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Spinning. Everything is always spinning, glowing and rushing away from him. He wonders why that is. This thought makes him giggle like the playful child he never got to be. In the haze of his paralytic mind, this thought makes him sad. But then this emotion is far too much and he blacks out on his cold, hard bed in a hotel somewhere in Japan.
James Blunt sits up in bed far too quickly and the floor rushes up to meet him. He closes his eyes and groans, the weight of an intense hangover rushing into his head. Great, his day was ruined before 9 am. He stumbles to his feet and to the unopened bottle of water discarded on the floor yesterday morning with the rest of his belongings. The truth is he’d taken all his worldly possessions on this tour because he didn’t really have anywhere else to leave them. Of course he had his tiny flat in London but fame had thrown itself upon James so quickly that he hadn’t had time to prepare. Fuck he did not want to think about that right now, the whole reason for last nights mad drinking spree was to forget. It was 2006 and he was in the second year of his Back to Bedlam world tour. This, he had declared after one show, was his purpose in life. It didn’t matter that he was being followed around by death threats, angry paparazzi telling him he was the least deserving person of success. It didn’t matter that his girlfriend had left him last month and he was finally starting to accept that at 32 he was officially unlovable. It didn’t matter that every chatroom, newspaper and column had something nasty to say about him and his music, when all over the world people were screaming his songs back to him. This was all the therapy he needed, and trust him, he needed lots. As he necked back 2 paracetamol he suddenly regretted last night's extreme drinking. Today was his last day of the tour and tomorrow he would fly back home. Then he would be expected to get on with his life, to find a house, start writing the next album and fuck he knew he could never top this success. People had already pledged to avoid him like the plague. Before he realised what he was doing, James found himself rolling a spliff and sinking into the couch. And in stoned oblivion, he let himself drown.
Home. If you could even call it that. Because this two bedroomed flat would soon be someone else’s and James could not wait. He had too many traumatic memories here. The ones of his father finding him black out drunk on the floor just before he was set to leave for tour. The ones of the girl he believed was his soulmate telling him he meant nothing and that she hoped he “just fucking ended it before someone else did her the favour”. And then the darkest of all, him trying to take up her offer and downing a concoction of drugs, legal and not, and alcohol. And then one final, desperate attempt to leave the earth just after the criticism started pouring in, the violent letters to him and his family. He’d taken a razor to his wrists and sunk into the bathwater. The most humiliating moment of his life was waking up in the morning, freezing and half drowned in his own blood. He’d bandaged his wrists and covered them up with bracelets but almost two years later, the scars lingered purple and angry, a constant reminder of what he nearly did. Nobody knew. Carrie suspected but she didn’t need any ideas and he was resigned to give them to her. As he packed the rest of his life into cardboard boxes, stamped ready to go to Ibiza he let out a sigh of relief. Maybe now he could forget about the hell and heaven combined which the last two years had been. Ibiza called to him and he was excited and ready to start a new life.
What he didn’t realise was that this chapter of his life, his second album and tour, would be the darkest years of his existence and 17 years later he would still be mourning the man he left behind in his London flat.