David Rat's Blog: "RAT BITES" - Posts Tagged "open-books"
HAPPY ENDING AMAZON REVIEWS
"Happy Beginning"
February 12, 2013
5.0 out of 5 ★´s
"When you decide to be an outlaw, you gotta stick with it or you're gonna fall flat on the chopping block at some point. You have to embrace the darkness and start dropping bombs on everything you see. This is a life you won't hear about in school, or on the news, or in the official history...it's where David Rat lives. He exists in the sideways glances of everybody on the crappy bright streets; he runs with the hogs and when the night is over, he eats their hearts to live just...a little bit...longer; he is in the dungeon of rock and roll--c'mon down, at once! Yeah it smells like vomit, it's way too hot, and way too loud but it's the only way to redeem yourself after listening to NPR all morning. That's where David Rat is...or rather, was.
So what is a happy ending? Maybe it's the sure end to suffering that David hints at. Maybe it's just the end of another day when you've tricked yourself into thinking you're still alive. Or maybe it's the idea that people can change the world they inhabit. Because in the midst of all this bleakness, there is a tiny glowing atom which may grow into something unexpected.
Rat is easily one of the most fantastic drummers on Earth...but that is not going to save his life. It might save yours though, because that's what rock and roll is for. Rarely does a disciple of the rock church destroy the spectrum of aural joy and then write about it well. David Rat does..."
"Because Every Life Matters"
February 9, 2013
5 out of 5 ✭`s
Read the book in one sitting. It was a poignant journey through the morass of addiction and hopelessness that emerges in the end with a message of tenacity and hope and a new-found love for life. It's hard to imagine a lifestyle of death unless you've lived in and through addiction. In this collection of dark memories, interspliced with colorful images of a life seeking the art it was designed to present, David takes the reader on a journey of self-debasement, broken promises, and eventually to the light that was always waiting at the end of the tunnel. There is no way to present it without entering the shaking, feverish nightmare it was. And yet, there were always glimpses of paradise that drove the author forward despite addiction's debilitating mockery of happiness.
It reminds its readers that every life matters - even the life of a junkie. David Rat is alive and well and the world is a better place because of that life!
"Review of David Rat's
Happy Ending"
February 6, 2013
4 out of 5 ✭´s
I was so moved, by this book, I wept....It was brilliant !..David transports you to his world, his pain, his emptiness, and the abyss.. in himself. To a complete... real life.. "Happy Ending". I wanted more of this very talented artist's ' words.. that became images... and visions "..Haunting..beautiful..painful..raw..."...A "must read".......
"The Honest Truth"
January 9, 2013
5 out of 5 ✭´s
With prose befitting poetry, David Rat shares the heaven and hell of a "Junkies Lament." The painted picture reveals an honest glimpse of the hell and hope every junkie lives on a daily basis.
But that is not what this is about. A deeper read reveals a slice of humanity at its rawest level.
It reveals the strength and spirituality of a good soul, simply along for the ride.
David carries the reader down a dark alley; one littered with lost lives, lost loves, and lost souls. He shares the secret unknown to most, "there but for the grace of god go I." Believe it!
But don't despair through the tears of this read. For in the end, it is really about redemption and the rising of a soul. I found it to be an excellent read and roadmap for the important things in life.
For David:
A junkie's sick
A monkey's strong
That's what's wrong
Oh my god, a monkey can move a man
Send him to hell
And home again
With an empty hand in the afternoon
Shooting for the moon
~ James Taylor A Junkies Lament
"Courageous, profound and hauntingly beautiful"
December 27, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
A raw and intense account of the horrors of drug addiction and one artist who found the strength to pull himself out. David's words rip into one's soul. They are brutal and honest. One can feel the agony, rejection and hopelessness that he felt over and over again, yet somehow he hung on, and found a way out. It's a story of hope against all odds, the strength to survive and get clean - a strength fueled by the birth of his son, James. David is a true poet who bared his soul and turned his pain into a beautiful book, a Happy Ending. A must read!
"Happy Ending by David Rat"
December 22, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
I'm always happy to meet up with an author who has walked a few blocks on the dark side of the street. David Rat is that author. David Rat descended, like Orpheus, into an abyss, and he came up with his hands full of pearls. Drummer for the seminal art noise band Rat At Rat R, which he formed along with guitarist Victor Poison-tete in 1981, David Rat was well on his way to rock and roll stardom. Now along comes junk--heroin--smack--and David's rock and roll dreams go straight into the toilet. "The disease crept in with the new dawn / with a slap seemingly from God's hand / I was awake...the smell of cat urine and lilac filled the air / `I'm freaking sick,' I groaned to no one."
David Rat has seen what's at the bottom of the well. In a sense, he made the trip so that you and I don't have to go. Happy Ending is not a novel or a novella or even a poem. Happy Ending is a human document, the chronicle of one man's dark night of the soul. David Rat tells it like it is. He opens his veins--collapsed though they may be--on the keyboard, and pours out his anguish and remorse--the story of his addiction--in tarnished but glittering images that are reminiscent of Les Poètes maudits, of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. "I'm walking around dead / twenty years of bashing my veins / red stains in the bathroom sink..." In Happy Ending we're with David Rat kicking heroin on the concrete floor of a jail cell, trying to hide from jagged shards of light that are tearing him apart, "puking, shaking, tremors, too hot, too cold, can't sleep, moaning...you meet a side of yourself you never knew."
