Lips Unsealed

by Belinda Carlisle

  Why not? If the fire was another omen, we didn’t want to face it.

  When we returned to London after New Year’s, we sifted through the damage. Strangely, in spite of the losses, I wasn’t upset. Our dogs had been boarded; they were safe. My pet parrot gave me the biggest scare. Though he was in the fire, he had survived, somewhat miraculously, by imitating our winter coughs, as he was wont to do. The firefighters heard him, thought it was a human, and saved him.

  We sublet a small mews house owned by Richard Burton’s daughter Kate. It was somewhat coincidental since Burton had lived in Morgan’s parents’ Hollywood home before hitting it big.

  A few months later, Miles finally released A Woman and a Man in the U.S. and I returned to the U.S. to do promotion. Nearly a year had passed since the album had come out in Europe and Asia. I didn’t have much enthusiasm for its prospects—or for anything else. I turned thirty-nine years old and didn’t like the feel of where I was in my life. And it came out. In interviews, I was lackluster at best and blatantly negative when I was being honest.

  “I can’t wait to get out of here,” I told a Knight Ridder reporter who met me in Beverly Hills. “I don’t like it here anymore.” I mentioned that I had grown up less than forty-five minutes away. “There’s a lost innocence here,” I mused with a faraway look, “and I think it’s sad.”

  Without realizing it, I was talking about myself. Radio host Howard Stern all but drooled on me as he said, “Goddamn, you held up well. Too many women just sour. You must be happy.” I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “Happy? Yeah.” A few weeks later, I sat with another reporter, a woman who seemed to see straight into my troubled soul. Before she asked the first question, I had the sense she knew too much about me without even knowing me. She had that look, X-ray eyes that saw every wound.

  Indeed, she wrote a piece that described me as a lost and trouble-filled woman nearing forty years old and drifting like a boat that had come unmoored during a storm and was floating aimlessly on a gray sea. I was angry when I saw the story. I felt betrayed. I had been exposed—but not enough to stop my self-destruction.

  Back in London, I was barely able to manage my addiction. The worst was when I took Duke, then five and a half years old, to school and snorted coke in the kids’ bathroom. I knew I was in a nightmare as I towered above the fixtures meant for children and got high. But I couldn’t stop. I had to do a line before I walked home; I couldn’t deal otherwise.

  I remember having to sit in the Heath and come down before I could pick my son up from school. What was I doing?

  Morgan was afraid. I saw it in his eyes and wary approach to me. I don’t know why—I certainly didn’t understand it then—but he loved me. I’ve asked him numerous times why he didn’t leave. He explained that he could always see the beautiful person underneath all the pain, and he couldn’t let go of her.

  I heard that and cried. It still makes me tear up.

  I wish that I had been able to appreciate everything I had going for me. I wish that I had been able to see the things that Morgan saw in me. But I was too cut off. I was incapable of giving or receiving love. Sometimes I knew it. Other times I only knew that I was in pain. I had no idea how I had gotten to that point.

  It wasn’t where I had imagined myself. I was about to turn forty, a difficult passage in time for any woman and even harder when you feel like you’re at a dead end. I spent a good amount of time reflecting on where I had been and where I was going and decided I didn’t have a clue. It was sad.

  Encouraged by Morgan, I began seeing a therapist. It was apparent that I needed professional help in dealing with my demons and sadness. My therapist was a woman with a momlike demeanor. When she asked why I was there, I told her that I felt like my baggage was too heavy to carry around anymore. Then I burst into tears, crying, “I just can’t do it. I’m cracking under the weight.”

  I saw her several times a week, but I didn’t care enough to make it work. It was like when I had cried to Charlotte, Kathy, and Gina on the last Go-Go’s tour, before we imploded, that I was in trouble and they responded that they couldn’t do anything until I was ready to help myself. This was the same thing. I was still incapable of being honest with myself or anyone else around me.

  In my sessions with her I would conveniently leave out information. I was afraid of what I would find if I opened up.

