Just finished reading Eric Clapton’s biography. It was a fantastic book. Very moving. It is about a man who really goes to the lowest of the low in his life and then gets back up on his feet until going to yet darker places yet through all this he finds real, genuine happiness which I believe is very rare. I would recommend the book to anyone although since I have pretty much grown up with his music always playing in the background and have also read a few biographies on him before, maybe there is a special interest in it for me.
I’d like to say one more thing about the book and it is something that I realized was quite important. Have you noticed that when seeing a good film or reading a great book that the endings usually resolve in someway? I don’t mean everything has to be perfect in the end but there is some kind of solution. It’s as if throughout the whole thing everything is leading to the good part. If you live a good life, you will probably most enjoy your last years. Why can’t those last years start now? I always tell myself that before I’m this and this age, i’ll work at myself towards this ideal me and then when i’m there, i’ll start really loving life. I’m sick of waiting for that day. I want my life to start now!
The sad part is that although reading about the recent years of Clapton’s new and sober family life is touching because he had been through so much (e.g. rockstardom, godstatus, intense heroin addiction & alcoholism, the death of his 3 year old son, deaths of several close friends and family members among other stuff), I still have to admit that the most compelling stuff was reading about his dark times. I guess I have an attraction to the dark side although I must admit it is a place that I am scared of. It is also a place where I have felt that I have been close to a few times but never quite there. Always drifting in between the darkness and the light but never reaching either extremes. Maybe it is essential to reach one of those extremes for the other extreme to happen. Maybe both happen eventually for everybody? I don’t know. I think for many people the wavelengths of the intensity of life are more neutral than mine. Then again maybe I don’t know the real stories behind many people that I know and I know this is true when looking at it the other way because I certainly don’t really talk about these things much with anyone, ever. Maybe we don’t really know the people we know.
This year has begun well although the first hours were spent alone drifting in a cold Helsinki night with snow flying in my face and wondering where I should go because everyone disappeared. Luckily I had a half empty bacardi bottle in hand which I managed to finish while walking to my friends apartment who was luckily still up (at 5:30a.m). I walked the 2-3 miles it took to get there accompanied by my ipod. It was good to see Samppa who I hadn’t seen in awhile. We had some interesting conversations about life and where we currently were and where we were not.
After that I have not drank any alcohol nor wanted to. I also haven’t seen barely anyone besides my family when I occasionally wander downstairs for a glass of water. I have felt recently that drinking is not something that I overly enjoy. It is only fun at the time when you are intoxicated and I always drink too much and do stupid things. It used to be fun but now it just makes me feel fake and I am sick of forgetting things and having black outs. It is the same as if someone was to make your life shorter. I am already enough worried that there is not enough time to do all the things I want and any more time wasted is just not acceptable.
Of course I love spending time with my friends but wish there was a way we could do that without all having to get really drunk. Do we really need that stuff? That is a scary question even for me because I am not yet fully convinced that the answer is a definite no. I am seriously thinking about quitting it completely which is something I always thought i’d do one day but again I wonder why couldn’t ‘one day’ start now? I am not sure of this as I am not sure of so many other things. I guess it can do no harm to try it out. At least I am not addicted to it and I have no problems not drinking which is not the case for everybody.
I have also been swimming intensely, playing lots of guitar and singing, writing new songs, listening to lots of new music, reading intensely and watching lots of films I have missed last year. I have been keeping my phone off because I want to be by myself and think about stuff and also figure out the next steps and where I really want to go from here and what I want to achieve.
I still have a few weeks left to do this before I go back to the UK. This time it is Ireland and I am really looking forward to properly start promoting my album and maybe getting some kind of record label there to release the album. There is something about Ireland that really appeals to me and I feel it’s where I must go. Life is good 😀
