Moonshiner

My posting has been on hiatus for nearly a year. My sobriety hasn't.

Better than the other way around.

Let's settle the needle back down into the record groove with the next track from my early sobriety collection Another Day to Face Up, Another Day to Wake Up:

"Listening to it now, what I hear most in my voice is fear."

That's what Jay Farrar said about the recording from which Uncle Tupelo's "Moonshiner" comes. That whole album, mixing original compositions with folk and country standards like this song, is stark and gorgeous. Beautifully spare tales about the Other America, somewhere far from the privileged world in which I grew up. It made them critic's darlings.

But Uncle Tupelo also had their detractors. People who gave them shit because they believed that two 20somethings like Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar had no business singing hardscrabble classics when the worst deprivation they knew was working in Farrar's mom's used bookstore.

If we're going to apply that standard of musical authenticity, there goes the whole of the folk movement of the last 50 years. And throw out the first, maybe the greatest, folk-pop hybrid, "House of The Rising Sun" by The Animals.

Reaching back doesn't mean copping out, even if it's a fine line between homage and theft. Some cover versions so improve upon the originals that it's like the cover is an entirely new creation.

But maybe the greatness of a cover song is beside the point. Perhaps the question for Uncle Tupelo's "Moonshiner" isn't "Is it great?" but "Is it true?" Like emotionally true? I don't know.

I think I hear what sounds like authentic despair when Farrar sings:

let me eat when I'm hungry

let me drink when I'm dry

two dollars when i'm hard up

religion when i die

the whole world is a bottle

and life is but a dram

when the bottle gets empty

Lord, it sure ain't worth a damn

In my more morose drinking I could imagine myself singing the words of "Moonshiner." But had I really ever earned that kind of world weary sadness? Does anyone? Or does problem drinking always mask some deeper, less approachable, anxious sadness that alcohol can never cure, and only ever exacerbates? Hopelessness can be as big a lie as any fairy tale, and worse, because there's no moral at the end of despair's story.

Maybe that's why the older Jay Farrar heard fear in his younger voice. Maybe he caught a glimpse of a young man aspiring to a world-weariness he couldn't have had yet, and hopefully never would.

Thinking of my drinking self, what I remember most is fear.

I drank at the very first because of fear of never matching up to any real standard of success or value. And then bitterness after the fear because I felt I was entitled to feel secure but never did. There were, honestly, plenty of good times as well when I drank. Stories and friends I'll never give back. But at the bottom of all my drinking was the sense that happiness was infinitely weaker than despair. I couldn't believe that feeling good, or feeling right, was sustainable without alcohol.

The problem was that drinking never released me from my fear. No amount of momentary liquid courage could alleviate it. The grip just tightened.

Some people drink their lives away and call it poetry. A few people with immense talent have managed to make that kind of tragedy sound romantic, even noble. Tom Waits and Shane McGowan, as much as I love them, have both made careers singing about their dissolution. Many of their songs are beautiful lies. Drinking as an excuse to avoid facing fear, and perhaps finding out that there's some power in reality that's greater than fear. I really started to get to know that reality, that Higher Power, in the fragile hope of my early sobriety.

What I hear now in the despair of "Moonshiner" is my own cop out. My two decades long refusal, now mercifully ended, to authentically put myself on the line or in the game.

The musical snob in me hates to say it, but as much as I still love "Moonshiner," I now believeMama Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind of Music" more. There's more heart, and certainly more hope, in its bubblegum pop than in any barstool philosophy. The 25 year old me wouldn't believe I could believe such a sentiment. The 40 year old me is grateful that I finally can.

Like ee cummings wrote, "it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." Such a fearful thing. Such a necessary thing.

Until the next post, Happy Living. Happy Listening.

Here's "Moonshiner" and the two other songs I mentioned.

4 Years Today

4 years ago today--September 19th, 2005--I got sober. A day of fearful hope that reminds me of a book title --The Answer to How is Yes. I didn't know how I would quit drinking, I simply knew I had to. I said "yes" with fear and trembling. And I would discover that willingness to change makes a way of change.

