21 Days/ Day 21

Coltrane's Sound

It’s round about midnight. I’m listening to Coltrane’s Sound. I’m a few sips into my second pint of a tough IPA, my first in 3 weeks. It’s 21 days, and I’m deliberately getting drunk.

I was in the studio Saturday night. Liss brought some wine, and I had a couple of glasses over the course of the evening. Whatever. Nothing ever turns out the way you expect it too, does it. Going into this, I was sure I was going to be all weird and crave-ey, but it turns out I like iced tea and coffee better than anything, hahaha. If I really wanted to do an addiction diary, I’d quit drinking coffee.

That is not going to fucking happen, hahaha — you can peel the coffee cup from my cold, dead fingers.

I quit smoking cigarettes awhile back — I’m terrible with years, dates, but I want to say it was probably millennial, so maybe 9 years ago. I’d quit before,

It’s easy to quit smoking, I’ve done it hundreds of times.

–Mark Twain

but finally I just reached that point, and I quit. Here’s how: every time I jonesed, I’d hit the floor and do pushups till my arms gave out. After awhile (my dose tended to a pack a day, usually — that’s a lot of pushups), I associated the jones with that particular noodle arm feeling and man —  ¡no mas! — I also started having a sort of Mighty Mouse chest, hahaha, see what happens when you do 1,000, 1,500 pushups (or whatever — a lot, I’m serious).

Maybe I hoped drinking was my problem, in a way — this is the enemy, this is the thing to conquer.

Turns out it’s not. I like drinking good wine, good beer, but not really anything else, and I definitely don’t want to drink every day, or anything like every day. It slows me down too much.

This is what I need to do: I need to do significant work.

That’s all.

Drunk, sober, straight, high, here, there, wherever, however – I need to do significant work.

Elvin just played that tom roll at the end of Satellite. Coltrane quit — Monk flaying him every night at the 5 Spot was enough to do it, finally, the elevator shaft, stomach-in-throat feeling was enough for Trane, and he quit.

Right now, I’m going to pick up my bass, and I’m going to work on Giant Steps. Arbolito said I should put it on a record, and I think he’s right. When I can play it to my [conditional] satisfaction, when I can play Donna Lee (nope, I’m not going to include it, it’s just how I’ll know it’s time) on guitar and piano as well as I play it on bass, I’m going to start recording.

And in the mean time, sober as a drummer in a blues band, drunk as a Tibetan monk, I’m going to work.

Real hard.

21 Days/ Day 17

Barton Springs. 1984. Jose Cuervo.

Great moments in alcohol.

21 Days/ Day 16

I wrote this last night, but I forgot to post it:

More Great Moments in Alcohol

Safely and harmlessly tucked away at my place, we were drunk, and I was playing Salsa music cranked up to 11 on the stereo, and we were dancing all over the house, buck naked, and she said, man, you’re really a good dancer, and I said, I’ll never be able to dance like you.

21 Days/ Day 15

It rained today. We’ve had the hottest early summer I can remember in Austin — not that I’ve been here every year since I moved here way back in 1977, I’ve been on the road for many, if not most, of those years…

Still, it’s been an exceptionally hot summer, and there’s been no rain. Lake Travis looks more like the Texas river it was than it does the lake the dams made it.

Parched, literally desert-like this year, Austin sits on the edge of 4 distinct weather systems, and from year to year, any one might dominate.

The other day I was biking home from work, it was 103°, and, on the old airport sevice road that winds along in parallel to Manor, I came upon a sunflower plant, perhaps 4 feet tall, one of many that are steadily tearing apart the asphalt carpet of Mueller. Standing in the scant shade, motionless, was a dove. His mouth was open, gaping at the heat. By the time I saw him, I was only a few feet away, and I went right by him, very close, and ruffled not a feather. He didn’t even take notice of me, it was so hot. I had a feeling I could’ve given him water cupped in my hands, and looking back I wish I had.

I feel very much as though I, too have been trapped, baking, on a waterless planet, too stunned by natural forces even to react to possible harm.

Today, it rained.

Day 21/ Day 14

Thirty violinists, ranging in age from 4 to 60, under the benign but intense bow of their supremely gifted teacher, giving their annual recital at The Broken Spoke.

