Feast or Famine

Now after all the morose noose news of the past posts, you’re all expecting me to be brimming with the grim. But despite having spent the morning in my least favourite position- the dentist’s chair- I am on top of the world. It’s nice to have a respite, however brief, from the crippling depression I’ve been experiencing lately, and if I knew how to hold onto this pinnacle, I would. But I don’t, so I’m just enjoying it for all it’s worth. I get increasingly alarmed when the episodes of doom extend so long and deeply that even Kramer fails to make me laugh, or my own private monk fails to get the dharma through my thick skull. It may be that the first truth of the Buddha is that life is suffering, but I like that laughing Buddha better, and tonight I am she.

You can’t pinpoint what tips the chemicals back into balance, or into a more preferable imbalance. By all accounts, today should be abject misery. My financial woes are larger than their usual monstrosity, given the dental prognosis of the morning. My local mini mart ran out of Arizona Iced Green Tea. I ripped the garbage bag in the hallway and you know it’s always kitty litter and Tampax when the bag bursts open. Plus, I just finished torturing myself with another riveting trek into that bitter brain of Crad Kilodney’s- this time it was Excrement, the prequel to Putrid Scum, in which the writer recounts his hatred for the illiterate masses. I found a few new varicose veins, always cause for fresh hysterics. And of course, the bad news from yesterday, of brilliant writer David Foster Wallace’s hanging. The morbid and the sordid, and yet I’m dancing on the ceiling, filled with joie de vivre.

Well, I have a lot to be thankful for and glad about. Today for a change of late I’m donning that attitude of gratitude. I’m glad I’m finally going to see James on Tuesday. I have fresh lychees to go with the doob-tube later. I got some fan mail in regards to one of the Fascinating People blog posts, and a couple of new assignments. I had a good purr-down with all three of my fine feline, had a good chat with dad, and though no one rose from the dead in the past two thousand years, I was somehow flooded with peace like a river from the great beyond.

Best, I was so productive at work and I did my exercises, so I have no qualms about two hours of sitcoms and the brand new Haruki Murakami, After Dark, that I’ve been waiting to devour. And tomorrow after work I am dressing up and going out to celebrate with the festive and the gay. For as Auntie Mame said, “Yes! Live! Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” In my days, I am fortunate to have been stuffed to the gills, but today I’m absolutely ravenous, and absolutely fabulous to boot.

Visit Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

The Artist Formerly Known as Leslie

It’s impossible to compare the artist and the music of Sam Phillips to another, though there are shades of most of my favourites: Joni Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper, and Jane Siberry, even Nina Simone. It’s better to let her somewhat detached quirkiness be its own thing altogether, and worm its way into your imagination. There are obvious and subtle influences in the work and persona of any artist, but the unusual Ms. Phillips is one of those artists who is kind of freaked out by fame, intimidated by public expectation. She keeps recording though, with a kind of mechanical detachment that somehow turns out more intimate and personal than anyone else. Sam ends up right inside your heart, trapped there and fluttering with those big alien eyes, desperate to get out and get away. But I’m a big believer that you can’t escape your fate, even if you don’t particularly like it.

The tiny, ethereal Sam Phillips who stands shyly on the stage at Hugh’s Room, Toronto, tonight (September 10, 2008) doesn’t have a clue that she changed my life about 25 years ago. She may be mortified to know that any fans in the house go back as far as the dreadful days of her shrill Christian Flashdance era. She would be sickened to know that I can still belt out the melody to “Powder Room Politics” or “Dancing with Danger” in the shower. (“Lies from a stranger…waltz inside your head…..”) I was a weird, alienated kid who already knew I’d spend my life as a fucked up artist. In my ridiculous fundamentalist Baptist childhood, it was clear I was heading straight for hell as my fate as a poet began to unfold. I was not always writing about John 3:16, after all, and I had already tried marijuana. I also thought a woman shouldn’t have to ask permission to speak aloud in church. I was tight enough with JC, whose recorded sayings seemed to be on my side, but somehow our religion skipped right over his essence and made much ado about nothing, quoting Paul on the deadly sins of homos and chicks and other hell-bound errors in God’s creation.