I marked today by talking with some friends who are also living happy, sober lives. I spent time with my wife, went to the gym and... oh yeah, got my first tattoo. Ink never called me before, there just wasn't anything I liked so much that I wanted it indelibly on my flesh.

About 6 months ago I was listening to Yeah Sapphire by The Hold Steady. An okay song, not anything essential by their lofty standards until the final 30 secs when it explodes into a crashing mission statement about the journey from old life to new with the repeated words I was a skeptic at first but these miracles work. Perfect. Those are words I'd lived. Those are words I wanted on me. But best to sit on it for awhile. If it was a good idea, it would continue to be a good idea when I would reach my 4th anniversary.

Sobriety anniversary dates are often referred to as birthdays. The tattoo was more than a gift to myself, it was a way to mark my life in a most intimate way--on the same skin that accompanied me when I was born naked into the world. Being marked in this way--above my heart, over both my shoulderblades--was like a realization of the Hebrew Prayer the V'havta (except tattoos are so not kosher). I will wear this testimony to my new sober, better life when I rise up and when I lie down. When I leave my home and when I return to it. I will wear this message upon my heart. It will remind me of what I've done, and that I haven't really done anything. I just said Yes. And I need to continue saying Yes, day after day. My tattoo reminds me of the miracle of this life, and reminds me to remain true to it.

I didn't come to sobriety kicking and screaming, but full of full on doubt that an alcohol-free life could be anything but washed out black and white. Remove the alcohol and the fun and flavor would wash away. I've never been happier to be proven so wrong. Not only is my sober life in living color, it's HD.

Here's Yeah Sapphire. A band at the top of its game, trusting their stuff so much that they know the final 30 seconds alone can carry an entire song. Boy, does it. A boatload of gratitude to The Hold Steady for putting words to my life.

I Got Drunk

This is the first of five songs from my early sobriety playlist "Another Day to Face Up, Another Day to Wake Up" that come from Uncle Tupelo and its descendents: three Jay Farrar songs, and two Jeff Tweedy songs. I've had a handful of signature, successive musical loves--Dylan, The Replacements, Springsteen, Uncle Tupelo, The Hold Steady--that have helped define whole periods in my life. I like a lot more music than just these musicians, but I only love music the way that I do because of these musicians.

The untimely split of UT in '94 spawned a silly Farrar vs. Tweedy sectarianism that, minus the bloodshed, remains about as enlightening and productive as Sunni vs. Shia. I prefer to stay rooted in both sides of the UT family tree. Here's their wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tupelo

"I Got Drunk" is about knowing you've got a problem but not giving enough of a damn to change it. And if you did give a damn, you'd still have no idea how to start making the changes that mattered. Emerging mostly from the punk part of Uncle Tupelo's country/folk/punk foundation, Farrar drawls/growls over a distorted thrash --"Well I took a fifth; and I poured me a shot; and I thought about all the things I haven't got. And I drank that down and I poured me some more; kept drinking and pouring til I felt the floor. I got drunk and I fell down..." It's a perfect song about immaturity, about a covetous reach that exceeds any emotional grasp. "I Got Drunk" is the kind of song written the morning after the crazy night before, quickly penned, then soon forgotten (the song was, after all, a B-Side). It's pace races ahead, not leaving enough time for the realization to sink in that there might be another, better way to live.

Although I didn't hear the song until years after it happened, "I Got Drunk" reminds me of when I was sixteen and got into the bar at my sister's Bat Mitzvah. One moment scotchfully giddy, the next moment sobbing at the back of my parents garage, crying to some friends and cousins about how nobody could possibly understand how misunderstood I was, how miserable and sensitive and unique. I look back now and try to forgive that kid that I was (and also ask the forgiveness of those people at the back of my parents garage, and those who followed them over the years, who had to listen to my drunken self-pity or, worse, my drunken anger), but what I remember at the time was how convinced I was that all my misgivings of myself and resentments of others were completely justified. I took to drinking not because I had no self-awareness of my feelings, but because I had far more of it than I wanted, and no clue what to do with it.

