Before I Sleep

For Amy by Russell Brand

2011-07-31T03:23:00.000-04:00

I felt the need to share the words of brethren about our brethren.

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.
Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.
Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

The Junkie Shuffle (for Eric)

2011-07-07T22:04:00.000-04:00

Greeting his fate

He welcomed it with hate

Sat up all night

in dreadful wait

He'd begun to have to run

Swore it'd only be one

Thick and numb

21 and done

Now it's a full out flee

And there's no one left to see

How this fix would end

and lead death to my friend

Obituary... Birthday,
Convulsion... Narcolepsy,
Neurotic... Raging Comatose,
Heart swollen... Timely Overdose

Cool, damp, slumped on the stair

Clumped, sticky blonde hair

Ashen waif, his body gets harder

Lying safely swaddled like a martyr

Happy now?

unhooked... content?

Its all been done before
By that mudslinging whore,
Slinging the cure,
And this cure was too pure.

Cliche'd death

to be mocked and scoffed

While in deathly dances

the junkies shuffle off

-BSW 1994

Kudzu

2011-06-23T20:32:00.000-04:00

We are each other,

All beautiful, and South'rn,

We hail from these hills,

Now hollo' furniture mills.

We take pride in our time,

We sing Sunday clothes rhymes,

Gather 'round Momma's stew,

'N giggle watchin' Paw Paw chew.

A li'l church when we were kids,

Bes' friends in Sunday class,

'S where we came up to know Jesus,

'N play football in the grass.

This's where WE learned how...

The old back roads were better,

This's where WE grew up,

'N WE live HERE TOGETHER.

-BSW, fall ‘08

Pencil Bones

2011-06-21T16:08:00.000-04:00

Give them a reason,

to open a slit,

Tweaking with treason,

and fucking the skit,

They welcome these seasons,

of sappy green will,

Indulging and gorging,

on willing young skill.

Now Thrashing in rivers,

of hospital blue,

I love you, I hate you,

I’d die for you too,

I want it, I need it,

it’s drained all my life,

I had it, YOU took it,

Battle’s bred all my spite.

Your commitments,

and unpayable physical loans,

Are my new impediments,

and broken pencil bones.

-BSW 6/18/2011

Dark Catharsis of Desire

2011-06-21T15:36:00.000-04:00

Toxic sweat crawls up the back of that neck,

Spreading profusely contaminating that scalp,

Salty skin sizzles with freezing hot shivers,

Thin dead despair plights the lobes of those lungs,

Muscles roll and quiver in panicked spasms,

They plead for the potion, the antidote of peace.

And this is but a half a grinding day since that last healing fix.

The fully satisfying hit intended to be the swan's song,

Is now forgotten, lost deep beneath a dying crow's wail,

Blackened morosity envelopes the searing hot coal,

Growing, seething behind those hot bloated eyes,

Dripping, freezing, burning dry, easily convinced to die,

And this is but a half a grinding day since that last healing fix.

Broken, body stifled with anguish too sick to move,

Courting the droning emptyness of the sinful non-living,

Sun, too painful to see, air too pure to stand,

Earth, too hard feel, love, too distant to want.

And this is but a half a grinding day since that last healing fix.

by BSW 1997

The Where You Been Blues

2011-06-21T15:23:00.000-04:00

I've been down...

Way deep down below the ground.

Been high... far too high,

I've flown beyond the sky.

Yet... nights I spent floating in between,

I melted into my most hallowed dreams.

This journey's effort has aged me well,

Kept my soul aflame... yet far from hell.

-BSW, June 12, 2011

Love in the Fold - bleeds truth

2011-03-14T23:43:00.000-04:00

On my lips,

Cold wet confession,

On my back,

Sacks of depression.

"It's over,"

She raved and berated,

I rant, "Love's messy

Lonliness is underrated."

Yet, tomorrow,

I will love her sans the sorrow,

And rip open my stubborn heart,

To warmly bleed our new start.

True love flows thick then thins,

Honest love growls some before it grins,

And our love does't n'er pretend,

For our love forgives all left sins.

-BSW

A Man

2010-12-03T23:07:00.000-05:00

smoothed

rough edges
experience pride
leading example stoic
confidence steady mature
youthful protecting patient open
soul loves lover emotion participate

BSW (2005)

Breeding Black '03

2010-12-03T22:59:00.000-05:00

Stale musky pillow clings to cold sweaty cheek,
Spent, steely dampness unmitigated by lone dying candle,
Room taunts with shadowy empty spaces,
Ceilings drip condescention from a mile above,
Eyes blackened, burned out with fear,
Dry tears grind like sand,
Lungs tide with hopeless anxiety,
Pain...relentless,
Alive within this,
Wasted...adrift,
Sold Out...miffed,
Alone... enclosed,
despised...disposed,
Nothing seems to fill it,
Nothing seems to kill it,
Who's hand is this? who's breath?
Who is dealing this cruel death?
There's two of me here to lose now,
Which one to choose? How?

BSW (2003)

For you:

2010-10-31T13:04:00.001-04:00

We are what we consistently do,
Not what we occassionally achieve.
-Aristotle

"Take It Easy, People"

2010-08-12T15:28:00.000-04:00

Life... It's a grand ole' grind,

And I just can't figure why,

Anyone would want to try,

If we couldn't laugh and cry.

-BSW, 8/12/10

Sea Foam - I Love You

2010-07-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

Today we stood

togeter in the surf.

She clung to me

tightly like a child.

The Carolina current

tugged at my legs

as her grip withstood

the crashing trial.

We'd worked hard

all year to make it there

to feel the ocean,

together, under that pier.

We lived our whole lives

to make it here... together,

to hold tight in life's currents

wrapped in love... forever.

-BSW