I was sitting at the dining room table one morning three years ago, pre-spring rays piercing the blinds, cat on the windowsill, when a peculiar feeling struck me: I didn't have to work anymore, not in the way society would have me work. I didn't need this career any longer. I could pursue music. It's now or never.
I called my boss immediately, almost on a whim, and explained that I wanted to pursue music and that I was quitting. The decision to quit came in one instant. I knew this was the correct path for me, I knew it in my bones, even though the "how" and the "what" of my decision was as opaque as the walls around me. I also knew it was irrational.
I had no plan whatsoever beyond jettisoning my job. Life at the time was good on paper: I had a well-paying career, money in the bank, a long-term live-in relationship, a solid collection of instruments, a solid group of friends. But I was miserable.
My boss, surprisingly, was quite supportive of my decision, relating to me a story of a military general who, upon reaching the shores of enemy territory, decided to burn the boats they'd come in: if there was no chance of going back, then the only option was victory. I thought it a fitting metaphor and felt inspired by the support.
The job itself was good on paper, but it was soul-sucking, and it seemed at the time to be the reason I couldn't create music: I was so mentally burnt at the end of the day, having ten or so people under me on the org chart, having a demanding client, and traveling every so often, that there were no resources left to expend on creativity. I had all the equipment I needed to make music and I was in several bands at the time. And yet, when it came time to sit down and write or record a song, I couldn't seem to do it. Actually, that's not entirely true: sometimes a creative window would open. But it felt like the window was either open or shut and I had little control over its state. When the creative window was open, I was fully aware of the fact that it would soon close and so necessarily raced against the ticking clock to get something out.
One thing I knew could open the creative window were substances. Alcohol, weed, whatever. I mean, this is how I would unwind, how I could let go enough to write songs: go to the local bar, get decently drunk, smoke a few bowls, then pick up my guitar. Most of the songs I wrote during that period were written nearly instantaneously. If I could get enough of the thing out while the window was open, then the song would exist as-is, as it appeared at the time, with little need for edits. It was more improvisation than actual songwriting. Once the window was shut, however, that was it, there was no turning back, no revisiting the song, for the creative spark had vanished.
Writing music was an issue for me at the time, but so was performing. I couldn't understand why, if I'd been playing music in some form for over half of my life, I couldn't seem to perform in front of others, or even play with others without a huge mental trip. I could play just fine on my own, but the minute other eyes or ears were in the room, my body shut down. I couldn't seem to fully control my muscles. Any eye contact while playing would, and still does, derail me.
At the time I thought it was my job that was the issue. Quit my job and I'll have the mental and temporal resources to make and perform music. Except I soon learned it wasn't the job that was the obstacle: it was myself, some unquantifiable force that was preventing me from expressing my internal music. And then a series of events happened which blew my life apart.
A few months after quitting, my girlfriend broke up with me and moved out. And then the drummer in our band died a month or so after that. And then I seriously broke my dominant arm in a biking accident with no health insurance a couple months after that. And then I realized a few months later while recovering that I had, in fact, endured some sort of sexual abuse when I was a child. I felt like I had died. Everything I knew to be true up to that point was a mirage. I had zero self-worth.
And it goes even deeper than that. I haven't quite figured out how to write about this aspect of the last few years, but for now I will say that I discovered a, shall we say, tantric side to my sexuality that, when combined with weed, allows me to enter and maintain profound mental states for weeks at a time.
So here I was, isolated, deeply broken mentally, but also deeply in touch with a more essential part of myself than any words could describe.
I started seeing a therapist and would show up at her office and ramble off coherent but manic theories about what was happening to me, and about life and society. There was a lot of mental stuff to spin out. I knew I was on the edge of sanity from prior experience, so I had an idea of how far it could go before I lost my shit. Somehow I managed to keep my mind enough within the lines, but my therapist said she was "this close" to intervening at one point.
The thing about being in these far off states of mind is, how does one relate to others who have not been there themselves? I could function enough on paper to pay my taxes and go to the store and do improv comedy, but I couldn't relate to anyone. I didn't trust a soul.
I recently got the answer to this question through reading "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass. It turns out there are other humans who have been "there." I mean, here was a guy, highly educated, successful by the world's standards, who discovered there were other levels to existence by taking psychedelics. In the first part of the book, Dass describes taking LSD consistently for three weeks straight. Now here's someone I can relate to.