From the age of 13 on, I was praised by many adults for how mature I was, how empathetic I could be toward other people's feelings and so willing to express my own. But that empathy wasn't anything like a cultivated compassion for others, it was an unwieldy sensitivity to my own standing and status. (BTW, here's a link to a great Jonah Lehrer article that makes a related point about how to help kids succeed. At the end of the article he talks about "Fixed Mindsets" vs. "Growth Mindsets." I definitely suffered from a "Fixed Mindset" around being told I was mature--and like the article says, I was often easily frustrated and gave up on things, which, in turn, made drinking appear even more attractive because it would always welcome me back.)

Emotionally I was like an anxious Ed Koch standing at a NYC subway station asking, "How'm I doing?" I was in constant need of approval. Getting drunk turned my heart alarm off. Sweet relief... but only momentarily. Drinking just set it to snooze, because too often after a number of drinks, it started sounding more louldy and haphazardly than before. Anxiety became anger. Sighing became crying. And all that gangly stuff came spilling out. At the time I thought all that pain made me deep. But now I know that it just got me more pain, and also could make me a pain in the ass.

A couple years ago I made an amends to someone who witnessed a lot of the above type of behavior. Forgiving me, they said that when I got drunk and started to rehash my grievances and griefs, they always assumed the pain coming out was cathartic. I appreciated their understanding, but the problem for me was that there really wasn't any true letting go at those moments. Paraphrasing from a West Wing episode, when I drank I didn't simply remember what dogged me, I relived those memories and kept reliving them, giving life to old wounds that just wanted to be healed and released.

And now, thankfully, some of them are.

Until the next post, Happy Listening, Happy Living.

The only version of "I Got Drunk" I could find is this inferior one from the band Slobberbone. Note their seemingly unironic celebration of drinking. Jeez, guys, the song ain't "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)." Sigh.

The Slow Descent into Alcoholism

The New Pornographers gave me the first song on my recovery playlist. There's actually nothing XXX about them, name aside. Rumor has it it's a response to Jimmy Swaggarts's declartion that rock n' roll was the "new pornography." The New Porns are kind of an indie/alt supergroup. Unlike other similarly assembled bands the brilliant parts here don't outshine the whole though. They're power pop with a good deal of Beatles and Brian Wilson (whose genius suggested this blog's title) added to the mix. Here's their wikipedia page if you want to know more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Pornographers

Of all the songs my playlist "Another Day to Face Up, Another Day to Wake Up," "The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism" has the least emotional resonance for me, which isn't to say it has none. It's pogo around the room danceable and immediately singable. Judged by the music alone, it sounds like a pretty lighthearted fall. But the song's lyrics are sly, revealing the truth behind the shiny exterior --"I said my, my, my, my, my slow descent into alcoholism it went...something like this song." Kinda meta--the singer's aware the song's form is a lie that captures the lie of what his slowly descending life is really like.

Slow Descent concludes in a repeated refrain--Salvation Holdout Central--that's spot on for someone like me who put off his day of reckoning with alcohol for years. I postponed wholeness, holding out in the delusion that I could somehow titrate the right balance between my drinking and my happiness and all would eventually be well with my soul. Salvation Holdout Central--I was sick enough to know I wasn't well, but well enough to convince myself I really wasn't alcoholic-level sick--the Catch 22 of the high functioning alcoholic.

