Morissette On Life After Rock Bottom
Source: By Karen Bliss
Posted: 06/09/08 11:48AM
Filed Under: Music
AOL Canada spoke to Alanis to find out more about her new album, being single and her life battling addictions. With each new album since 1995’s phenomenal smash Jagged Little Pill, Ottawa’s Alanis Morissette does some soul-searching. Flavors of Entanglement is no exception, charting what she calls her “rock bottom” moment. Released two days after her 34th birthday, the songs explore human ties, growing up, breaking from crutches, and standing capably on your own two feet.
In “Underneath” (the first single), you begin the first two verses with “Look at us” from “waging war in our bedrooms” to “form our cliques in the sandbox.” You’re drawing a comparison between “us” on a small personal scale and that of war?
I rarely ever write songs that are overtly political because I just believe that the personal is the political. So what’s happening in a living room between me and another human being, if there’s unrest or conflict or ego or projection, or whatever it is, that’s what’s actually happening between nations. There’s no dialogue going on. So rather than me writing about what’s going on between China and Tibet or what’s going on in Iraq, which I could easily just comment on idly, rather than singing about it from a pulpit, I’d rather just write about it from my own personal conflicts and how in cases maybe I’m a little dictatorial or I don’t listen to someone. I’ve always believed it starts here anyway.
How do you feel, being a Canadian – and now dual citizen — living in a country that is run by Bush?
For now.
Unless you’re pro Bush!?
Er, no…I love America. America to me is like the older brother who is on the varsity team and Canada’s like the thoughtful younger sibling who’s maybe a little bit more communicative. It’s hard to generalize that much.
It’s an exciting time because at the start of next year there will be a new leader and there will be change.
Yeah, but I never really look to the one leader. I just think that the system itself is flawed. I just think that the people who voted for whoever is the leader at any given time— even though they say it was fixed and Florida blah blah blah – I still think, well, it is a democracy and we are the ones that choose what’s going on and we even stand behind our political system. There could be a whole planetary uproar about our governmental systems and there isn’t.
Have you been watching the primaries?
I used to be quite obsessed about it, but now I am not. I mean, I know what’s going on, but I don’t obsess over it.
The song “Not As We” includes the line: “Day one day one start over again.” Is that what you’ve been doing personally since the “we” became “I”?
That one is just the fantastic rock bottom moment. I’ve had so many rock bottom moments in my life. I’ve hit rock bottom, but I didn’t necessarily bounce up as high right after. This one was the biggest bounce.
What is rock bottom? Not many of us have been there.
It’s completely losing your shit and realizing that your life is utterly unmanageable based on how it was being navigated [chuckles], until that moment.
Do you think you are being hard on yourself? Is your rock bottom really rock bottom?
Well, I think ‘rock bottom’ is when there is no more sense of control. I used to think, ‘Oh, I can get myself out of this,’ but it was a really beautiful surrender. It was like it was the proverbial, suicidal, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’ moments, and a lot of them have to do with addictions, and self-parenting. What I really see myself on now is this recovery path and [from] any addiction really, I’ve had a lot of them [laughs].
How do you let it get that far – whatever that is? Are you talking relationships? Substances? Work?
All of them. Workaholism, busy-ness addiction, food addiction, sex addiction, love addiction, substance addiction. It’s all of them, and I think a lot of people who go to rehab, and a lot of people that are in 12-step programs, come to realize that they don’t have just one addiction. It’s often overlapping a few. I haven’t met that many people that really only have one and that are untouched by any other one.
You have been doing the same thing for 20 years — music. Do you think now you've stepped back and taken time for yourself that you will never go back to workaholism?
Yeah, on a work level, definitely. If I’m just to make it as clear as possible, I think it’s just a matter of growing up. I was this early-‘30s woman with an early ‘30s body, but as this 11-year-old in some ways. I’m still on it. I’m still on the recovery journey, so I don’t think there’s any arrival point and that’s part of what [the song] ‘Incomplete’ is about. I’ve always thought that there would be some finish line. I would arrive there; I’d high five everybody and be done.
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