Video: https://youtu.be/D0G-MyLbenE

I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me, but rest assured that I haven’t disappeared quite yet. I needed a long overdue mental health break. I had a grand time touring in 2017 and met some incredible people/poets/artists/creators, but the mental cost of having to exist in the same emotional spaces night after night was very heavy. The stories and pieces I share are personal, and not everyone understands what may be hidden in those pieces… buried under metaphors that allow me to address certain aspects of my life indirectly. Of course I know what those moments actually are, and from time to time those memories or feelings will resurface to invade my psyche. Sometimes “The cup runneth over”, and that’s where I’ve found myself as 2018 begins. I wanted to start this year by talking about resolutions. Many of us made promises to ourselves as the clock clicked over into a new year. Some of those promises have since been abandoned by that whispering voice inside our heads that suggests “now isn’t the right time”. A voice that insists there’ll be a better time to quit further down the road. Most of our resolutions have to do with sacrifice, or at least what we feel is sacrifice. We believe that we are losing something that helps us cope with our pain. Let me be clear in saying that addictions survive by our making more and more space for them. The more space we give an addiction in our lives the more space it will occupy in our minds, and the voice meant to bolster our confidence, or determination, gets the volume turned down by an addiction that insists on playing it’s own music louder. I started drinking one year after a bad break up. I wanted to feel anything other than what I was feeling so I picked up drinking, and found that it allowed me to push other hurts out of my life as well, at least temporarily. I didn’t have to spend late nights wrapped in a cocoon of depression. Alcohol would blot out those stains in my memory, and it often felt like I was taking a coffee break from anguish. I should also mention that I live with chronic pain… a two prong existence on that front. One stemming from an accident in my youth where I was hit by a van, and the other coming from a medical condition that effects one of my legs. Alcohol would numb those aches as well, and I found that I could just pass out if I could drink through it. I felt like it was a solution to my problems, and night after night people would offer to buy me a drink after a show (when I first started out all I ever got paid in was drink tickets) so it seemed to fit into my life rather perfectly, and I became what many would consider a functioning alcoholic. I didn’t have a regular day job to work; in a way being an artist allowed me to camouflage my behaviour. I would never drink before shows, but was always eager to let the late night drinking begin afterward. Drinking became one of the ways I was able to come down after a show. I’ve had other addictions along the way… I think to some extent many of us have, it’s just that some are more socially acceptable than others (cellphones, social media, etc). The first addiction I managed to overcome was smoking, and I was not a casual smoker. Toward the end of my run with nicotine I was up to 2 packs a day. That experience is now several years in the rear view mirror, and after that I kicked soda pop out of my life… that one doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s a lot harder to do than people might imagine as it’s everywhere, and no one bats an eye about having a pop. I had struggles with Dilaudid (especially post surgery) that I’ve managed to overcome, and I’m now a year and half into my life without alcohol. What I’ve gleaned from my experience is that quitting an addiction is impossible if the only way we see it is as something we are losing. I’ve only been able to have success with quitting by adjusting how I see my addiction; I look for benefits of its absence… what do I gain by leaving this behind? If all we do is attach sacrifice and loss to giving up an addiction it only serves to reinforce our trepidation, and doubt as we make our attempt to scale that particular mountain. I need to be clear in saying that no addiction is easy to overcome, but it's easier if you can reinforce your will with positivity rather than listening to a siren that keeps singing you back down into the fathoms where depression resides. So for my first offering of 2018 I wanted to put forward a piece that addresses addiction. I wrote some very simple music that Tavis Weir than developed into something truly beautiful. Dave Mai is a film maker here in Penticton that I’ve had the good fortune of working with on a number of projects, and Endrené Shepard is the artist who designed the cover for A Bruise On Light… here she is using her skills to translate metaphor into imagery. I’m blessed to have worked with this trio of artists who all brought their considerable talents to a project that is deeply personal for me. This piece is called Resolution and if you’d like to support more projects like this you can find my Patreon page, or buy the track from the website. As always you’re support is greatly appreciated. I hope you’ll share the piece with anyone who may be facing this problem, or even with those who have a hard time understanding what someone goes through with addiction. I can’t say I’m cured, but I’m doing better… much, much better.

Resolution

Mostly we get hung up on the stopping

the suddenness of abandoning

a tether we both love and hate

love with a devoted affection

for the calm it sings to our chaos

hate

for the shame it haloes above us

like an unflattering hat

mostly we think that in stopping

there is loss

that our spines will feel the impact

of a vacuum we cannot imagine

but nevertheless dread

the truancy of our determination

decaying the foundations of our belief

we are crushed

under the swollen density

of a perceived disgrace

our resolve corrupted

by the whispering razors of suspicion

skinning our confidence

to make trophies of our ruin

we convince ourselves to accept failure

before sacrifice is required

there is in us

a solemn hysteria

but also

a stray seed

taking root in the womb of hope

growing a philosophy that insists

any triumph over vice

is proof of a daring that binds us to our might

that if we succeed

we must then surrender the relief our excuses provide

that there will be no alibis to rescue us

from the indictment of our proficiency

and that the discovery of our own strength

means we can no longer deny our ability to make change manifest

mostly we are afraid of the ending

panicked at the certainty

that a tombstone will suddenly flower atop

our buried obsession

and that our goodbyes to the mania we once cradled

will land like glass roses thrown against the casket

when victory becomes a funeral

a lament

for the poisons we thought were cures

mostly we shudder at the purity of a fresh start

we pause

like skates in worship of untouched ice

like a pen in praise

holding ceremony for the start of a new sentence

in a story

it is changing.