  Nonetheless, it was a start. I inched forward a little more when I read The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield’s New Age adventure novel about a man’s spiritual awakening as he searches for the secrets contained in an ancient book in Peru. It was filled with an easy-to-understand blend of Eastern and New Age thought that underscored my sense that there was something more to life—and I was missing it.

  I took another step forward a few weeks before my fortieth birthday. I went with a group of friends for a three-day weekend to a secret place on the west coast of Ireland, where we hooked up with a promoter who did a lot of work in Dublin. Essentially, he was a rich hippie who lived in an old farmhouse on 160 acres of lush ground. He moved with the unhurried deliberateness of someone who was either stoned or into life’s more spiritual and sacred side.

  I thought it was the latter.

  It may have been both.

  He led special, exclusive mushroom walks across his property and the neighboring landscape. I’d heard they were like therapy sessions: medicinal, healing, and spiritual. That’s why I had gone there with my friends.

  Our walk began with all of us sitting in a circle as our guide led us in what he described as a sacred ceremony. He spoke to us about the profound insights and connections we would likely experience as we went into the world of mushrooms. We breathed deeply and meditated to calm and clear ourselves. I had the feeling of being in an outdoor temple. Then we drank some mushroom tea, stuffed our backpacks with fruit and nuts and water, and took off for the day.

  I had no idea what to expect as we hiked up into the hills. Pretty soon, as I took in the scenery, I lost track of time. I felt a rumble in my stomach, a wave of nausea sweep over me, and then all of a sudden—or maybe it wasn’t all of a sudden—I saw everything around me pulsate and breathe. It was as if the trees were alive. I sat down next to one, caressed its trunk, and purred, “I love you, tree.”

  I felt like it loved me back, even talked to me. I’m not exaggerating; that tree and all the others spoke.

  All of nature came alive as we went deeper into the forest and came upon streams, climbed hills, stared at lakes, and slid down heather-covered slopes on our butts. Looking up through the canopy of branches and leaves, I saw the clouds as giant crystals in a velveteen blanket of blue.

  A couple times we stopped to eat fruit and nuts and have some more tea when we needed to top off. I saw nature in an altered state, one I couldn’t possibly have seen unless I was in this different dimension. At one point, I laid down next to a giant mushroom I found growing beside a log. As I reached out to feel it, the mushroom shouted, “Don’t touch me.”

  Both of us recoiled.

  “Okay, I won’t touch you,” I said.

  Afterward, we went back to the house and discussed the trip. It was dark outside. We had been gone for more than twelve hours. The thoughts, insights, and reflections people shared about the day took a very intimate yet philosophical and almost holy tone. There was also a surreal element to many of the observations that people shared. I was comforted to know that I wasn’t the only one who had seen trees breathe and flowers pulsate.

  People had experienced a range of visions and revelations. But the takeaway was fairly uniform—namely there were many more dimensions to life than we allowed ourselves to see, and not seeing them caused us to squander so much potential. I could attest to that.

  Such insights were easier said and thought than put into practice, but I spent the rest of the weekend thinking, and wondering, about these things and how to incorporate them in my life, and how to change. Indeed, change was a big, scary word to me. I thought about it
often, but avoided it like the plague, and yet in the aftermath of that hike I wanted change more than ever.

  But while change might start with an aha moment, like the Big Bang, it’s a process that happens slowly, and incrementally, over time. It’s about evolution, not revolution. The Go-Go’s were a perfect example. It may have started with three girls sitting on a curb in Venice agreeing to start a band, but it took years of hard work before it happened.

  And so it was with me. At some point I began picking up books about spirituality including the Dalai Lama’s primer The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, which had a profound effect on me after I read it. I don’t remember how I actually ended up coming upon it, but I have a theory about books. I think they find you; you don’t find them. In any event, The Art of Happiness made me realize that I’d ignored the spiritual side of my life, something I had been thinking about since my trip to Ireland.

