Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication and Music

music has, quite literally, saved my life and, I believe, the lives of countless others. It provides company when there is none, understanding where there is confusion, comfort where there is distress, and sheer, unpolluted energy where there is a hollow shell of brokenness and fatigue. And

It amazes me how many people love being unhappy.

Look, the easiest thing in the world is to cut and run. From anything, not just relationships. It neatly avoids taking responsibility for things, learning lessons that have to be learned at some point, reinforces blame, and, in my case at least, ensured I would simply repeat the same shit with someone else.

Lo más difícil que he tenido que aprender ha sido a relajarme y disfrutar sin más de lo que está pasando ahora, confiar en que, si hago lo correcto, entonces las cosas correctas sucederán a su debido tiempo. (p.209)

La música ofrece compañía cuando no la hay, comprensión cuando reina el desconcierto, consuelo cuando se siente angustia, y una energía pura y sin contaminar cuando lo que queda es una cáscara vacía de destrucción y agotamiento.

Ahora sé que la música cura. Sé que me salvó la vida, que me mantuvo a salvo, que me dio esperanza cuando no la había en ningún otro sitio". (p 223)

I was used, fucked, broken, toyed with and violated from the age of six.

How awful to have a passion so intense it dictates your every breath and yet to lack the moral backbone to pursue it. The

I sat there on that Wednesday evening in my pokey fucking living room, looked at myself on the TV screen being a massive, odious cunt, and realised that nothing has really changed. Deep down, like most of us, still now at the age of thirty-eight, I have this empty, black hole inside of me that nothing and no one seems capable of filling. I say like most of us because, well, look around you. Our society, our businesses, our social constructs, habits, pastimes, addictions and distractions are predicated on vast, endemic levels of emptiness and dissatisfaction. I call it self-hatred. I hate who I was, am and have become and, as we are taught to, I constantly chastise myself for the things I do and say. And such are the global levels of intolerance, greed, entitlement and dysfunction it is evidently not just confined to a small, wounded section of society. We are all in a world of pain. If it was ever any different way back in the past, it has, by now, most certainly become normalised. And I am as angry about that as I am about my own past. There is an anger that runs underneath everything, that fuels my life and feeds the animal inside me. And it is an anger that always, always prevents me, despite my best efforts, from becoming a better version of myself. My goddamn head seems to have a life of its own, quite beyond my control, incapable of reason, compassion or bargaining. It shouts at me from deep inside. As a kid the words didn’t make sense. As an adult it’s waiting at the end of my bed and starts talking an hour or two before I wake up so that when my eyes open it is in full-on rage mode, blaring this shit at me about how glad it is I’m finally awake, how fucked I am today, how there won’t be enough time, I’ll fuck everything up, my friends are plotting against me, trust no one, I must try as hard as I can to salvage everything in my life while knowing it’s already a lost cause. I’m exhausted all the time. It’s a kind of toxic ME – corrosive, pervasive, penetrative, negative, all the bad -ives.

Do not confuse kindness with weakness. Kindness is a dying art. It is the single most important quality in this world and one which is sorely lacking.

Real compassion comes from understanding that what feels true for someone is, to all intents and purposes, true. Doesn’t matter a bit if it is patently untrue to you and everyone else.

that’s the thing about music – we hear a piece of music and feel something. We hear the exact same piece of music at a different time and although the music is unchanged, our response is always slightly different.

Bach has taken us on a journey that we interpret and experience through our own memories, feelings and conditioning. You will respond differently from the way I do, and vice versa. That is the glory of music, especially music as immortal as this.

Lo mejor de querer suicidarte es la energía que sientes después de decidirlo: como si te hubieran dado alas después de haber avanzado penosamente por arenas movedizas durante varios años.

En cualquier período de veinticuatro horas no hay momento peor que las cuatro de la mañana. La verdad es que la hora que va entre las 3:30 y las 4:30 es una putísima mierda. A partir de las 4:30 el tema ya no es tan grave, puedes dedicarte a dar vueltas en la cama hasta laa 5:00 y después levantarte con la seguridad de que hay personas que están haciendo lo mismo. [...] Pero si te levantas antes de esa hora, está claro que algo falla en ti. Tiene que fallar. He empezado a escribir esto a las 3:47. Algo falla en mí.

Los músicos tenemos que establecer un vínculo y formar una relación con nuestro público que vaya más allá de los pocos cazadores de autógrafos de después de los conciertos. Sé asequible, responde a los tuits y los mensajes de Facebook, cuenta chistes, sé humano, déjate del rollo ese de artista envuelto en su misteriosa genialidad" (p242-243)

Yo sabía que debía de haber al menos 45 millones de personas, solo en el Reino Unido, que hasta entonces nunca habían escuchado una sonata de Beethoven al completo, y eso era algo que me deprimía profundamente. No se trataba de predicar a los conversos, ni siquiera de predicar en absoluto. Lo iimportante era llegar al mayor número de personas posible, de llevarles algo que quizá no conocían aún, y hacerlo de una forma que fuese accesible y cómoda para todos". (p. 201)

Si me enteraba de que en uno de mis conciertos no se habían vendido todas las entradas, le decía a Denis que regalase las que quedaban, ¿por qué coño no íbamos a darles a algunas personas la oportunidad de disfrutar de una velada gratis de música? (p 200)

Todo es por culpa de mi cabeza. El enemigo.lo que me acabará matando; una mina antipersona, una bomba con el cronómetro activado, moriarty. Mi puta cabeza que me hace llorar y gritar y aullar y frotarme los ojos de pura frustración. Siempre presente, constante solo en su inconstancia, rabiosa echada a perder, espantosa, retorcida, errada, aguda, afilada, depredadora

A woman with the loveliest face imaginable was there. Open, kind, totally loving and non-judgmental.

Unfortunately love is always a practical exam, never theoretical, and all the thinking in the world is ultimately pointless. It’s like learning to play the piano by reading a manual. You might think you know what to do, but until you’re sat at the keyboard and discover how immensely, overwhelmingly complex it is, how much effort and concentration is required, you know nothing.

There is this peculiar twist inside me that forbids me to enjoy things that I like unless they are hidden.

Si pasas varias horas trabajando lenta y metódicamente, acabas interpretando las piezas de forma brillante y con una rapidez y seguridad mucho, mucho mayores que si te limitas a ensayar a lo bestia. (p. 110)