I was the soundman.

I was part of one of the coolest things that happen in Austin. I’m a lucky man.

21 Days/ Days 11, 12, 13

If I were reading these postings from day one, and I saw a weekend gap in the sequence like that, I’d be nodding to myself and thinking, uh, huh, crunch, THAT motherfucker just fell off the wagon.

Well, I didn’t.

Truthfully, I’m a little surprised that I could drink steadily, virtually every night, for something like 6 months, and not have much of any kind of reaction. The lost sleep thing is definitely there, but I’ve been trying to go to bed really tired, which helps, and if I’m just laying there, not sleeping, I’ve taken to reading, or getting up and putting in some practice time, and trust that in time my body/brain is gonna just work it out. In my heart I believe when I get right with myself, I’ll sleep just fine, so my real business isn’t trying to figure out how to sleep through the night, it’s how to, you know, like the man in the mirror.

But aside from intermittent ooh yum thoughts (the same thoughts I’d be having if I’d be having if I’d been eating ice cream every night, hahaha), nothing. Nada.

Still, I’m going to continue with the 21 days – the truth remains I WAS drinking every night, for quite a long while, and while I may or may not go back to tall dark ales, I would like to test the 21 day hypothesis, and if I should go back to drinking, I’d like it to be occasional, recreational, and NOT daily.

I started to say I don’t want to do anything every day, but of course there are any number of things one MUST do daily, aren’t there. And I can’t even say voluntary activities – it seems to me playing music every day is a positive value (and if it ain’t, too fucking bad, I’ll cling to it, in denial, in purest addict fashion), reading, smiling, laughing, dog petting…

Another way to put it might be: I don’t want to do anything thoughtlessly, heedlessly, by rote or comfort of repetition. That’s not to say that I don’t or haven’t, or won’t. It IS to say when I identify these things, I’m gonna give them the 21 Day Treatment.

Oh, I foresee endless cycles of 21 days.

21 Days/ Day 10

By the time I got in last night, it was Day 11.

Last week was revelatory. And last night I slept through the night, for the first time since I stepped back from hoppy sleeping bottles.

The wrinkles around my eyes are permanent, but they’ve lost that liver-ey darkness they were developing. Can’t say I’m thinking clearly, but I am thinking clearer.

21 Days/ Day 9

I’ve been lost before. I’ve been deep in redwoods, gawking, awestruck, and gotten completely turned around. Took me hours to get out. I’ve been hopelessly confused in Springfield, Missouri, in Montreal, and in my own Hill Country.

One time, in Copenhagen, no kidding — well, I still don’t know how I found my way back to the venue.

You see things, when you get lost. People that stay only on the map, that always bring a compass, that remain positioned via satelite see less, but feel they know more.

And maybe they do.  It’s hard to argue with their logic, isn’t it. I see them, jogging with their carefully planned babies, conceived at just the perfect moment in their careers, tucked in humvee strollers, inexorably running towards some mansion, as sharp and clear to them as it is blurry to me.

Thus tragedy is reduced to any variation from the template, and the absurd rot and oblivion that awaits them as surely as it does you or me are simply to be denied until that very last moment, when, god willing, smacked into a pharma trance, they’ll even miss that one last chance to wander, lost, in those dark woods.

I’ve wandered all these years, looking at people inside the warm glow of their homes, enveloped in illusions as powerful as mine, but more reassuring, more comforting.

I don’t think we get to choose whether we’re the lost ones or not. If we did, would we not choose order over chaos? Certainty over doubt?

Love over knowledge?

I remember the choice as a child, offered me over and over again. I tried to grasp the ring, so bright, so shiny, and let it lift me out of the wilderness, but for all the love and comfort it presented,  I never could bring myself to reach for it

And so I live my life — getting lost, finding my way to some unexpected place, over and over again, and I understand, now, finally: that is who I am, and that is who I’ll always be, until that day when I am simply unable to find my way out.

21 Days/Interlude

I did it again! —  when the alarm went off, I went straight into miles-deep REM sleep, cinematic dreams and everything. If Tuatha hadn’t needed to go outside, I’d STILL be asleep.

I feel really good.

21 Days/ Day 8

I continue to be stupefied, hahaha, and in no condition for writing.