The worst year of my life was a Cloud of Smoke
I arrived in San Francisco with the love of my life, ready to start our next perfect chapter together.
We had met 4 months before, at 2am on a Monday, in a dodgy South London club. It was intense; it was the great beyond.
I’d never done that well with drugs, but he was into them. He was a highly functional substance-abuser who’d gotten a full scholarship at Berkeley in structural engineering, stoned. He could do high-level computer modelling while completely high on weed. He would channel his intelligence in an almost supernatural way, big black eyes beaming like headlights onto the screen of his laptop.
He was like the moon to me; but younger. 8 years younger. His parents did not approve. Family visits in Tokyo and Hawaii on our way to SF, spelled the end of our love story. When we landed, it was over.
Deep down we both knew it, but for a year, we ran on fumes — literally.
Now that he was back in the land of legalised marijuana, there wouldn’t be a day without smoking. Getting stoned was like a lifeline for him. He put more time and thought into buying weed than a birthday present for me.
Cloud of Smoke (Photo Marija Sribna, 2015)
I got into it, too. He would go to work in the morning and I would light up. I’d make music and watch trashy TV, go to classes, etc
In San Francisco, so many people smoke weed that it has become a normalised part of the culture (arguably, a culture that dates back to the 60s). I don’t think legalised marijuana is a good idea. What I saw were a lot of sedated people, stuck in Stonesville.
Without the smoking, I wouldn’t have been able to bear the day-to-day pain of my heartbreak; with more clarity, I think I would have gotten out sooner.
In the midst of it, I wrote a song called Cloud of Smoke, a trippy electronic jazz lament produced together with my friend Aryaman Agarwal.
Cloud of Smoke
When the air is clear
I find it hard to breathe
I’d like to disappear
And in this cloud of smoke
I see you better, I see it all
In this cloud of smoke
I feel it all, everywhere
There’s still parts of me
That won’t show
That won’t go
Cloud of smoke
I feel better
I see it all
And in this cloud of smoke
I feel better
Cloud of smoke
I feel it all
I see you better
We said our goodbyes and I got on a plane back to London. As soon as I touched down, I could breathe again. Weed no longer needed.
A couple of years later, he moved to Amsterdam.