Woke at 8:30 and showered and filled a mug with coffee and drove straight to the library. Only when I sat at a desk did I take a sip, look at my phone, open a can of Helwit Salmiak, and satisfy the little beast inside me that craves caffeine, internet, and nicotine. This is progress.
(I’ve been importing my nicotine from Sweden and the shipping costs are killing me but I enjoy having an international vice.)
Flipped through a massive book of Gary Winogrand photos and selected characters for a new story: a gnarled old man who looks like he was muscle for a union in some midwestern town, another with a spooked expression like he’s spent too much time thinking about God.
Went for an ugly run in the rain, and it was gloriously dramatic in the mud and the grey. I’m picking up my mileage now that the weather is no longer fuck-you degrees.
Came home to the news that one of my favorite music producers was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room, along with two other artists whose work I’ve admired. For fifteen years, Silent Servant has been a steady part of my life’s soundtrack, a name always in my playlists via landmark imprints like Sandwell District and Hospital Productions and Jealous God, and an early producer of one of my all-time favorite projects, Camella Lobo’s Tropic of Cancer. Now there will be no more. Goddamned fentanyl. It has claimed so many, and the chemicals are only getting weirder and more relentless.
Early in my sobriety, a loud old man in a church basement said this would be a life of stepping over dead bodies. I thought he was being melodramatic, but his words come to mind more often with each passing year. I loathe the moments when the suffering of others reminds me to be grateful. This should not be necessary. But tonight, I’m reminded yet again that my sobriety is like grace and cannot be taken for granted.
