When I look outside and see the darkness of the gray fog and clouds strangling the afternoon sky and watch as the trees stand lonely in the eerie mist, I can’t help but find myself drudging through my decisions and being horribly introspective on my soul searching.

Standing uncomfortably close to this window, I find myself leaning hard against the glass with all of my weight.  What if the window broke and I fell from this floor onto the chilled concrete below?  What would change?  Would I be running just as fast to catch up with something unattainable?  But I catch my self thoughtlessly wandering this path of pain, regret, and confusion.  Recovery is one thing that I’ve never believed in.  There’s a hole, a crater, an emptiness that you learn to avoid when walking, even in the dark.  You memorize your steps as if to avoid stubbing your emotional toe against the foot of a bed.

On this roller coaster, I’ve tried to find peace and solace in the music of the moment.  There was that ‘one’ song that could whisk me away from the otherwise loathsome self-drowning pool of despair.  In its painful beauty and honesty, “Black Gives Way to Blue” by Alice in Chains founds its meat hooks into the weak sinew of my heart.

With great clarity, I find myself listening to the tune nearly a dozen times.  It’s so solemn and speaks of coming to grips with the crater now in life’s path.  I guess that’s more of the personal message that I feel is being directed toward me as if it were sang by a ghost.  I guess that’s one of the most intriguing aspects of music.  We can listen together or apart and interpret or connect differently but yet be inspired to become someone better or stay strong along the path.  As an art medium, it gives so much more universal connectivity to people than other forms of art.  It actively invokes so much more emotion out of people.  Strangely, the feeling of inspiration in sight of a great aesthetic piece is never as moving as its musical equivalent.  I guess that’s the curse of art: To effectively communicate emotion through many senses and staying relevant to all.

Away from the window, I can sit at ease with my head between the earpieces and completely wrapped in the enveloping blanket of sound that is music.  I am carried to a cloud of peace and out of the private hell where the voice of the ghost explains that it’s OK today.  It’s OK.

Alice in Chains is a band that holds a major chapter in my life.  Growing up in the northwest, I was aware of their existence but I suppose their relevance is a matter of perspective.  For me, I always related to the tortured and heart-wrangling lyrics.  I felt not-so-alone when I listened.  But during the bands most notable prominence, I wasn’t interested in hearing the message.  I was busy trying to find my inner suburban anthropometrically challenged gangster wearing my Jay Jacobs baggy pants slung low off of my posterior with a hint of undergarment in plain view.  And now, here I am, surrounded by other individuals carefully carrying out their routine job activities while I stumble through the murkiness of foggy emotions.  It’s the blur of life swirling around me that stops me from getting any focus on composure.  All hallways look the same.  There are no signs to give me direction on this path.  The only clarity is in the music.  This is the way ‘I feel right now.’

I can count on this like a trusted friend.  Not once but other times too.  I remember rediscovering AIC in the late 1999.  Living in Los Angeles changed me at a sub-contextual level.  I was desperate and driven, confused but confident.  In my desperation, like a battered dog, I followed an invitation to spend a weekend with a friend in Las Vegas.  The weekend was met with the ingestion of substantial amounts of chemicals into one’s system.  In the fog of (un)consciousness at some point in the time continuum that weekend, I stumbled into a music store in the Forum near Caesar’s Palace.  Drawn to the music playing?  Maybe?  Following someone?  I don’t know.  For reasons I will never understand, in my disturbed state, I was cognizant enough to hear the music that was playing through the store speakers.  “No Excuses.”  It spoke to me.  To this day I still remember looking up at the monitor playing the video in that store.  The next morning, I gathered myself up off of the hotel room floor, trudged my way back to my car, and drove back to LA in that hot sun down the I-15 freeway. An awakening.  After that, I didn’t look in the mirror of my beach apartment wondering when would be the end.

Today marks another day where I am uncertain how I arrived at this emotional low point.  The journey is slow enough that you don’t notice any of the milestones or warning signs.  All I can surmise that I’m stranded somewhere along the highway in between the exits if identity crisis and disenchantment.

As I‘ve said before, music provides waypoints for your travels through life.  In this instance, it’s Alice in Chains which marks today.  But the music and the voice of the ghost reassuringly reminds me that despite my disenchanted perception, black will give way to blue, pain can turn to hope, and loneliness can turn to acceptance.  And just like a loyal friend, it will be there again for me the next time.  Inspired to lift one’s self up again I wrote the following:

“It’s a choice to be grateful, any moment this can end

My two reasons to believe in something once again

With the sun shining bright, can’t see too many dark seasons

Don’t know what I’m doing here, I’m grateful for my two reasons”