Michael Gravel Edmonton Writer

Five Ago

Funny what half a decade will do to a guy. Quit drinking and a life changes. Many things become not only possible, but maybe even easy. Five years ago this week I kicked the bottle to the curb. I hesitate to call myself an alcoholic – I know many, and their plights dwarf mine. Nonetheless, I had a problem. I spent my late teens and nearly all my twenties intoxicated. Not unusual, I realize. It was fun some of the time, maybe even most of the time. Sometimes I hate myself for romanticizing those times. Guilty of it all the time in my writing. Like most men, when I hit 30 drinking and partying became less fun. Aging and a changing metabolism have their way with everyone. The good nights became fewer and further between. My tolerance was down but I kept packing them in like I was a kid. Eight bottles of wine a week, most of them consumed while I was alone, and nearly every Saturday night ended badly. Worst part of it was, I couldn’t finish a night of hosting The Raving Poets. My good friend Kozub had to take over for me in the second half of the night. Those nights were five pint minimums, and I’m not proud of some of them. A few are so hazy I can hardly remember them.

Before I quit the sauce, I was enamored with the idea of the artist as drunkard. Bukowski, Kerouac, and all those idiots. What they forget to tell you in pisstank artist school is that Kerouac died alone and miserable in his mother’s basement, and Bukowski lied through his teeth just to spite the wake of wannabes that he himself spawned. Pissing on your followers, embellishment, and building your legend are long-established literary traditions. In my opinion, nobody should look up to those legends. The tidbits we have aren’t the whole story, and I have no doubt that the real stories are either more boring or far uglier than the history-winning versions we now refer to. If at all possible, enjoy the best of their art and fuck the rest.

In April 2004 I started writing like a mad fuck. Different than before. The floodgates crashed open and I couldn’t keep my mind tied to anything. I pulled all-nighters regularly and I filled coil notebooks in weeks. Reading that stuff now, some of it’s damn inspired, some of it’s shit, and much of it is just there. Not much of it saw the light of day. I started on the web in August 2004 and started many projects – Dirtpuppy (RIP, and I still have the last DB backup from the site…who knows, maybe one day I’ll put it somewhere, some of that shit was good), StreetRag and Daily Haiku (now beautifully and brilliantly managed by Patrick Pilarski and Nicole Pakan) being the best examples. I started a few organizations in meatspace: The Rasp and the Wine with CT Staples and then Patrick Pilarski as partners, and co-founding The Roar with my longtime pals in the Raving Poets. Both those endeavors are now defunct, but I’m glad I did them and I learned a shitload about organization and what it takes to pull an event together (lots of work, in case you were wondering). Through all of this, and until ’07, I lived with my brother Stuart. His role in my growth was one of stability and support. His steadying presence and unwavering support was a gift, perhaps even greater than the one of living with, knowing, and appreciating him as an adult.

Along the way to now I started my own web business, toured Europe, got married to a killer woman and became a stepdad to a wonderful girl, nearly died from a pulmonary embolism, had a poem about asparagus published by a lifestyle magazine in Michigan, started doing the writers conference circuit, honed my event hosting skills to the level I always wanted them to be at, redesigned my personal website a dozen times, changed my eating habits and lost 35 pounds, read my poetry on television, published a chapbook, bought a Jeep Liberty, and started hitting the gym with a vengeance – running six clicks a day. I didn’t list all that shit to boast. It all became possible because I stopped drinking and I’m goddamn proud of that. Sometimes I feel like I’m paying for something. Paying for my life. All the time I spent wasted. The extension I was granted back in December ’07. You know what the best feeling in the world is? The feeling that nearly anything is possible. That one considered nudge can make it happen…that you can change your history; that you don’t have to play small any more. And maybe most of all, that you don’t have to do it alone.

Five years of evolution. Thanks for being a witness.

Entry #104 · April 7, 2009 in