Gil

This post has nothing to do with kink, She, dommes, rope, or sex. Half this blog is about how music drives my feelings, hopes, and dreams - as half of all my posts are music videos. This is a post about music.

On the way to work this week I've been reading a story from the August 9th issue of The New Yorker about Gil Scott-Heron entitled "New York Is Killing Me". It was such a raw, painful article for me to read as I was just a huge admirer and fan of Scott-Heron's in the '70's and early '80's when he was at the peak of his extraordinary musical talent. I saw him perform once in 1977 when I lived in San Francisco. He was produced by Clive Davis and Arista records and wrote "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", "The Bottle", "Winter In America", "We Almost Lost Detroit", and "Home is Where The Hatred Is" along with just a host of other incredible songs that meant the world to me in my twenties. Some call him the grandfather of hip-hop and both Kanye West and Jay-Z have sampled him. He has a new album entitled "I'm New Here" and there is apparently a resurgence of interest in his work.

Gil Scott-Heron is also a crack addict and the New Yorker piece chronicles how this horrible disease has devastated his life. The interviewer and author, Alec Wilkinson, met with Gil on a number of occasions in his apartment in Harlem and the prose captures the essence of a soul trapped by addiction. His description of Scott-Heron clutching his propane torch will haunt me for sometime. My brother became addicted to crack in his early-forties and committed suicide.

His girlfriend, Monique de Latour, does a poigniant and melancholy voice-over to her photos of Gil, now 61 years old, on the New Yorker website. It all made me very grateful that somehow I got sober and have managed to stay that way. Here's Gil Scott-Heron who the article says is one month clean from crack.