Flea

Craig's girlfriend Amanda loaned me Flea's autobiography.

If you don't know, Flea is a founding member and bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His real name, which I didn't know, is Michael Peter Balzary.

I started reading it this morning. I came at it with curiosity because biographies and autobiographies are wildly unpredictable. I have read a ton of them and will continue to do so during the next 40 years of my life.

The ones that read like a novel are the best. The ones that you can't wait to get up and read in the morning.

There is a Neil Young biography that I loved. Bruce Springsteen. Stevie Van Zandt. Warren Zevon. Dean Martin. Jackie Gleason. Katherine Hepburn. Dozens more.

But you never know. Pete Townshend's autobiography sucked. I couldn't believe it. John Cleese's autobiography was boring. Can you believe that? And yet, Eric Idle's autobiography was hilarious, as you would expect. 

Anyway............I picked up the book this morning and my heart and soul got zapped. Flea is a deeply emotional and sensitive man, and a fucking poet. The way he writes bipasses the brain and communicates directly to the soul.

This I was not prepared for; for this I am grateful. I am now guaranteed many enjoyable mornings.

Flea made a trip to Ethiopia in 2010. He listened to three elderly women sing in a church and described it this way, in part: "But those resounding voices reminded me of who I was, for what purpose I existed, and the beauty of it leveled me. Tears are not a sad or happy thing, they mean you care (my italics). I'm a wimp who cries too, so be it."

Describing himself: "I've often felt separate from other human beings....................My earliest memories are rooted in an underlying sense that something's wrong with me, that everyone else is clued into a group consciousness from which I'm excluded. Like something in me is broken. As time passes I become more comfortable with this strange sense of being apart, but it never leaves, and on occasion, I go through phases of intense and debilitating anxiety."

Flea's father left the family when Flea was very young. His mother took up with a bona fide hippy jazz musician junkie and alcoholic. The man played upright bass in a band. 

Flea: "He was just too much of a mess. I'd soon learn he was a drug addict and a drunk who'd never have it together enough to live his dreams, build his bridges, or connect his dots....................But he showed me what it was to turn pain into beauty..............True alchemy, letting go and letting anger articulate a divine vibration. If only he knew how to apply that energy to his everyday life...................He never processed what damaged him so he could get to the other side of it."

Enough quotes. Quoting is dangerous - they might not hit you the way they hit me.

My real point today is the joy I get when a book unexpectedly nourishes my soul. Boom. I pick up the book and right off the bat I know Flea's words, his story, will resonate with me deeply; they will make me feel, they will inspire empathy - they will make me feel alive.

Rescued from the grave once again.