Two contrasting events

Blog 19th July 2015 I’ve been out twice this week, to see two interesting but very contrasting events. The first one was a theatre production of the musical Sweet Charity; it was in the open air theatre in Sophia Gardens and was pure entertainment, the all singing, all dancing, feel good, toe tapping, high kicking, thigh slapping caper that some of us know and love. (I always said I should have been a gay man, my love of musicals cements this) The second event was a film documentary called Amy about the tragic and all too short life of the musician Amy Winehouse. I wanted to see this from the recovery angle, to see if they covered it “warts and all” and captured the lonely self loathing confusion and despair of addiction. I think they did. I was also reminded with flashbacks of shame of my own degenerative state at the time. My fiends nicknamed me Winehouse, how we laughed, I even went to a Halloween party dressed as her thinking that being seen as my nemesis was cool and ironic. I was fat she was tiny but under the black comedy of it all we shared more than drug and alcohol addiction, we shared an eating disorder. Think of Amy and you think of drugs, of alcohol, of jazz and soul and a voice, a beehive, Bambi legs, flicked eye liner and a dirty laugh. Amy also had a serious eating disorder she had started making herself sick at the age of 13 around the time of her parents confusing and acrimonious divorce. How we mock those afflicted by addiction, they become the bane of our jokes, we can’t look at ourselves so we point and sneer at them instead. I’m bad but I’m not as bad as her. I wonder if the comedians Graham Norton and Frankie Boyle watched that film and cringed as I did poking fun at a young girl’s painful, long drawn-out suicide mission. Like so many of us her body just gave up, it couldn’t take the battering any more. One quote that was relayed by her friend spoke volumes to me about the way she viewed life and the fact that she was a long, long way from acceptance and recovery. It was at the Grammys; she was clean and in London. She spotted her friend Juliette in the crowd crying with happiness at her success and pulled her onto the stage then whispered in her ear “Do you know, this is no fun without the drugs” Not knowing what to do without them. In the end she lost everything that she had once genuinely loved and became the addiction. It was the only way to run away and hide and she reverted to type. It could have been so different, but she was never ready and those around her with vested interest in her were never ready either. Let’s wait until these five concerts are over then she can have a rest. She’s resting now on - a vacation of a permanent kind. Sweet Charity was a different type of character, manufactured, yes, but there are such women out there. The tart with the heart, eternally optimistic, shrugging off the shoulders and getting on with it, pushed down pulled up, but never beaten, enduring it all with gritty determination and a tits and teeth attitude. Believing in the dream that good things happen and love will conquer all. Even after being jilted for the hundredth time. Seeing the bigger picture and never giving up hope. Becoming a giver not a taker and trusting it will all work out in the end. Living a positive meaningful life. Julie