A Moment Forever Ago

I’m grateful for investing in two different pairs of comfortable sneakers to help protect my feet during long distance runs. I’m grateful for taking in the relatively pleasant weather we’re having before the super chill arrives this weekend. I’m grateful for the veternarian we have in Denver administering solid care to Harper. I’m grateful for a meeting where we talked about the 12 Concepts, something still quite foreign to me, and how money plays into AA’s survival. I’m grateful for letting anger pass through rather than be held onto for no good reason. I’m grateful for the sea of marshmallows floating in my hot chocolate. I’m grateful for thinking about the impact people who have passed continue to have on me, even in ways I don’t yet realize. I’m grateful for a conversation that reminded me of just how tirelessly my parents worked, often in quite thankless circumstances, to provide for me as they did. I’m grateful for the opportunities I have to embrace a healthier lifestyle, both physically and mentally. I’m grateful for driving teaching me how to better practice serenity.

One of my favorite shows in recent memory is on Apple TV+ called “Central Park“. It’s a wonderfully irreverent adult animation musical comedy set in NYC’s most famous park with voice talent that includes Leslie Odom Jr. and Kristen Bell. Of the many great songs in the show, the one that has stuck with me the most is also from one of the series’ best episodes called “The Shadow” (S2, Ep.6). The musical number is “A Moment Forever Ago”.

I bring this up because the song has been on various playlists of mine since I first heard it in 2021. Like any impactful song, it seeps in and out of my mind at random moments, whether what I’m experiencing is related to the lyrics or I simply want to hum a pleasing tune to myself. All this is to say I never dug into the creators behind the song. My assumption was it must be Henry Winkler singing because he does the character’s speaking voice, but that is as far as I got into my “research”.

Seemingly unrelated I remember reading on some pop culture site about a young, Tony-aware winning Broadway actor named Gavin Creel who passed away from a rare type of cancer last Fall. I thought to myself that’s quite sad. Like me he was a NYC gay guy in his 40s (well, I will be in a little over a week) so we perhaps may have crossed paths or have had mutual connections. Fundamentally speaking I had no real relationship to his work and the only thing I knew about him was this tragedy from a random Internet source.

Or so I thought. When I was rewatching the Central Park episode the other day, I decided to hop onto IMDB and discovered it was Gavin Creel who provided the vocals for this lovely little number. The immediate rush of surprise and sadness hit me. Making the connection between song and singer touched me deeply. Here was someone who tragically passed away, will never produce any more new work, but his impact continues to touch my life in a small, but beautiful way. At that moment I was very moved by everything I had learnt. I felt strangely connected to someone I’ll never meet.

Now there is a way I tie this back into AA. I was rereading the multiple Forewords of the Big Book over the weekend with my sponsee, learning about the history behind how our Program has grown. During our meeting I had to take a mental step back. Here are words written in the 1930s penetrating the minds of two South Asian kids whose families were not only on the other side of the world when this text was published, but also our country wasn’t even an independent one at the time. Still the content of recovery somehow found us. Its impact, at least for me, is as overwhelmingly meaningful and current as it was for folks who read it back then. Its message continues to evolve in interesting ways as my own sobriety changes with time.

When I reflect on it, AA overall is an amazing entity. The stories we share take on lives of their own after we send them out into the ether at meetings, over coffee, on Zoom – hoping they linger in the minds of other alcoholics, hoping some wisdom is conveyed to help at least one person in the throes of addiction survive another day. I’m humbled thinking about how beautifully interconnected we are inside and outside these rooms. Whether by discovering that the voice behind a song I love is no longer here or by reading about alcoholics in the 1930s who strived to make this Program a reality during those formative years, it’s amazing how we manage to survive in such a wonderfully disaggregated, yet unified way.

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