Music Monday - Vol 3 - James Arthur Recovery

James Arthur - Recovery

James Arthur is a British singer who won the British show  X Factor and fell from grace due to an in appropriate comment he made for which he later apologized.  The song below is more about looking yourself in the mirror: do you like what you see or are you willing to change?  Do you give up or do you try to recover?

Recovery is about sitting down with the truth of ourself and facing the truth about what we are.  We can never recover by running away or ignoring things from our past that bother us.  That's what "Recovery" is all about: sitting down with yourself and coming to terms with what you see.

I take this song personally because when I look at myself and my truth, I don't think I'm always honest with myself, and there are many things in my past that I would like to ignore.  However, if I want TRUE recovery, I am going to have to come to terms with my past.

Partial lyrics to his song are listed below:

I don't wanna play this game no more / I don't wanna play it / I don't wanna stay around here no more / I don't wanna stay here / Like rain on a Monday morning / Like pain that keeps on going

In my recovery / I'm a soldier at war / I have broken down walls / I defined / I designed / My recovery

I love the above verse and how passionately he sings them.  You can just hear the pain dripping from his voice.

I could find no definitive answer on the second stanza listed regarding what it is he "defined" and "designed."  From repeated listening I can only surmise from the intonation of his voice that he is referring to designing his recovery.  My interpretion of these lyrics is that he's become a soldier because he's had to fight and build a recovery for himself and repair his reputation.  He will not be destroyed again by his old self.

As we watch the video, perhaps again,  see if you can determine what he's emoting and how it makes you feel.

It's a simple, stripped, and black and white video that has him in the middle of a circle and the video camera is rotating around him.  What does this basic video add to his message and to his recovery?  I think the simple, encircling aspect of his video highlights how he keeps going round and round and looking at himself in the camera and we do just the same thing by never stopping or looking at ourselves, but if we want to get better, we will have to stare that mirror in the glass and find out what we're made of.

I think because his video is black and white it is symbolic of the truth we discussed earlier.  For the songwriter, it is all or nothing.  It's either recovery or relapse.

What about us?  What if we drown out all the things that get in the way of our recovery?  For me it would be thinspiration pictures or looking online at calories.  It might also be the negative dialogue I tell myself about how worthless I am.  What about you?

I can relate to the idea of building and defining my recovery.   We all have our own path to take and have to build our recovery the best we can.  There is no definitive course that cures us, so we have to define our recovery, face the truth in ourselves, and keep moving forward.

Questions I ask myself: 

Do I truly want to recover?  What does recovery look like?  What does recovery mean and not mean?  What am I willing to sacrifice to work towards recovery?  What will it take to recover?  How can I recover?

I'd like to hear from you.

What are your thoughts on this song?
What are your thoughts on recovery, yours or otherwise?