  It wasn’t the only thing I’d been thinking about. The fact that I was turning forty hung over me like a dark cloud. The dark cloud metaphor is a terrible cliché, but so is getting depressed about turning forty I hated that I was upset about something that was completely unavoidable and much better than the alternative, but I didn’t like it one bit. And I liked it even less when, on the day before my actual birthday, an executive from my record label called and said they were dropping me. I felt bad for having let Miles down. I knew I hadn’t committed myself to the work. But the timing sucked.

  On my birthday, I felt exactly as I had feared—old and washed up. All I wanted to do was get through the day. I did allow myself a nice dinner with Morgan and Duke, who was six and a half and more concerned about me than I ever considered. Many years later, he confessed that he felt like he had an almost sixth sense that caused him to worry about me even though he didn’t know what he was worrying about.

  Hearing that cut to the quick, though I don’t know what I would have said if my son had sat at my birthday dinner and asked me if I was all right or, God forbid, something more direct. I’m sure I would have lied. Why not? I lied to Morgan and myself.

  As was often the case, instead of being forced to take constructive action, I was provided with an out through work. In this case, producers Ted and Amanda Demme approached Jane, Charlotte, and me about turning the Go-Go’s story into a movie. The Go-Go’s were still getting over some serious infighting stemming from Gina’s 1997 lawsuit against Charlotte for unpaid royalties. The suit had settled out of court, but bad feelings had lingered until the movie forced us to patch up that and other problems.

  Thank goodness for email, I quipped to Rolling Stone. We could “air all of our crap” without seeing one another. It was a joke, but was true.

  The five us of got together to talk about the movie, and we enjoyed working on an outline with Ted and Amanda. As was usually the case, we laughed and cringed as we dredged up old stories, and in the process we revived bonds that were too strong to die. I envisioned Drew Barrymore or Christina Ricci playing me—girls with curves or, as I said back then, girls with “meat and potatoes.” We were realistic about the odds of actually getting our movie made. In the end, it didn’t happen.

  Meanwhile, Miles heard that we were getting along and suggested the five of us once again reunite for a short tour the following summer. In a big surprise, everyone was game and marked their calendars. Our reunion inspired a writer to remark, “Not since the Who has a band had a harder time sticking to breakup vows.”

  He was right, but there was a lot of time—and several adventures—to get through before that tour. At home, my friend Amanda organized a holiday outing to Thailand for both of our families. Amanda was a free spirit and out of her mind in a great way. I realized she had an ulterior motive when she suggested the two of us go to Burma for a few days before meeting our families in Thailand.

  “Burma?” I asked.

  “It’s supposed to be spectacular, darling,” she said, and then, with a grin, she added, “and quite the dangerous place.”

  I don’t know why, but I agreed to go. Fortunately we never made it there, but when we found ourselves in Thailand ahead of our families we hired a guide and driver to show us around. One day he took us way out into the jungle. Although we were in the middle of nowhere, I noticed we were traveling on roads that were paved and well tended. It was odd given the location. Our guide explained that the drug lords paid for them.

  I heard the word “drugs” and perked up.

  “Do you know where we can get something?” I asked.

  He turned around and looked at me in the backseat.

  “What do you want?”

  I knew opium was farmed in the Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand, and Laos and wondered if we could get some. He nodded, made a phone call, and said, “Tomorrow morning at nine.” His English wasn’t great, but we understood that he was going to take us into the mountains to meet the opium farmers. He advised us to bring candy and pencils for the local children.

  We were waiting for him the next morning, though when I saw Amanda in the hotel lobby, I said, “You can’t wear Vivienne Westwood high heels into the jungle.”

  “You don’t think so?” she asked.

  “Go back up and get some sensible shoes for the outdoors,” I said.

  A few minutes later, she returned wearing platform sneakers. From my expression, she knew I didn’t approve of those either. But my feet were barely any better. I had on Prada sandals.

