t smoked a cigarette since. And with it went every speck of interest in alcohol. Once done, I was done. And I don’t miss ‘em a bit.

What I do love is living, and continuing to make art without ‘em. More art, and more learning and being. And, of course, smoking weed. Cuz it’s not like I went CRAAAZY or nothin’!

I truly hope you listen, and enjoy. That’s my soul you’re listening to.

I love you! GOOD NIGHT!!!