As my poetic gifts were unfurling and I was already beginning to publish, even as a ‘tween, Leslie Phillips released an exquisite, life-altering album called The Turning. In the spare, lean observations of that song set; she affirmed that God’s grace and beauty transcended the difficult obsessions of other people. She proved poetry could be deep, deeply disturbing, and deeply comforting, and that spirituality was not a bumper sticker or a contest on how many souls you could collect running door-to-door inviting people to your crappy church.

And while Rolling Stone magazine and everybody else was recognizing Sam’s chilling eloquence and staggering talent as a songwriter, the Christian church was lambasting The Turning as an obvious declaration of ‘turning’ from Jesus toward the Devil. (Anyone listening to this gorgeous and still relevant 1987 album today will be hard-pressed to find a single evil sentiment, but fundamentalism is a scary prison from which Sam and I ran, arm in arm.)

Thinking I might let Ms. Phillips know (as if she didn’t know) how amazing I thought her poetry was, I wrote her a teary teenage letter of support. And to my amazement, she wrote back, personally penning a few words about C.S. Lewis, the opening of the spirit towards less rigid mores, and the path of the artist. It was on a yellow card with lime green Celtic knots (in my family, even the pattern of Celtic knots would be considered pagan demonism. They’re slightly more liberal today…slightly.)

Because of that tiny vote of confidence, the kind act from a woman who took the time to nurture an anchorless child poet, I continued writing, slowly branching away from persistent rhyming Bible stories into the full depth of all the stories in my heart. Because of that green Celtic knot, I held the strength of C.S. Lewis and Phillips’ future songwriting close to me through the murder, suicide, mental illness, addiction, sorrow, and other messes that were to surround me from that point forward. And I never let go of the mystery of God inside my heart because she told an impressionable child to hold on even when I would throw out the garbage that had been piled on top of him.

I’d wanted to see Sam Phillips (she began using Sam for recording after Leslie was burned at the stake) since then. I’d always missed it, or wasn’t able to scrape together the twenty bucks, or whatever, through the years. But last week it was sheer fate to see a small poster telling me Sam Phillips was coming. I’d never heard of Hugh’s Room. I was on my way to see a friend I hadn’t seen for nearly a year. She’d heard that I was undergoing another serious tidal wave of depression, and asked me to come by for an Indian head massage and some sisterly comfort. Walking toward her house, I saw the sign. So both of us went the following week to see Sam Phillips live.

It’s a strange thing when a singer-songwriter stands before you and symbolizes some of the shadow and light that makes up your past. The poetry on Sam’s first “post-Christian” release, The Indescribable Wow, showed the kind of confessional songs Sam states now on her blog that she abhors. Yet their poetry rivaled the psalms for plaintive honesty. These songs were so emblazoned in my unconscious mind that they are sound tracks for dreams and nightmares I have today.

Soap Bubble Set by Joseph Cornell

On and beyond it went- through albums that included A Boot and a Shoe, Fan Dance, and Martinis and Bikinis. Sam Phillips’ music is like the art of Joseph Cornell, the master of assemblage. Inside the assembled boxes of either artist, we view mysterious cues from the subconscious, images and objects ranging from the mundane to the obvious to the surprising, gathered together in ways that show us our world in a completely different context. There are very few artists who show us a distinct way of looking at the world. Both Cornell and Sam Phillips succeed in doing so.

Hotel Eden by Joseph Cornell

Now Shelly and I have been fortunate enough to get a table right next to the stage, and opening hottie David Celia, an artist new to both of us, plays blues and sings with an occasional falsetto that reaches right into me and digs up mounds of pain, which I promptly drown in a few glasses of wine. (Believe me, when I found out in therapy that I don’t have to entirely eradicate wine, I was overjoyed!) The two of us remark on how talented Mr. Celia is, and we cheer in between his songs. I can’t believe it when dude behind us asks us to keep our enthusiasm zipped so he can ‘really focus on the artist” when she appears.

Now it’s great to be subdued and respectful when it’s called for, but we weren’t shouting or conversing loudly while ignoring the stage act. Since when is emotional response not part of art? I turn and tell the poor repressed sod that I’ve been following Ms. Phillips since Beyond Saturday Night in 1983. And that I’m going to laugh and I’m going to cry because the artist has moved me so deeply that in part I’m ‘okay today’ because of her work. I invite him to emote along with us.

Sam Phillips performs from her new album Don’t Do Anything, and peppers in those little window boxes of unusual objects from older albums as well. For a writer, I’m at a surprising loss of words to describe what I hear and see, and perhaps that’s where all that laughing and crying came in. I invite you all to discover Sam’s unusual writing and her mesmerizing, bumpy voice.

