Howl With Monk

Creativity and recovery - oxymoron or not? Can the two words live in the same sentence? First, the creativity of users…

The wild shamanic utterances, the flung oaths, the heroic stories, the complex lies pouring forth from wild eyed sweating men and women at street corners, their clothing filthy and dishevelled.
- Why, when you're smartly dressed, does no one ever refer to it as hevelled? 'Oh wow, man, you look really hevelled!' -
Crack harpies shrieking poetic prophecies of doom at fresh-faced coppers (trust me; this morning, Portobello). Fabulous stories of impossible delays and miraculous diversions roared out in dole offices and doctors surgeries at closing time into the incredulous ears of cowering norms. Chalk in the hearts, steel in the veins, foil in the lungs, soot on the face like a stoned Dick van dyke chim chimenying across the treacherous rooftops of old London town with a bunch of kids, faces shimmering in the foil shouting for "more!" The terrible eloquence of diconal. The wild song of the hep seamen.


So - Is all this lost? Is this golden age of poetry and outright lies gone? Does an age of intoxication leave nothing to posterity? Our children's birthright swapped for a mess of recovery pottage - a set of self-help books, Feel the fear and do it anyway - not recommended for those inclined to suicide or murder - The road less travelled (often wrongly assumed by the ignorant to be a treatise on the merits of anal sex) read this book and do what you where going to do anyway, but that’s all right, etc. The thin line between self-help and self-delusion.

Does invention and creativity cease? Or does it simply become re-deployed in the generation of resentments for conscientious addicts to write down and unpack?




I'm in Angola late September walking through the streets of Luanda, a sprawling wild dusty red city set upon a hill over the ocean, strange constellations winking and floating overhead, a soft yellow half moon balanced on the tiled rooftops, a fresh breeze off the sea to dispel the fecund pall of human sewage that occasionally wrinkles the nostrils. A man approaches me with a chimpanzee in his arms. In response to my smile he speaks to the chimp in Portuguese and it stretches out its antediluvian impossible black leather parchment hand lined like an ancient map of a fabulous kingdom and we touch across the evolutionary divide. I savour the moment and fondly imagine it feels itself in the presence of a magnanimous god; I unconditionally love it…

Without warning it discards my hand with a contemptuous flourish, sneers at me with theatrical disdain, waves its companion forward and they walk on - my last glimpse of it grinning malevolently over the shoulder of its demonic servant thumbing its nose at me. After checking my wallet I smile and walk away amused. After all, it’s only a chimp. Its opinion of me is irrelevant; no-one would consider its views so why should I? Yes, I think later, mildly irritated, who gives a fuck what chimps think? If my self-esteem depended on the goodwill of monkeys I'd be in a sorry state.

However, though I sit in idyllic surroundings in good company, for the rest of the evening the face of the chimp remains gloating over some secret knowledge of me. I begin to regret not punching it in the face or at least twisting its arm but deep inside I'm uncomfortably aware that in a straight contest, without the assistance of tranquilliser darts and dogs - chimphunds, I would have been soundly battered. Like everyone else I've seen them on the telly tearing apart their lesser capuchin brethren (the ones that favour hats and frequent organs) like pitta bread. In short, any punitive action on my part, however just, would have led to a public beating and humiliation. It is generally understood that chimp/men contests are an unequal affair - geometry or general knowledge, yes, I'd be in with a chance, but fighting… no.

I comfort myself by chuckling over its ill-fitting clothes and its unkempt appearance (unlike me both kempt and hevelled) - then shudder at the meanness of my own soul and the fragility of my self esteem - dissed by a monkey and it all falls down (they're primates actually, corrects my son). Yes, I conclude, there's enough cause for potential resentment amongst human beings without going inter-species on it. There are no easy victories in recovery.