Exile and Zen

Rocks Off literally makes everything ok.

I wrote that a few weekends ago, on a Sunday, when the power was out and I was watching the fog of anxiety creep in. I had just put on Exile On Main Street, my default album for panic, and was moved to articulate the relief I was feeling.

It is difficult to describe the place The Rolling Stones occupy in my heart/mind/psyche/ record collection. I have my Dad to thank for wherever they reside, as he has been a fan since seeing them on the Exile tour in 1972. It was his first concert and he went in an outfit my grandmother had helped him pick out. In other words, I come by whatever The Stones are to me honestly.

What began with loving the sound of the marimba in “Under My Thumb” has become an appreciation of album layout, obligatory listening during holidays/trips/thunderstorms at Gettysburg and a likely-inappropriately overjoyed response whenever a song is used in a film (particularly dir. Wes Anderson, see: “I Am Waiting,” Rushmore; “Ruby Tuesday,” The Royal Tenenbaums; “Play With Fire,”The Darjeeling Limited. Also “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” The Fighter). However, it has only recently occurred to me that The Rolling Stones have begun to fill a more vital role, particularly their 1972 two disc opus…that of an antidepressant.

While Sticky Fingers is my (gun-to-your-head-make-a-decision) favorite Rolling Stones album (more on that later), Exile has the power to lift me up. It is so long and takes you to so many places that you can just ride with it, out of wherever you are.

Keith Richard’s autobiography, Life, recently played a similar role. I read it during one of my rougher periods, a bout with depression in the wilds of northern Kenya. It was the descriptions of making Exile that I hungered for the most. Villa Nêllcote is well-covered territory (at least now, anyway), but I didn't know about the mechanics of making the album, the snaking cables in the basement, the late night/early morning sessions…breakfast in Italy…(if you haven’t read it, go NOW). It saved me. Everyday I knew Keith would be there, a respite from my intense unhappiness.

Exile is, to me, like one of the key tenets of Zen: the idea that when the LAST thing you think you can do is sit with a problem, you’ve just got to sit. And if you do that, if can you wade into the misery and face it, what you discover is the ability to get through whatever shit by just being. If you can just sit, if you can be reinforced and reassured by your presence, your breath, your person, you can move through.

And for me, that’s what Exile does. At the start of “Rocks Off,” I can be a maniac, caught in a storm of my own mind, but before I know it, “Torn and Frayed” has arrived and I find I’m still here, the darkness hasn’t swallowed me.

Emma Impink appreciates angels beating their wings in time, ventilators, a beautiful buzz and 2:32 onward in “Tumbling Dice.”

Joel Skinner

6: Lil One