Like Orpheus, whose voice charmed the birds out of the trees, David Rat is a musician, a poet, an artist. Thus his journey to the dark side was not simply a slam-dunk into a charnel pit, but a transformative experience. Everyone wants to be reborn, but there's a catch: in order to be reborn, first you have to die. And only a few--like David Rat--are trusting enough or desperate enough to simply let go.
Twenty years of heroin addiction left David Rat a shot-out wreck of a man, "a junkie with ghosts in his eyes," but with Happy Ending he has emerged into the light to sing for us.
"Happy Ending is excellent,a must read, an artist's struggle"
November 20, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
This poignant book flows with the words of a true poet and writer. It seems to come from the deepest darkest places that can touch all of us no matter where we are and what we have experienced. It is a voice of pain and suffering and deep emotion sprinkled with humor and clarity and intelligence and magic, a balm for the soul, a struggle for this artist with his drug addiction and his honesty, his music and the fight for his life to overcome--- his deep love for his young son, and he puts it all into words that are satisfying emotionally to all of us readers, hungry for an understanding of his journey ..And with great hope for his brilliant future...
"A Dark and compelling read"
November 14, 2012
4 out of 5 ✭´s
My first thought when I finished this book was wow. I was blown away. This memoir not only packs a punch, but keeps you intrigued and reading more to see what will happen. I was captivated from page one and my attention was kept throughout the entire book. I couldn't put it down and had to read it in one sitting.
I found the words on the cover and the image to be very contradicting. How can needles have a happy ending? They almost always have a negative connotation and bring bad news. The cover art was creative and had a stark contast between the colors and the white background. It is an intriguing cover that captures your attention.
The prose was very well written and each verse broke my heart. The writing was so compelling and vivid, and stated everything bluntly. No sugar coating here. With every word that I read, I could feel the emotion that the author felt, I felt the heartbreak and the pain. The writing was done in a way that each word was not wasted, and the short verses had twice the impact of the long ones.
The author's story tells of heart breaks, loves won and lost, fame and fortune and the dark world of drugs. It seemed as though everytime David Rat got out, something else would bring him down back to the drugs. However, the one thing that finally got him out completely was his son. His love for him was no match for the drugs.
This was a dark book that I usually don't read and it was a change of pace from what I have been reading lately. It definitely brought a new perspective to the world around me. I know that drugs and rehab exist and the dangers of them. However, the way that this memoir was written made it seem so much closer to home than usual. For anyone who has ever known of a drug addict or has been affected, I would recommend this book. The pain and struggle that resonates with each word as it is read just grabs hold of you and won't let you go. Not until you finish it all.
"It's poetry...like you've never seen before"
November 12, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
"Happy Ending" is a rare gem - a brave, poetic and anguished tale. David Rat's minimalist style is vivid, compelling, and fluid. It's not a story for the self-righteous or the faint of heart. No sugar coating here, but unadulterated reality...one man's rise, fall, and redemption, as told by a true modern poet. In page after page, the reader encounters single lines that stand out and could become themes for entire songs. It's frightening to realize that addiction can and often does victimize almost anyone given the wrong set of circumstances. Maybe someone you know. Surely there's, "...a little part of it in everyone." Walk a rugged mile in someone else's shoes, see into another side of life, and experience this hard-hitting book...
"For those of us who have been there and came out better for it"
November 8, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
The book is a drugies look back on the cost and pain of addiction. As tragic as it is; the silver lining shines through from a spirt that wouldn't sink. Moving and artful in it's delivery. You would have to be a very hard case to not be touched...
"Dark & Depressing!"
November 3, 2012
2 out of 5 ✭´s
This book was very dark and depressing. I think it would be good for his son to read it someday so that he knows that his father loved him. I feel bad for the author. Would I recommend this book to others? Not really. People that don't do drugs don't want to read about that agony people that go through when they take the drugs. People that do take drugs wouldn't want to read this because its depressing enough to make you want to take drugs if you already do.
It was well written though even if I don't care for the content....
February 12, 2013
5.0 out of 5 ★´s
"When you decide to be an outlaw, you gotta stick with it or you're gonna fall flat on the chopping block at some point. You have to embrace the darkness and start dropping bombs on everything you see. This is a life you won't hear about in school, or on the news, or in the official history...it's where David Rat lives. He exists in the sideways glances of everybody on the crappy bright streets; he runs with the hogs and when the night is over, he eats their hearts to live just...a little bit...longer; he is in the dungeon of rock and roll--c'mon down, at once! Yeah it smells like vomit, it's way too hot, and way too loud but it's the only way to redeem yourself after listening to NPR all morning. That's where David Rat is...or rather, was.
