Back to Life

May 2009

The heart has its reasons. I was right about that.

When I started writing this blog I didn't really understand the motivation for doing it. I just felt that it was something I needed to do.
I thought there was perhaps a way I could learn to want to do music the way a lot of other people do. They are in bands, they play gigs, they have a laugh, they get on with it - a bit like a normal job, a bit more fun and a lot less money. And you can always get drunk after the gig.
But this went deeper. The purpose of writing this blog, as it turns out, for me as a songwriter, as a human being, was to deliver me from myself.
By paying attention to dreams, building a rapport with the unconscious, and getting the help of a coach and a therapist, I cleared a lot of muck out of my way. Not only am I singing and playing again, but I’m leading a cleaner, happier life. And because my mind and perceptions are no longer clouded by self-questioning and doubt, what I would hesitatingly call the mystical silence at the heart of life, has again been revealed to me. That is something that I haven’t seen or felt really for a couple of years. It’s nice to have it back. In the decade and a half I lived with severe depression, these extended moments of altered consciousness - total freedom - would descend upon me from time to time. They gave me hope that there was a possibility of living a better life. But I also interpreted them as a possible symptom of a worse madness to come. Why did the world around me suddenly ‘burst off the page’ into full radiant life? And how tantalising that it would inevitably recede again into the shadow – after a morning or a half hour or even a few seconds.

Of course, there is more to come. I have to be honest and ask the question, “How connected with my 'higher purpose' will I feel after 12 months of playing in pubs when the punters' conversations are louder than the PA?”
But right now I feel like something so fundamental has changed that all that stuff is irrelevant. The only barrier I ever faced was within myself. I am home free.