WHO WAS I?

Hi, and thanks for dropping by.  You may know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my book, 'How To Become A Crack Addict' (Jan to April 2013), which you can read here, or buy on amazon as an ebook, if you do that kind of thing.  Nowadays, this blog is the sporadic emissions of yours truly, Benjamin of Turnham Green.  I'm rather tired, but feel, at the close of Valentine's Day, that I should check in with my fan-base...so here is tonight's emission...

WHO WAS I?

Now, looking back on a year or two ago, and beyond, when addiction was as automatic to me as a spin-cycle is for a washing-machine, I wonder if I might have overdisclosed at times, told too many people too much about myself, or at least what seemed to be my self, at the time.

But then, I guess you can't undisclose the disclosed.  Even if one goes about redacting every detail that's out there, what's already known will still be in the memories of previous readers, who may wish to do you down, or use stuff against you, even if it was said or done in the darkest time of your life, wrongheadedly, cruelly, thoughtlessly even.  But, on a more personal level, I wonder who I was back in the day...the day of addiction...the day that only lasted six hours, until the money ran out, swiftly followed by me, home to bed for two days, until more money was poured into my account, when another daytrip to dissolution and despair would ensue...

In my little book, 'How To Become A Crack Addict', I pretty much refer to sexual abuse and prostitutes in the first thousand words, or thereabouts.  Would I tell a stranger at a bus-stop my life-story in such vivid terms as quickly?  Well, time was when I might have, especially if it was the 237 bus, of which there aren't that many.

But what is disclosure?  It is the revealing of a fact.  What is overdisclosure?  It's an opinion.  Truth is, in holding back certain truths, even if only alluded to, I would have made my little book less 'true'.  I guess, in my way, that the job of a writer is to walk the tightrope between what the reader needs to know and what you want them to know.  This can be like pigeon-stepping along a strand of Rapunzel's hair, hung taut above a never-sated gorge of flame and air-crinkling heat - precarious.

Now, do I want people not to know what I did, who I was?  What's the point in rewriting history?  Forensics can always find the original message under the scrawl.

And the truth is, to me, I don't know who I was, or who I am now.  Sometimes, lately, having begun doing some things I love, like comedy, music, writing, reading, even having a social life, I recognise myself, an old self, that needs a dusting off, but is still pretty functional, whereas sometimes I feel unfamiliar, unintentionally airborne, as if walking on blustering updrafts from some zero-gravity simulator for trainee astronauts, treading clown-like on bulbous buffetings from below.

I carry these thoughts, I feel these feelings, I type these words.

I guess it was me all along.

I'll try to check in tomorrow, unless Rapunzel's hair snaps, mid-ravine.

Here's one of my songs, if you'd like to listen.  I'm hoping to write more soon...just click on the name here and it goes safely to youtube...no Rapunzel hair dangers...Windswept

Thank you for dropping by.