  When we got up into the mountain village, we saw only old people. All the young men and women were working in the fields. After a friendly welcome, we were led into a large hut, an opium den. People were sitting or lying on the ground, puffing on pipes. We went to the center, where I noticed a grandmother nursing an infant. I was instructed to sit next to an ancient-looking woman who smiled at me, revealing a few brown teeth that were completely rotted from betel nut. They looked like dirty cars in a vacant lot. She herself looked like she had been there for years. She offered her pipe. Afraid to decline, I took a deep hit and tried to enjoy the mellow that followed.

  Off to my side, Amanda, who had never done drugs, was going through a similar indoctrination. Both of us were trying to decipher lots of chatter we didn’t understand. A situation like that can make you paranoid; after a couple hits of opium in a mountain jungle in Thailand, you go into a whole other level of paranoia. I did.

  After I bought a small ball-sized chunk of opium, some of the regulars with whom we had been trading pipes, plus our guide and various other people who moved in on us, made it clear they wanted to sample some of our purchase. I was happy to share. But when I turned around to get Amanda’s consent, I saw she was lying flat on the ground while some guy rubbed her back. From her dazed eyes, I could tell she had no idea what was going on.

  We made it back to our hotel and put the two balls of opium in the hotel safe. That night, we wanted to go out. We accepted our guide’s offer to show us around and ended up at a karaoke bar where he met up with a friend. Our guide became too friendly for our comfort. We had no idea where we were in the city’s maze of neighborhoods. As our fear grew, Amanda took out her cell phone and called her husband in London. He hung up on her, thinking it was another crazy tale of hers that would turn into a funny story the next day.

  We feared there might not be a next day. The guide was behaving inappropriately with us and my survivor instincts went on red alert. Without our guide and his friend hearing, I let Amanda know that we had to get out of there. A few moments later, I screamed, “Run!” and we tore out of the bar. We ran across the parking lot and saw our car and driver. We jumped in just as our guide was racing to grab us. I slammed the car door on his arm and yelled at our driver to go, which he did, leaving our guide and his friend in a cloud of exhaust smoke. It was a scene straight from a movie—except it was real.

  Once back at the hotel, I feared our guide, angry, maybe injured, and aware we had opium, was going to show up and perhaps bring friends to rob us and get even for what I did t
o him at the club. He never did, but we locked ourselves in the room and tried to smoke the opium. I attempted to fashion pipes out of various objects and pieces of fruit, all tricks I’d learned in my early days on the road with the Go-Go’s. To my frustration, none of them worked. Then I remembered another bit of useless information I had picked up with the Go-Go’s. You could stick opium up your butt and get high as it was absorbed.

  Indeed, a while later, I was very high. Poor Amanda, though. She got high and suffered terrible diarrhea all night.

  A month later, I began 1999 with a three-month acoustic tour across the UK, with stops in Glasgow, Aberdeen, London, Birmingham, Leeds, Cambridge, and Dublin. My fourteen-song set was filled with hits and audience favorites, from the opening number, “In Too Deep,” through the encore, “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” But I still found myself peeking out at the crowd beforehand in disbelief that they had come to see me. I was like, Why?

  Even on this intimate little tour I went back to my dressing room and did what I had done for so many years before going onstage, and would continue to do for more years to come: I opened up a bottle of wine and drank a glass, sometimes more, and transformed myself into that person who could go onstage and have people looking at her. At this point in my life, I didn’t only wonder if I was good enough. I also wondered what they could see.

  You’d think that after all these years I would have come to some kind of an understanding with myself. But no, instead of coming to terms with myself, as I had hoped would happen after my mushroom-inspired epiphanies, I was still as insecure and troubled as ever—maybe more so since deep down I was more aware than ever of my failure to get myself together.

  I knew a better, happier, saner, and even sober me was out there and available. I just couldn’t get to her.

  twenty-three

  BEHIND THE MUSIC

  BY THE END of that tour, Morgan was disgusted with the state of our relationship—and me. As he pointed out, London had too many temptations for me to handle. He hated going to sleep knowing that I was sitting up in the living room, doing coke and blowing cigarette smoke out the window. He was frightened knowing that I often got in my Citroën that was parked in front of the house and drove off in the middle of the night to get more drugs or cigarettes.