After everything, the magnificent night whizzes past as I take the late streetcar all the way to the other end of the city. The sounds of the songs are filling me up. If I close my eyes, I see the little movies from the whole of my life reeling, going way back to the days I spent working in the small-town gas station, blasting The Turning from the dusty old recorder in my little booth. It was right before they all started to fall like dominoes- beginning with the murder of my friend Elaine Bown in 1988. And right through until this March, when an overdose took away the second of two men I loved who went out like this. I’ve been so depressed ever since that this time I wasn’t sure I’d make it out from under the weight of sorrow.

But now I hear a voice from so long ago, rising above the smell of gasoline, the summer heat. “Don’t give up now…la la la la….love is not lost….”

As the streetcar moves north just past the Don Valley, creeping up from the Don Jail, you can look over the valley and see the cityscape outlined in lights. The view of Toronto is breathtaking from here. And an old, old familiar voice/song from the past rescues me again and promises me I’ll come out of this, too, alive.

The turning from light to shadows
From burning to indifference
The turning of heart to granite
Of steel hopes to molten fear

And when it turns on me
Don’t let it turn on me

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

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Pure Popaganda: Joey DAMMIT! Dishes It Out

(here’s a piece originally from Idea Museum Magazine, several years ago, about one of favourite artists and mentor in collage, Joey Dammit! )

When Joey DAMMIT! comes in, exactly on time to meet me at a café, he looks around almost shyly and checks the time. This slightly nervous demeanour contrasts with the gregarious DAMMIT! I’d met twice before at art shows, and quickly disappears as he begins to spill his guts. His openness and lack of art school clichés is refreshing. Never once does he use the word “landscape.”

Joey feels oddly like an old friend or an older brother, comic, smart, warm. Despite having an agent and many annual Toronto votes for ‘best artist’, there’s zero pretension. In fact, I consider it a possibility that inside the smiley, self-designated ‘media whore’, there might be a frightened little kid whom everyone picked on before he became the coolest, most popular one of all.

“Joey DAMMIT! is the cartoon character I invented because John de Freitas, a shy character, can’t do. Joey is a larger than life superhero…sometimes he is really scary to be,” Joey tells me conspiratorially.

Still, for a shy kind of guy, Joey talks a lot, answering most of my questions before I have a chance to pose them. I’m left with an uncanny feeling that we’ve known each other for a long time.

I did, in fact, meet Joey eight years ago when I co-organized a Madonna event for A Viva Voce Gallery with art star/hair stylist diva/rock star Daniel Hogan. We put together a Madonna-themed art show, complete with a bronzed fountain of Madonna bent over a fish by artist Dante, a wall sized rosary, and bar staff in bustiers.

DAMMIT’s popaganda was perfect. Madonna is one of his favourite subjects. One of the pieces he had made for the show incorporated chicken bones, which our guard dog decided looked mighty tasty. The temptation was too much for Kita to bear, and she supped on our star’s artwork, leaving it shredded and boneless.

Much to our relief, Joey was delighted about the turn of his art piece, feeling the incident could only add to the changing qualities of pop culture’s meaning.

It was this incident that jarred my memory years later as I was helping Gonzalo Cardenas and Sal Taglib put together an Idea Museum art event, Mayonnaise. The show’s theme was “visualizing popular culture” and I knew we had to have DAMMIT! as our star.

“Popular culture holds up a mirror to civilization. I’m more into what’s going on now than I am concerned about the past or the future,” he says. “That’s how I try to live life, too. The future is still coming, you can’t live in fear of it. You have to live in the moment. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been hypnotized by celebrity. I’ve wanted to be a celebrity myself. I’m the kid who always wanted to be famous.”

He laughs. “There would be nothing cooler than seeing a kid walking around with a Joey DAMMIT! lunchbox.”

Joey’s art is as “now” as it comes. The ancient themes of art as religious expression still reigns, but the new pantheon is celebrity and shopping. This accurately reflects today’s soul in North America, sometimes with sarcasm, and sometimes with pure adulation. Forget about bowls of apples. Joey paints, glues, cuts and creates swatches of the popular mind, blending them together in a rough, raw composition that reveals the true hunger of pop consumption. “I see myself as a DJ,” he explains. “I sample a lot of stuff and put it together.”