Even more than Slow Descent's lyrics, or the fact that it's a fantastic song, is that it had me at the title. It was the perfect way to start off my playlist. Mine was a slow descent into alcoholism. Like the frog in the hot water that's turned up a degree a minute until he's cooked before he's even aware, that was my active alcoholism. Over the years I wasn't so much killing myself with drinking (although I might have), it was more that I was putting myself to sleep with alcohol, deadening the finer points and appreciations of my life. I was a poor steward of things that counted. I didn't favor my favorite things, not in the way that truly honored the worth of the commitments I aspired to keep, the people I professed to love, the concerns I thought were ultimate. My alcoholism inhibited my full development, a degree here, a degree there, not all at once, but slowly, and not so much that I couldn't rationalize my mistakes. Until one day, thank God, I woke up and found that life I was living was far off course and too small for the life I wanted to live. Drinking had to go. And when it did my ascent could begin. Slowly.

The New Pornographers rank as another first for me, the first concert I attended after I got sober. I wasn't falling down drunk at every concert I attended before that, but since the age of 15 alcohol was always a part of every show I saw. As much as I remember of the songs that night (October, 2005, The Trocadero--Philly, PA), more of what I recall was how the drinks looked in everyone else's hand. Dark beers, fruited vodkas and smoky whiskeys. I smelled, sensed their presence as a haunting. And the club soda and lime I held in my hand was like wearing inverted X-ray specs, revealing to the world my awkwardness and vulnerability. I was naked without a drink and entirely uncomfortable.

But my wife, the normal drinker, was with me and was mindful and said we could go if I wanted to. That assurance was enough for me to stay the whole way. I fell in love with one of their songs called "The Bleeding Heart Show" that night, but couldn't sway or bounce because I still hadn't learned to let myself go in public when not drinking. So I didn't enjoy myself that much, but I didn't drink at the concert either. And that, as the Hebrew song goes, was dayeinu--it was sufficient.

My wife and I got home afterward, cued up a bunch of The NP's songs and bounced around our apartment dancing until we panted. I had gone to my first sober concert and I was happy.

Here's the band's fittingly chaotic video for the song.

Another Day to Face Up, Another Day to Wake Up

With less than 90 days sober I did what I had always done in the midst of a rite of passage--I assembled a song list and burned a CD. In a typically earnest and naive act of early recovery, I wanted the music to chart the entire course of my release from alcoholism.

Yes, self-mythologizing is definitely one of my character defects.

But aside from the obvious grasping for premature maturity, the CD was also my implicit declaration of faith that there was a better way of life for me. And also of the hope that music might continue to be as crucial in my sober life as it had been in my drinking one. I knew that alcohol and I had traveled as far as we could go together, but I was terrified that leaving drinking meant departing from my life's soundtrack. Up to that point music+drinking=the little I knew of transcendence. Would my sober life sound soulless, like Michael Bolton doing Vegas?

Hoping the songs could solo without the alcoholic accompaniment, this is what I came up with:

"The Slow Descent in Alcoholism"--The New Pornographers

"I Got Drunk"--Uncle Tupelo

"Moonshiner"--Uncle Tupelo

"Bottom of the Glass"--Whiskeytown

"Hurt"--Johnny Cash

"Save it For a Rainy Day"-- The Jayhawks

"Juanita"--Emmylou Harris and Sheryl Crow

"Leaving New York"--REM

"Deeper Well"--Emmylou Harris

"Feed Kill Chain"--Jay Farrar

"Choices"--George Jones

"Life is Beautiful"--Ryan Adams and the Cardinals

"The Big House"--Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell

"Be Not So Fearful"--Jeff Tweedy

"Every Grain of Sand"--Bob Dylan

"Long Way to the Light"--The Waterboys

"Please Tell My Brother"--Golden Smog

I called the collection "Another Day to Face Up, Another Day to Wake Up" a line from one of the songs it contained. In the posts to come, I'll explore how these songs and many others have helped me to live sober. I'm grateful for my sober life, grateful that I don't do things as asinine/ambitious anymore as trying to capture all the work of a day at a time lifetime in just 80 mins of music.

But I'm also blessed that these songs could, in fact, sing for themselves. What a relief to know that beauty and wisdom and awareness of suffering and forgiveness and joy and God, all that these songs mean to me, are more real than alcohol's power and much more a part of my life now then they were before 9.19.05.

Happy listening, happy living.