Some thoughts on A Love Supreme, John Coltrane and my Recovery.

Well, instead of drinking this evening (Tuesdays are always a temptation - cause I usually go without on Monday then on Tuesday I feel like I "earned it") I thought I'd write. Since, when I don't drink I get a bit of insomnia, I think I'll go to the local coffee shop after and draw - start building my chops back up.

But, yes I though I'd write first, sort of like journaling, I suppose. They say its good for you.

A Love Supreme - Alice Coltrane said of the opening of Ascension "It's like a beautiful city, but we don't enter, because we have to go through the portals, the corridor, and then we reach the entranceway. When that chord hits, that E major, the doors start to open. That's what its like for me - the very first invitation to this place that's here, that's in our heart and spirit." - hmm, yeah, I like that. Seems to me like alot of what needs to happen with me. An opening, an exploring.

Coltrane means alot to me. The man drank very heavily and then became such a junky that Miles Davis kicked him out of the greatest jazz grouping of all time. If you look back at Trane's life, he always was driven by his art. He suffered the loss of a number of family members (including his Father) when he was at a formative age. But he always had his horn.

By comparison, I always had my pad and a pen in hand. I suffered the loss of my father through divorce (or abandonment, depending on your preference) and then my mother through addiction. She has come back, lately, though not fully.

Trane was known to be obsessive in practicing, dedicated totally. Even during his drinking days and later his junky days - he prefered his music to trying to pick up women and such. Inevitably the problem took over and he began to lose control.

I, now on day 2 of recovery am at a state where I have become separated from my art - from myself. I need to rediscover what lays in that inner city. I feel that through my last hidden pangs of self love and survival instinct, the gate has cracked open. Man there's sure a maze of corridors in there! Some are dark and strange sounds come from them. Others seem to hold light, somewhere deep in there.

If you listen to A Love Supreme you find a man encompassed by his art, flowing, flying, grinding, wailing. Wailing about love, passion, God, whatever you want to call it. A man who had recovered himself (not after enough damage had been done for him to die young - though sober). Just dive into Resolution and let it sweep you up into the stratosphere like a milkweed seed hitting all the frenetic updrafts and zephyrs and cool rythmic breezes until he gently lets you come to rest on the ground of Elvin Jones's quick flit of an ending break. That's the art of a man joyous to be free, at last.

Coltrane sweated withdrawals out locked up in a room in his mother's house. Cold Turkey. He never looked back. He became a man completely for his art and his love of God.

Now I'm not going to speak of my own religious/spiritual feelings here (I always get flamed) but I'll say that Coltrane's spirituality makes my own vibrate in resonance. I wish I could speak to the man. In some ways I feel like I can, like he's there, somewhere encouraging me saying: "Come on man, throw that bottle out and pick up that brush and paint. Even if you don't like it. It's time to do some woodshedding, my man!"

Well, with encouragement like that I have a place to start out from.

I think I'll step inside this first corridor. It's dark. If I take my pad and a pencil and go sit and do some street portraits of the kids that hang out in front of the coffee shop, lit up warm, streetlight orange in the haze of this humid night, then each line can be a step inward. Each observation can cast a little more light into that city. Each quickly grasped gesture is a new, shaky step, as I relearn to walk, relearn to draw. Relearn myself.

Thanks John, I love you, man!

My college roommate turned me on to him. I had never heard of him before. IMO there is a lyricism and soul to his playing which has never been touched in jazz.

He seemed to know he had a very limited amount of time and had to put out as much of himself into the universe as he could.

You have a long road ahead of you but you've already taken the hardest step :thumbsup:

I need all the encouragement I can get!

pm is on the way

:hug:

addiction for another. that is really common. Don't start overeating, or scratching your skin off or whatever. For god's sake, stay away from pills and such, unless your skin is crawling so bad you have to take some tylenol to help you stop twitching.

Been there, done that, as you may have guessed.

If you absolutely cannot sleep, benadryl can help, if used occasionally.

Other than that, I believe that cold turkey is the best way to do it, if you can handle it. You will not soon forget that pain.

Drop me a line if you need.

Peace, brother. 'Trane was right on the money.

It's hard to get back to everybody. :)

I do apprectiate it!

laid bare and open for its own sake, in all its woundedness and vulnerability we finally meet ourselves.