Joey came out of graphic design and worked in an art studio for three months.  But graphic work didn’t let him express the huge waterfall force of his own creativity. “The most creative I got was adding white to someone’s strawberries. It just wasn’t me. Another three months and I would have ended up in a loony bin. It sucked my creativity.”

He wanted to work more expressively, on his own agenda, and chose mixed media collages. “I get bored of one medium. I get bored way too easily. There’s so much to say and so much to try.” He wanted to try glue, crayons, textiles, wood, paper, paint, Xerox.

But the three years of studying design advertising wasn’t useless. On the contrary, it gave Joey the information and confidence he needed to understand that as an artist, you’re going to have to market your own work. And with his relentless persistence as his own marketer, he has climbed to pseudo-celebrity status in the contemporary art world. “If it weren’t for marketing, I don’t think I would be where I am. I’ve been able to publicize myself well, to get the media out to my shows. Art is a business, and I believe you can make a living out of something you love so much that you would do it for free. This is pretty close to the meaning of life.”

And the meaning of life is no small fry to graduate from college with, a point where most people realize they have just squandered thousands in the search for it and come out with a big blank.

Marketing gave Joey confidence and strategy to employ guerilla tactics. “You have to stand out from others. You can sit in your studio and wait to be discovered, and it won’t happen until after you die. In this business I call art, you have to stick your name down their throats, send press releases, flyers, posters, convince them they’re missing out if they don’t show up. You don’t let too much time go by that they don’t hear or see your name.” And you have to produce. You can’t let a few old pieces in your portfolio be the benchmark of your work. You have to be prolific, inventive, and constantly have new works.

Joey just showed a whole series of new works at the Wagner Rosenbaum Gallery on King Street in Toronto. The show was called “Big in Japan”, another reference to pop culture where Japan picks up stuff from North America and goes wild over it. His huge collage-paintings splashed across the walls in contrast to a photographer’s quiet black and whites and quaint, well-executed but forgettable tree paintings by a landscape artist. The audience kept roaming back into Joey’s room. That was, to be fair, where the free food was, but it was also where the viewer was compelled to look and look and look. There’s always more to discover in Joey’s works. A phrase you missed on the first viewing, a hidden reference to your favourite pop hero. Welcome to Planet DAMMIT!

Planet DAMMIT! is a world of muchness and extravaganza, a place where so much is happening at one time you can barely catch all drifts. Every art piece is brimming with delight and caustic wit, of worship and disapproval. Your heroes and heroines melt into puddles of logos and letters, pop out behind layers of collage and paint, jump out of a multitude of textures. Joey works like Warhol did, producing vast amounts of work around the clock, never stopping for breath. “I’m nowhere near finished producing the things in my head, and they just keep coming,” he says. His art heroes are Warhol, David Carson, Rauchenberg.

Madonna, Jackie O., Cobain, Elvis, Bowie, and brand logos are a few of the icons that continually appear in the layers of his works. Glamour divas appear frequently, from supermodels to Jayne Mansfield. “If there is anyone I love, it’s women,” he tells me. “They are a far superior species. I say let them run the world. Man has had his chance and he has fucked up royally.”

With the appearance of recognizable icons and logos, I wonder if Joey worries about the copyright police. But he believes, as I do, that intellectual property should be about growth and creative flexibility. Creation should inspire creation. “I’m hoping people whose images I’ve worked with will see it as homage to their works,” he says. Warhol used copyrighted works all the time and people let it happen.” Good thing, or we might be missing out on some of the most forward changes in art history. Andy Warhol helped bring art out of the elite and into the streets, the shops, the parties. He bridged the gaps between high and low culture, between fine art and design, between important intellectual discourse, where it belongs, and fried freak parties, where it also belongs.

“If Ted Turner wants to sue me for the five or ten bucks I’ve got in the bank, then more power to him. I could use the notoriety,” Joey jokes. But he isn’t really joking. “When it comes to the moment that someone sues me, so be it.” Joey can’t afford to worry what others think when he has so much expansion and growth ahead, without limits of convention, just like all truly great artists. “I’ll live dangerously,” he decides.

“I’ve broken the rules since 1994 and I’m not about to stop now.”

www.joeydammit.com

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

My Very Own Charlie Brown Christmas

I’m sure my nephews and godchildren will be thrilled that they aren’t getting squat for Christmas this year.

