One Hour At A Time with Mary Woods

Guest: Brixton Key    In a fascinating interview Brixton will discuss his unusual upbringing as well as the U.K. music scene in the 1960's, a time fueled by drugs and rock and roll.  He will talk about dysfunctional families, what it was like working for the British music weekly Melody Maker; becoming Chris Isaak's music manager in America, getting a second chance at life (his battle and recovery from heroin addiction as well as a life-threatening brain aneurism), and his semi-autobiographical book Charlie Six.  More info can be found on his website www.whereischarliesix.com Brixton Key was born in Isleworth, England in the 1950s to a party-loving Mum and an errant Dad. Expelled fromboarding school, which he attended on a scholarship, Brixton landed a gig with the British music weekly Melody Maker,writing under the name of Mark Plummer. He left for America to manage Chris Isaak in the 1980s, guiding the pop idol and actor's career as MTV started ruling the airwaves. In the 90's Brixton suffered a life-threatening brain aneurism. After he recovered, on the advice of his stepson he began writing fiction. Brixton lives with his girlfriend Josephine in a downtown San Francisco loft. In the late night hours he reads his favorite authors under skyscraper shadows, and works on his sequel of theCharlie Six trilogy, There Ain't No God Here. The purpose of these Internet podcasts is to increase awareness about recovery from substance use disorders and mental illness and to decrease the stigma and increase awareness of the discrimination that exists for people with substance use disorders and mental illness.  Our hope is that people will understand that recovery is a process and that there is treatment that is as effective as what is being used for other chronic illnesses.

WestBridge Community Services is a private non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the recovery of individuals and families that experience co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders. All WestBridge programs utilize evidence-based treatments to help participants and families achieve their goals.

New article in Forbes Magazine

 http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/02/15/how-to-kick-adversity-in-the-butt/

How To Kick Adversity In The Butt

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This is a guest post by Brixton Key, author of the novel, “Charlie Six.”

If you live long enough, chances are there will be a time in your life when no matter how hard you strive, you worry about going under. Many people feel that way in today’s tough economic times because of job loss, investment setbacks–or both.

For me, the really rough period began in the spring of 1998 after I suffered two burst aneurysms, requiring hours of brain surgery to repair, 16 days in intensive care, and months of recuperation. It didn’t help that my house was being renovated at the time and draining my bank account. My partner and I were always arguing. She saw a changed man. I was angry about the constant pain in my head that lasted for months.

Finally, I moved out into a loft on my own. Three months later a disc slipped and ruptured in my spine requiring another surgery. Then the day after Christmas I broke my right big toe playing soccer with my friend’s children. (Yes, that required another surgery.)

I’m an optimist but by then I wrung my hands in despair. To dull the pain, I turned to heroin. It was easy to score. I rang a pager and the dealer rang my door. My bank account dwindled. I became suicidal.

Today I’m back on my feet, living in San Francisco and writing novels. Here’s what I learned along the way about coping with adversity.

Don’t be a wimp–turn to professional help. There’s an answer to every problem. I was born in Isleworth, England during the 1950s and like the character, Charlie, in my novel Charlie Six, grew up in what we now call a dysfunctional family. I lived with a single mother after my father ran away from his creditors and the law when I seven. She was a fun lady, who liked to party and to have a good time, but Mum realized my education was paramount to my success in life.

As I was running wild, she took advice from my grandmother, a tavern owner, who told Mum that through her trade association I qualified for a Guinness scholarship to a boarding school on the outskirts of London. Being banished from home when you’re young is frankly horrid, especially since my working class Cockney background set me apart from the other middle class children at school.

I can’t say I liked boarding school, but it taught me an important life lesson: Always ask for advice from those experienced enough to help you. Events leading up to it may seem shocking today. I told a teacher, who asked me why I was crying, that two older boys were bullying me. She told me to bash them in the nose. They never messed with me again.

Years later, when I woke up in an emergency room bed from an overdose, detained as a danger to myself, I asked for a counselor. He was a smart man from Catholic Charities. He placed me in a rehab program sponsored by the city of San Francisco. Best yet, he said the resident therapist’s door was always open.

I spent hours in her office, but was amazed at how many of the residents didn’t seek her help. When I left the facility, she gave me a stray cat to look after. The cat, Emmylou, kept me company while I wrote my first novel.

In times of stress, always obey the “walk” signal. I learned this in rehab and still adhere to it. In times of stress, we panic. It’s natural to run. Instead, we should slow down. It takes a steady mind to overcome adversity. Don’t rush decisions. Does it really matter that you can cross the street when there are no cars approaching?

It’s amazing the clarity that floods your mind while you are patiently waiting at a crosswalk. Like grandmother taught you, patience is a virtue. As an author I try to stay clear of clichés. However, I cherish this one. You can see it in action every week during the football season. It’s what makes a great quarterback able to come back against all odds in the fourth quarter.