In his former incarnation, Ram Dass was Richard Alpert, Ph.D. and him and Timothy Leary and another guy wrote a book in the 60s called "The Psychedelic Experience," which is a guide for taking psychedelics based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Aha!! Here it is, here is something that describes what I already know to be true. I've been to these states, on psychedelics and otherwise, and now there's a language to this stuff I can understand, a map, a progression.
In fact, and maybe this is a fallacious way of looking at the world, but sometimes I tend to think that if you haven't been "there" - out of your head, totally merged with the energy of the larger thing, the beauty and terror of it - then you don't really "know." And if you don't "know," then how can we relate on that deeper level? And I'm not even claiming I "know" anything here, just that there are levels of consciousness beyond the waking, everyday sort, beyond the drunken sort that this culture values, and, well, that exploring these states opens the famed doors of perception. And once they're open, society starts seeming crazy and unhealthy and hard to relate to on a general level.
At one point, I started going to AA. I thought, "Here are people who understand, who know about the other side of things." Except I found it hard to relate there as well. I couldn't get past the language of the thing and couldn't seem to connect beyond a certain level that always dealt with the substances and the 12-steps. I just wanted some fucking human connection, you know?
While I think AA and other anonymous 12-step programs are valuable and helpful to some, the major issue I have with their total abstinence philosophy is that there's a denial of half of yourself, the non-sober half. This may be for good reason: if you're so deep in the thing that you're destroying or have destroyed your life, then by all means, go to rehab, stop using the substances. But for me, I understood the issue went beyond the substances; I was already aware of some of the deeper reasons for my destructive behavior. It's just that in AA you gotta speak the AA language. And I didn't find the language there to talk about sexual trauma. I didn't find the language there to talk about my profound experiences of altered states and the value those had and continue to have in my life.
It's like if I know that these other states of consciousness exist within me but outright deny them, label them as "bad" or label myself as "defective," then I'm forever struggling against myself. If there's anything I learned in the last few years it's that all perspectives are valid and valuable, including perspectives from other humans, including perspectives brought on by altered states of consciousness.
People have shitty things happen to them and end up using substances simply trying to manage the volcano of feelings that erupt inside them daily, trying to deal with circumstances they were thrown into simply by being born, trying to exist in a society that doesn't value those it deems "broken" or "addicted." And that causes further pain and destruction in their life and for those around them. And then you go to meetings and learn that you have "character defects" and that the only solution is a higher power you can choose for yourself but that most people seem to call God, and society around you continues to celebrate drunkenness, celebrate violence and greed, and now you're an outcast at social events having to explain that you don't drink, and why is that any of your fucking business anyway?
And so you give up your solution for living, you give up alcohol or whatever your thing is, and learn to live without it. That part's great, serving others, even living sober, but there's always this part of you that knows it's there, the other states of consciousness. The alcohol and drugs are simply vehicles. The consciousness is your own. It's right in front of you, it is you. You know these states exists and to deny them is to deny part of yourself. You know the option to enter these states is always there and that they do provide some value or else you wouldn't desire to put yourself in them in the first place, consequences be damned. And if that's true, if there is value to these altered states, then there must be a way to obtain the value of these states in other ways, in healthier, directed ways that are not so clearly ambiguous as 12 steps, and that don't necessary prescribe mostly total abstinence from mind-altering substances, excluding caffeine and cigarettes.
Through all of this, the past three years, for all the lack of planning on my part, for following my intuition, for the pain I've felt and endured, I did pursue music. In fact, it's been my lifeline. I burned the boats, got deep with life and music was right there with me and for me. After I broke my arm, I bought a ukulele because it was easier to play than guitar. That uke and my cat were the only two things I trusted, that I could consistently rely on for a stretch.
And the thing is, as I wake up from the mania and ecstasy and terror and depression of the last three years, the music is still there. And now I'm finding the strength within myself to share it with others and to play it with others again. I understand why music is important to me and to society in general. I understand its power to heal, to communicate, and the role it serves in life. I have now what I didn't have three years ago the moment I quit my job: purpose. I've found "The Why." And you could say that the "why" is my "higher power" - it's the flow of life, it's the energy flowing within me and around me, it's the eye contact with others, the intimacy in sharing myself, it's the connections made.
After all this, I've learned that I am not defective. I am not broken. I'm a whole entity unto myself and only then just a connected part of a larger whole. If I can understand music, then I can understand myself. And so I will keep doing it, studying music, playing music, sharing it with others, as an offering to the larger thing. I have a voice, I have been given talents, and so I will contribute what I can.
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