As Labour Day turned yet another year into dust as quickly as I could shout “Happy New Year!” I realized with terror that it’s Christmas time again. I’m not the only one who is still recovering from visits with the Ghost of Christmas Past. I’m reeling from the expenditures. For those of us in an income bracket where the $40 Greyhound trip home is sacrifice enough, the long want-lists of our favourite kiddies is the nightmare before Christmas. With the looming gravity of yet another $1000 contribution to my dentist’s semi-annual Caribbean spa retreats- or a quasi-toothless smile, my choice- I’m choosing wisely, so sorry kids.

If you’re fourteen or over, you know the dread. It’s already here again, and we’re still recuperating from the last one. It’s not even trick or treat yet and we’re already tensing up inside against the horrific assault of four months of Deck the Malls and other carols we’d like to jam down some organist’s throat. This is the real reason that Christmas is suicide time- even the dude with the most jovial disposition in the world- hell, even Santa- wants to stick his head in the oven (or chimney) over one too many renditions of Jingle Hell.

Looking into my daytimer yesterday with abject horror that it’s already September, I fell apart. I had such good intentions to do my taxes and straighten out the tangle of receipts and whatnot. And now April has come and gone and is almost here again. I hoped to save a little something for a much-needed vacation, but I’m still working seven days a week to make things work. I accept all of this- I’m the hare-brained idiot who thought I can be one of the lucky few to make a living as a writer, and I’m still certain that one day I’ll be able to sing Papa, Watch me Fly. But I can’t afford Christmas, never could, but get ransacked by it every year for lack of an alternative. You can’t cancel Christmas. As a former retail slave, I can tell you one good reason for buying out the stores this Christmas: if you think our economy is based on oil and agriculture, think again. Without Christmas, it would literally fall apart. Christmas sales sustain the whole year of retail, manufacturing, and assembly. There is no economy without it.

It’s pathetic that we’ve let it get that far, let it get critical. The crash is inevitable, because eventually, we’ll have to opt out. There just won’t be enough wood and paper left to fill those garbage dumps with crappy snowmen cards and junk no one wanted in the first place. Or, there just won’t be any money for a family to do it all over again this year because it feels like it just happened yesterday. This year, it’s either Christmas or the tooth for me, so guess what? I’m getting nuffing for Christmas.

I’ve wanted to cancel Christmas now for nearly a dozen years. But I didn’t. Instead, I came to hate it more each year, becoming more Scroogelike with every calendar’s passing. Is this kind of clenched bitterness what Jesus had in mind for celebrating his birthday? Was he not poor, too, for his entire life, despite all that frankincense? Do other holiday traditions not purport also to be about love and family, not about stuff?

I felt sad and scared, not wanting to announce to the family that I have to opt out. But the second I decided I’m not going to force myself through it all again this year and be scrounging around again next year, I felt a huge sense of relief. I felt a massive influx of creative ideas for heartwarming family activities. I suddenly felt an irresistible urge to participate in making marshmallow snowmen crafts and cinnamon-stick cider recipes.

And then I realized something monumental had happened, not necessarily because I’d planned it that way. I was at last participating in Buy Nothing Christmas, a movement designed to rediscover the best elements of the season and reject the crass consumerist tide that is destroying our lakes, skies, annual grocery budget, and attics. I wasn’t opting out of anything- I was joining a meaningful event!

“Buy Nothing Christmas is a national initiative started by Canadian Mennonites who offer a prophetic “no” to the patterns of over-consumption of middle-class North Americans. They are inviting Christians (and others) all over Canada to join a movement to de-commercialize Christmas and re-design a Christian lifestyle that is richer in meaning, smaller in impact upon the earth, and greater in giving to people less-privileged,” says www.buynothingchristmas.org. Aiden Enns, of Adbusters and Geez Magazine is the genius behind this.

And while he surely did not invent the idea of buying nothing for Christmas, a ‘plight’ most of the world must undergo, he has been instrumental in validating the gift of nothingness since 2001, restoring creativity, mercy, spirituality, and resolve to those who must or want to remove commercial purchasing from their December to-do list.

The site offers tremendous inspiration for making it a family affair- explaining to others, alternate activities, getting back to the heart of what giving means, and choosing what things to buy (we do live in a society, after all, and you may still have to purchase a few things like that Greyhound ticket or food.)

