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 I can't help but feel embarrassed. Here I am adding an entry to a blog whose very first post was all about consistency and building a streak. Well, the streak didn't last long...Anyway some four entries and two years later here I am.

I'm not going to lie if I say that I've stumbled upon my own blog by chance. I've been feeling like writing something, but not like opening yet another Word document. Opening up multiple Words is my bona fide note-taking strategy. Over the years I've been piling up those files filled up with notes for my many now-aborted academic projects: articles, book chapters, and, most recently, a whole book thing. I might have developed allergy to Word by now. 

Well, the book project is still very much on my mind, but I've been having a hard time sitting down and concentrating. Whenever I try to actually get some planning done, my mobile phone starts to emit its soundless siren song. As much as I would like to tie myself to the mast and resists all the colourful Instagram pics, witty Twitter posts, and Sephora ads (my personal weakness) that this flat black object is wooing me with, I keep responding to the sirens. I press the google chrome icon and the whole wide world lays open for me.

Once I have fell for the siren song, there's no turning back. Honestly, if I, a relatively smart middle-aged person with a PhD can't resist the temptation, what about the kids that have been born already with that technology. In fact, today I saw a toddler sitting in his high chair. He must have been around one-year old and his parents were feeding him a cartoon on a mobile. The kid seemed transfixed by the whole thing. No wonder.  It's a recipe for addiction to the bloody flat object. 

The subject of addiction has been on my mind since I started reading Anthony Kiedis's memoir, Scar Tissue from 2004. It is unlikely for me to pick this type of book these days (I would either go for a novel or something academic for work), but this was a gift and I fell for it like a ton of bricks. 

The book, co-written by a well-known music journalist Larry Sloman, is a total literary ride. Written in a fast-paced, vivid language, the memoir plunges you right into Kiedis's whirlwind of a life. The memoir follows a chronological order, moving through Kiedis's childhood, adolescence and youth up until the release of one of Red Hot Chili Peppers' most successful albums of all times, Californication (1999).

The ending of the memoir couldn't be better or more appropriate. After years of drug taking and many attempts at beating the habit, Kiedis vows to stay clean on 24 December 2000. I like this ending for two reasons. First, unlike the biographies of such music geniuses as Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley or Amy Winehouse, Kiedis's life story does not end with tragic and premature death.  Second, addiction can be overcome and new beginnings are possible.

True, the memoir is a thick chronicle of Kiedis's intermittent drug taking interspersed with innumerable love affairs with beautiful women. But it is also a work of such raw energy, resilience, and good spirit, that, ultimately, it comes off as optimistic, which can rarely be said about rock'n'roll biographies. The memoir's strength is that it's unpretentious. There are no mock-psychological analyses of Kiedis's addictive streak or his commitment phobia. Instead, the singer says it as it was, chronicling the main events and relationships of his life in an honest and matter-of-fact fashion.  The writing itself is pretty entertaining. I don't know if this is Kiedis or his co-writer, but the book is replete with some pretty striking metaphors and the language is very much alive. 

My take-away message from this memoir is that it was the raw energy of music making that has sustained Kiedis over his most hard-core years of battling drug addiction. For all their incredible antics, the RCHP  are totally devoted to music making. While they have never been my favourite band, I've always appreciated their unique sound and aesthetics. The memoir has made me revisit their output - with much joy - and I can't wait to hear them for the first time in my life in Madrid this summer.