Take a breather and go for a stroll. I’ve read that Steve Jobs often walked for miles, letting his mind float free of encumbrances to solve problems, and I expect finding new ones to surmount. I’m not one for exercising at the gym. I don’t enjoy the rush of endorphins from running on a treadmill, but I do enjoy the steady release of them walking the streets in San Francisco, where I live. I’ve solved more problems with plot, or character development strolling deep in thought than I ever have fretting over them at my computer.

Don’t wallow in regrets. We’re told that everything happens for a reason, but that’s a simplistic and magical view of life. None of us has enough time to fully enjoy our family and our friends, a good meal, a great conversation or a good book. Life’s fleeting. We must teach ourselves to enjoy every moment. I don’t like casting my spiritual views, but I’ve never met anyone who’s come back from the dead.

I certainly came close to meeting death while my neurologist mended my brain. After a recent book reading , I noticed the disapproval in his eyes when I smoked a cigarette outside. I don’t regret ever having lit a cigarette. I don’t regret the bad decisions I made when I started working in the music business as a teenager. They were guiding lights later when I managed Chris Isaak’s career to hit records.

Bad decisions are perceptive teachers. They demand from you deeper thinking later on. They’ve helped me as an author to glimpse into human nature. As Edith Piaf sang, “Non, je ne regrette rien” — It is what it is: “I don’t feel sorry about nothing, because my life, my joys, today they begin with you.”

Never chase the blues away with mind-altering substances. The blues are life’s zingers. They’re are a reminder of how glorious yesterday was and how great tomorrow will be. The British songstress Adele seized upon hers to make a captivating CD. On Sunday, she stole the show at the 54th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, winning all six categories for which she was nominated.

Don’t kid yourself that drinking or drugs will pick you up when you’re down. They only gloss over your problems. You make rotten decisions when your faculties are impaired.

Instead, take a walk when you’re overloaded, or sit in the kitchen with a cup of a tea and talk to a good friend. No matter how dark the skies get when adversity visits, I’ve learnt to love that old maxim that trouble comes in threes. “Good,” I now say to myself when bad things happen. “It will get better from here.”

Guest Article in Steppin' Out Magazine

Steppin' Out Magazine published a guest article of mine today.

The Original article appears on page 52-53 on the link below

http://www.so-mag.com/3dissue/012512/index.html

New Review for Charlie Six on Litseen

Great review for Charlie Six  today posted to Litseen today by Dana Sitar.

CHARLIE SIX BY BRIXTON KEY: ruckus all around, pints being poured and drunk

 

Charlie Six is a unique coming-of-age novel, set in the seedy pubs and back-alleys of 1960s London. Charlie is a rebellious boy ready to embrace the musical and cultural revolution of the times, cheeky in his Beatle boots and shaggy hairstyle. Raised by a collection of gangsters, alcoholics, shysters, and generally big-hearted miscreants, Charlie has to learn to define his own lines of right and wrong from an early age—his definition of “right” far more mischievous than his schoolmasters would like.

The cast of characters painted by British-born author Brixton Key is colorful—to say the least. Were they to actually be expressed on canvas, this crew would splatter across its surface in a mesmerizing tie-dyed spiral, with plenty of elusive black splotches. The author offers this effect beautifully, using language that is vivid without being long-winded. He displays a cast of immoral hooligans we can’t help but love, root for, and miss… as some, inevitably, are lost or left behind.
Despite Key’s fluency at painting each scene, the novel would have benefited greatly from more aggressive editing—both to tighten up the storyline and to do away with grammar and punctuation issues. The characters are absolutely the novel’s saving grace. Even with the story’s structural issues, each page of dialogue between characters and the colorful observations by Charlie made me want to keep reading. Key’s clever manipulation of language alone is enough to push the reader forward.
The Cockney slang and accent employed by both the characters and the narrator of the novel were difficult to follow at first, but with time the words fall into a rhythm reminiscent of the sounds of an English pub—ruckus all around, pints being poured and drunk and slammed to the bar. This is not a novel to be read in short spurts but one to devote time to, so that you can fall into this rhythm and be carried across the page into the world of Charlie Six.

I recommend that the reader first flip to the back of the book and read the author’s bio before diving into the novel itself. The story of Charlie Six has an autobiographical twist throughout, and knowing the man behind it will make the reader much more inclined to love the story. Any artistically-inclined reader will undoubtedly recognize the skills of this wordsmith, and those who can appreciate his raucous upbringing will surely love the book even more.

——

Dana Sitar is a freelance writer, editor, and blogger, and author of the memoir series This Artists’ Life. She shares writing tips and anecdotes at her blog: http://danasitar.com.

http://litseen.com/?p=7433#more-7433 

• CHARLIE SIX BY BRIXTON KEY: ruckus all around, pints being poured and drunk

Back to the Li Po Lounge

I'll be back at the Li Po Lounge in San Francisco's China Town

later this month reading from Charlie Six 

with poets Michelle Murphy and S.P. Mackin ...  

It's a great room in a wonderful location ... 

and really fun to read in ... see you there ....