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:
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.
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