It is truely in those moments, when I see or hear a piece of art that I find God. And God is with me. While I don't want to put words in his mouth, I think Coltrane must have felt the same.

Art is as much catharsis as healing.

You just summed up what I was feeling when I saw it.

As for Trane's thought on it - see my sig line :)

hurts me because she suffered like I suffered though I recovered. When I look at her work, I feel like she understands what it's like to go to the depths and come back. I feel a sisterhood with her that I don't with any other artist because of it.

Again, it's quite cathartic.

edit: thank you for sharing that painting. :cry:

I have never seen.

25 lbs of plaster as a torso cast for months on end. Her straps remind me of later when I could wear a fiberglas cast with velcro strips to get in and out of.

Her painting, eventhough it's topless, is still quite confining, constraining, not letting through her true self. I felt the same way.

She painted a huge hammer and sickle on it. What a dame.

What happened to you, if I might ask? PM if you'd like, or I'll drop it if you'd prefer :)

I had corrective surgery for scoliosis, a degenerative curvature of the spine when I was a teenager.

Unlike Frida, I had the luxury of choosing my treatment. I chose the most drastic, but also the most permanent. I'm ok now, but the pain of living through that at a time when I might have been concerned with boys, and dances, and all things trivial was very heartbreaking. I got teased quite mercilessly about my turtle shell when i went back to school.

I know somebody who just had a disc replacement. She's in pretty bad shape right now. But she'll get better. I hope I didn't open up any old wounds with that painting - I didn't know it would hit so close to home!

:hug:

Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball...that was sweet, man. Kind of Blue is still one of the best things ever done by humans. So is A Love Supreme.

Been where you are. Feel free to drop a line.

Good to have another resource!

I don't know what to say. Amongst the squabbling and superficiality of the DU norm you've dropped quite a personal pearl. Be tough, be cool. xoxo.

Y'know - what's the worst that could happen? Some Freeper comes in and tells me I'm a pussy and to go drink myself to death. If that's happen I'd know who to out as a troll. Win win y'know?

Peace

I did go down town and drew - Christ am I rusty!

But I did it, and I'll do it again today! Day 3 begins!

You're not going to turn into a "preacher", are you? I mean like born-again Christians who preach to anybody who will listen about how they changed their life and how everybody should do it.

The word recovery gets everybody all weird. Hell no I won't. I'm trying to get at an even keel here. You can do whatever you want.

It had been evicted but, as of 1990, was operationing in a new spot.

www.cnn.com/2000/US/04/24/coltrane.church/

The Church of Coltrane, as it is known to many, was the brainchild of Bishop Franzo King, who established the church two years after Coltrane's death.

King said he had an epiphany one night as he and his wife listened to Coltrane's music at the old Jazz Workshop in North Beach. He compared it to being "arrested by the sound. It was a feeling of transportation, an out-of-body experience, where the focus is so entirely on the music that there is no sense of time or place or anything other than the sound."

I'll have to check

I hesitate to post because my experience with alcohol dependency isn't my own, it's my first wife's-- and she later left me for someone she sponsored in AA, which is a whole 'nother story, but not relevant here.

What I wanted to say before was something encouraging about how ashamed you felt. I hope you realize that that feeling is *part of the alcohol syndrome!* The addiction perpetuates itself by making you feel awful at any point where you might want to straighten out-- and the circuits it has its hooks into can be emotional as well as biological.

I didn't realize you were an artist. (I'm not a very regular participant on the board these days.) I have always felt that one of the biggest temptations drugs offer is, they shut off the superego-- which, for creative people, is the internal censor or critic, the inner voice that says, "You shouldn't do that, it's too primitive"-- which often means, too personal, too revealing, too naked. So one drinks, or shoots up or whatever, to squelch those inhibitions and give the inner voice its opportunity. But of course there are all these other bad side effects...

I don't know the answer, but I agree Trane had some insights, having been through it (and Miles too, although he could be a real jerk).

Anyway, best of luck to you, and you've got my support.

Your support helps. For my art I can't produce anything when I'm drinking - nothing. So, maybe its just me I suppose but its going to be allright.

you also have some good writing skills. Very passionate observations. Enjoy your explorations -art and music take us to wonderful places. The arts are not a luxury. Sometimes there is some deep stuff in the well, but it is worth looking there. Good luck.