There was even an amazing explanation for the “Christmas economy” and what’s wrong with it:

“If we all buy nothing this Christmas, won’t a lot of people lose their jobs?

Yes, and now we’re getting close to the core reasons for why Buy Nothing Christmas is necessary in the first place: our economy is based on a consumer driven capitalism. And because it’s the only economy we have right now, if we stop shopping we stop the economy. (Hence we have President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper telling citizens to get on with their lives after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and shop.) But the pitfalls of our current economic system (we work too hard to save money to buy things we don’t really need, and we endorse a standard of living that reinforces the gap between the rich and poor and ruins the earth) are simply untenable. Once we finally see the retail sector shrivel (e.g., the growth of McDonald’s has finally slowed and the fast food industry is arguably enjoying it’s last hurrah; Wal-Mart has been denied entry to several communities; town councils have banned big chain stores; and local communities have created barter systems, among other things, to keep the wealth circulating among the people), we can redirect our efforts to cleaning up our mess and developing more sustainable activities (how we build our homes, transport ourselves, manufacture clothes, and spend our leisure time).”

It’s only been 24-hours since I decided, and already I have a lengthy list of ideas. Friends and families will make their “Christmas list” of stuff they need right now: disks for the computer, paint for the bathroom, pantry stock, boots, a haircut, whatever. Those who have the item or the service will arrange it. A second-hand book swap with fair-trade hot chocolate will be a great urban meeting with old friends, maybe in early December, assuring everyone has time to reunite and catch up on the year. I’ll ask those who insist on buying me something to make a small donation to my church, because I can’t afford to stick to my monthly commitments! I’ll put in more volunteer time there myself, maybe for the food drive, and I’ll make a mixed CD with this year’s favourite songs for everyone!

This is so very exciting. What a relief! No mall traffic ahead, no deadly MasterCard bills, no stress, no endless frigging Michael Booblay holiday crooning, no hiding my bitter mood in a bottle of Jack Daniels. And I’ll somehow manage the dentist.

It’s only September and already I’m LOOKING FORWARD to Christmas, to long hours helping mom in the kitchen, to throwing snowballs with my nephews. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

www.buynothingchristmas.org

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Quotes of the Day

“Bobby, the Lord has been getting mad respect since the beginning of time.”

-Hank Hill

“Can’t you tell you’re not making Christianity any better? You’re just making rock’n'roll worse.”

- Hank HIll

“If it’s the one about the prodigal cucumber, I’ve seen it a thousand times.”

-Bobby HIll

The Long Goodbye

(Here’s something I pulled out of the archives for the great many of you who have expressed being moved or inspired by my writings on addiction)

One reason that it’s difficult to communicate about addiction is that so much of the ‘support’ literature might read like an alien phone book to an addict. It took me way too long to figure shit out for myself. After all, I didn’t think stuff was ruining my life until people started dying and I began to feel my liver ache.

There’s obvious veracity in Hans Moleman’s explanation for his early- aging: “I’m 31 years old. Alcohol has ruined my life.” But not every alcoholic is deformed or destitute. Most of them just look like people who have a lot of fun. There’s nothing dark about it, but it’s still destroying their bodies and brains.

There are tracts and brochures that call out to the sick, the frightened, the confused. You can give it up! they chirp merrily. Keep coming back! You don’t have to shame yourself anymore, hiding vodka from your kids and driving home from work shitfaced, wrote fitness and lush guru, Susan Powter. Newsflash: not everyone who needs a change is out of control. If you’re at rock bottom, you might check it out. By then it may be too late, but let’s be optimistic.

Thing is, no one talks about the obvious thing. That it’s hard to say goodbye because we don’t want to. Who would? We love our drugs of choice, or choices. And it’s not always making you do shameful, embarrassing, violent things. It probably isn’t. You may feel pleasure and comfort and have fun, but you know you’re poisoning yourself and that’s the only reason in hell you’d even consider giving up something you love. Every single smoker knows what I’m talking about here. Would a single one of you have quit if it were really healthy for you?

