Infinity Blues

It’s no secret that I’ve had a thing for pretty much everything Ryan Adams does for quite some time. I own a good handful of his many albums, I read his blog, followed his Twitter, watched him on Tumblr, and wherever else he chose to publish his words, videos and songs for 10 days at a time before deleting it all.

It started when a good friend introduced me to his album Love is Hell — one of the saddest and most beautiful collections of alt. country and piano ballads about heartbreak ever put to tape. It started a snowball effect that has slowed down but I doubt will ever stop until he does. (Coincidentally, he stated a while back that he’s on an indefinite hiatus from making music, so maybe that time has already come.)

So it comes as no surprise to most that I finally got around to reading Infinity Blues, his book of poems that he wrote a year or two ago.

Adams has undergone what seems to be a significant transformation in the last few years, having given up several addictions, getting married and, generally speaking, doing everything he can to shed the asshole image he had created for himself during several years of self-destructive actions on stage and off.

If nothing else, Infinity Blues is a look into the mind of Adams at the age of 33. It’s frantic, thoughtful, funny, sad and all over the map from one moment to the next. He talks candidly — and yet still with a shroud over names and events — about his broken family, lost loves, life in the city, art, faith and everything. In one poem he claims that he wrote anywhere from 3 to 17 poems a day for the book which, knowing his prolific creation schedule, isn’t too surprising.

If you like free verse poetry or watching Adams “find himself by losing himself,” Infinity Blues might be worth a read.