Shocked? I hope not. I hope you enjoy your wine, your grass, your T3s, your Scotch, your Oreos, your blow. It would be horrible if you were not enjoying them. If you didn’t enjoy it, you wouldn’t do it. It’s not like broccoli or fish- you know you should and so you do. A few of you can say “never me” and mean it, but anyone else in the normal over-14 population has enjoyed something from the list. Dr. Siegel, a renown scientist who has observed animals and cultures worldwide using chemical alteration, says this pursuit is the Fourth Drive. Yes, that’s right: Food, water, sex, and getting high. Is ‘everybody doing it?” Yes, yes, yes. Even insects and reindeers. And guess what? Our fuzzy friends, from rats to monkeys, like the same stuff we do: tobacco, cocaine, alcohol, and opiates top their list of thousands of selections in the natural kingdom. This is why, the good doctor surmises, that the war on drugs is about as useless as a war on food or outlawing sex. It’s IMPOSSIBLE. It is NATURAL.

So what comfort would it be to you- as an ‘addict,’ as a social enjoyer, as ‘undecided,” as proud functional user/drinker, wherever you are right now- if right now, for whatever reason, I dropped a bomb. You can NEVER have it again.

No beer, ever again, you’re gluten intolerant. No gin, ever again, allergic to gin. No Belmont Milds- they stopped making cigarettes. No nothing. No nothing. No nothing.

Do you see where I’m going with this? It would sure suck. And no one in their right mind would want to steer completely clear of the salves of this cruel world. They fulfill a lot of sensations from comfort to festivity to mourning to celebrating to pairing perfectly with the seafood. So why should that be happy news to an addict? The person who needs it most? If you can take it or leave it, and you take it, how do you expect the person who can’t leave it to do so? Get off of your high horse.

I’ve made the point before to people who were shocked that someone I loved was addicted to methamphetamine. Several people. As if it were that alien phone book, not an epidemic democratically sweeping populations from dieters to truckers to Thai manufacturing plants to Midwest farmers to gay sex party animals.

It’s not just something that happens to ‘those people.’ Alteration is a spectrum. Most see the scruffy panhandler twitching around and yelling as someone else entirely. It’s disconnected from the French restaurant where the wine pours freely. It’s apart from the cocaine parties in the corridors of higher education, where George Bush cheerfully inhaled. Really, the only difference is how functional a person is from another.

After all, none of us know when we’re crossing that line. We all do it, whatever it is, because we love it. It’s hard to get healing or even want it even though your liver is begging for relief. Why? Because it’s a long goodbye. How do you say goodbye to the friend that makes you laugh, the shimmer of a dream world? What about the warmth of a good bottle of aging scotch and a cigar shared with your father?

There’s no real answer, because just say no is not the answer. Or would you say you think prohibition is a good idea? Sure, anyone who says yes even once is technically in danger. But then, all the ones they’ve banned are still best sellers. Most people just say yes sometime along the way, from Mom to the President.

Saying yes many times through your life may or may not tip the balance into poisoning. When it starts to ruin your life or your liver, you have to stop, like it or not. Or choose the negative effects, a choice many make and die with. But it’s hard to say goodbye. Who wants to live their life without a crisp gin and tonic or ten? No one, except the ones who never drink, and they are all raving sugar addicts. Same thing, my friends- but booze is more fun.

Of course, there’s always the grim side of the story, selling yourself for crack, breaking tequila bottles in alleys and stabbing people, kidnapped sex slaves. But next time it snaps through your head that you have more ‘self control’ or whatever than an addict, try instead to acknowledge that you yourself are just on different rungs of the spectrum.

So should we all just say no, from the very beginning? Let’s get back to reality. It would be audacious to say no grown men should be allowed to go for beers, though this would save the world from an awful mess of immature antics and cheating incidents and bar room violence.

Should we say no one should ever smoke a joint? Well, we did say that, and people are still smoking pot. No one should use cocaine. But half of South American history is in coca. Shall we ban all painkillers, too, and let people suffer after surgeries or accidents? Addiction to prescription medicine is mindblowingly common! Shall we revoke driving rights for anyone who drinks at all, just to make sure the very common drunk driving accident doesn’t happen?

We all imbibe something, unless we are rare. For a long time, we thought this was human uniqueness. A few weird animals liked to get high. Now science knows most animal species like it just as much as humans, and access is their only barrier. The stuff they like, they’ll take it if it’s there.

My cats love catnip. And I love gin. It’s not some shameful secret. Should I be ashamed, or should the slick ad promising class, taste, and celebration be ashamed? Or should we blame the time-honoured tradition and recipe and wonderful ingredients?

The right answer is, of course, none of the above. It would have been wise if I’d given my liver a few fewer parties, sure. At least I quit smoking. I quit drugs. I quit sugar. I quit wheat. As Bessie Smith and Nina Simone sang before me, just give me my gin. Clothes? Pork? Give me gin instead. Sister Courtney Love also tells it like it is in her song All the Drugs. “With all, all of my love, with all, all of my money, It doesn’t feel as good as the drugs.”

Besides, what if after a few months or years or decades of nothing, the party girl’s liver rejuvenated, the old compulsions gone, she decides it’s safe to celebrate at special events. She doesn’t want everyone taking pictures of her having a beer, the way they do of Drew Barrymore, who kicked cocaine twenty years ago. What if she finds a harm reduction model useful, a guideline for safer indulgence that seems to be very effective. Is that okay? or will she be scrutinized at every sip just because once she announced she was getting help to keep control over her drinking? Now everyone’s looking at her and not at you. How convenient for you as you pop your seventh codeine of the day. Bad back, yeah.

Drugs can be a nightmare, as your health turns on your best intentions, your money disappears, and people you love die from their inability to snap back from la la land. It’s also a nightmare to give them up. Some people were appalled that some people were using drugs and alcohol at Marko’s funeral. Don’t all funerals have drugs and alcohol? What, Aunt Rosie’s not on ten valiums? No one’s throwing back the vodka? Of course, no wake ever happened with beer, and no Hollywood funeral ever took place with the fine white stuff and silver straws.

Of course, there wouldn’t be any of that at a wake for an addict! Thing is, a good handful of people embarked into recovery but they sure as hell didn’t do it that night, when they were open and scared and raw and hurting.

See what I mean? It might be a big fat relief to know you might break free. But it’s a nightmare, too. What will you use to obliterate the pain if your husband or child drops dead tonight? Trust me, you’ll use something. Ativan, rum, grass, you better believe it. But going lighter, how the hell is a person going to celebrate their child’s marriage? How many stone cold sober weddings have you been to? And how would you date? A glass of chilled white is just what the grape gods kindly stocked up on for situations just like these.

Quitting is traumatic because it will mean deprivation. It doesn’t matter if that deprivation hits hard at weddings and funerals, or every night when you no longer head to your favourite bar.

I love how I always hear that an intoxicant user should ‘face her problems.’ It is true that you and she both use alcohol or drugs to face your problems. Maybe she just has more problems. Maybe you have more restraint. Maybe you have more restraint because your body deals better with the alcohol. Maybe alcoholism runs in her blood and not yours. Maybe you are an alcoholic- I mean, you do drink every single day, but it’s only two or three little glasses of wine. Maybe you drink too much but no one notices and you pass for pretty straight. Classic. Classic. Maybe you don’t even know. Maybe you aren’t facing your problems and that person is, but in ways that you can’t see. Maybe you don’t know the half of it.

I won’t give you a laundry list of the things that are on that ‘must face’ list. But let’s just say it’s pretty dramatic. I admit I haven’t even begun to wrap my head around the fact that my friend/sister hung herself over Thanksgiving. It’s only just beginning to really sink in. I’d like to sweep it away and pretend I’ve dealt with it, but only time can deal with something this harrowing. Now raise your hands if something like this has happened to you- it’s horribly common. Yes, and so, what did you use, gin or Valium? Face my problems? I’m working on it, dude. When seven close friends drop dead in five years, from cancer to overdose to suicide, it’s hard to face. Then there’s the poverty, stress, alienation, isolation, broken dreams, work troubles, family madness- you know, the stuff of everyday life. Everybody knows the trouble we’ve seen.

Trust me, buddy, I’m facing my problems. I’ve had rewarding therapy in my life, great yoga, hell, I’m going to church at least once a week and it’s freaking out my friends. I’m working shit out in circle and learning about tools to moderate my depression and map my impulses. I’m producing more writing and acting with more focus than I’ve ever had. It’s been more than a dozen years since I spent a couple on the street, drifting. I haven’t been clubbing since Pride. I go to bed after the ten p.m. Seinfeld.

But guess what, I still drink too much, and my liver has asked for a nice break.

I’m just telling it so you can understand, why many addicts never change and get worse, why some manage their lives by going off and on, why many others who get healthy will always miss it.

You might, too- but you don’t have to quit, and I do.