So what is a happy ending? Maybe it's the sure end to suffering that David hints at. Maybe it's just the end of another day when you've tricked yourself into thinking you're still alive. Or maybe it's the idea that people can change the world they inhabit. Because in the midst of all this bleakness, there is a tiny glowing atom which may grow into something unexpected.
Rat is easily one of the most fantastic drummers on Earth...but that is not going to save his life. It might save yours though, because that's what rock and roll is for. Rarely does a disciple of the rock church destroy the spectrum of aural joy and then write about it well. David Rat does..."
"Because Every Life Matters"
February 9, 2013
5 out of 5 ✭`s
Read the book in one sitting. It was a poignant journey through the morass of addiction and hopelessness that emerges in the end with a message of tenacity and hope and a new-found love for life. It's hard to imagine a lifestyle of death unless you've lived in and through addiction. In this collection of dark memories, interspliced with colorful images of a life seeking the art it was designed to present, David takes the reader on a journey of self-debasement, broken promises, and eventually to the light that was always waiting at the end of the tunnel. There is no way to present it without entering the shaking, feverish nightmare it was. And yet, there were always glimpses of paradise that drove the author forward despite addiction's debilitating mockery of happiness.
It reminds its readers that every life matters - even the life of a junkie. David Rat is alive and well and the world is a better place because of that life!
"Review of David Rat's
Happy Ending"
February 6, 2013
4 out of 5 ✭´s
I was so moved, by this book, I wept....It was brilliant !..David transports you to his world, his pain, his emptiness, and the abyss.. in himself. To a complete... real life.. "Happy Ending". I wanted more of this very talented artist's ' words.. that became images... and visions "..Haunting..beautiful..painful..raw..."...A "must read".......
"The Honest Truth"
January 9, 2013
5 out of 5 ✭´s
With prose befitting poetry, David Rat shares the heaven and hell of a "Junkies Lament." The painted picture reveals an honest glimpse of the hell and hope every junkie lives on a daily basis.
But that is not what this is about. A deeper read reveals a slice of humanity at its rawest level.
It reveals the strength and spirituality of a good soul, simply along for the ride.
David carries the reader down a dark alley; one littered with lost lives, lost loves, and lost souls. He shares the secret unknown to most, "there but for the grace of god go I." Believe it!
But don't despair through the tears of this read. For in the end, it is really about redemption and the rising of a soul. I found it to be an excellent read and roadmap for the important things in life.
For David:
A junkie's sick
A monkey's strong
That's what's wrong
Oh my god, a monkey can move a man
Send him to hell
And home again
With an empty hand in the afternoon
Shooting for the moon
~ James Taylor A Junkies Lament
"Courageous, profound and hauntingly beautiful"
December 27, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
A raw and intense account of the horrors of drug addiction and one artist who found the strength to pull himself out. David's words rip into one's soul. They are brutal and honest. One can feel the agony, rejection and hopelessness that he felt over and over again, yet somehow he hung on, and found a way out. It's a story of hope against all odds, the strength to survive and get clean - a strength fueled by the birth of his son, James. David is a true poet who bared his soul and turned his pain into a beautiful book, a Happy Ending. A must read!
"Happy Ending by David Rat"
December 22, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
I'm always happy to meet up with an author who has walked a few blocks on the dark side of the street. David Rat is that author. David Rat descended, like Orpheus, into an abyss, and he came up with his hands full of pearls. Drummer for the seminal art noise band Rat At Rat R, which he formed along with guitarist Victor Poison-tete in 1981, David Rat was well on his way to rock and roll stardom. Now along comes junk--heroin--smack--and David's rock and roll dreams go straight into the toilet. "The disease crept in with the new dawn / with a slap seemingly from God's hand / I was awake...the smell of cat urine and lilac filled the air / `I'm freaking sick,' I groaned to no one."
David Rat has seen what's at the bottom of the well. In a sense, he made the trip so that you and I don't have to go. Happy Ending is not a novel or a novella or even a poem. Happy Ending is a human document, the chronicle of one man's dark night of the soul. David Rat tells it like it is. He opens his veins--collapsed though they may be--on the keyboard, and pours out his anguish and remorse--the story of his addiction--in tarnished but glittering images that are reminiscent of Les Poètes maudits, of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. "I'm walking around dead / twenty years of bashing my veins / red stains in the bathroom sink..." In Happy Ending we're with David Rat kicking heroin on the concrete floor of a jail cell, trying to hide from jagged shards of light that are tearing him apart, "puking, shaking, tremors, too hot, too cold, can't sleep, moaning...you meet a side of yourself you never knew."
Like Orpheus, whose voice charmed the birds out of the trees, David Rat is a musician, a poet, an artist. Thus his journey to the dark side was not simply a slam-dunk into a charnel pit, but a transformative experience. Everyone wants to be reborn, but there's a catch: in order to be reborn, first you have to die. And only a few--like David Rat--are trusting enough or desperate enough to simply let go.
Twenty years of heroin addiction left David Rat a shot-out wreck of a man, "a junkie with ghosts in his eyes," but with Happy Ending he has emerged into the light to sing for us.
"Happy Ending is excellent,a must read, an artist's struggle"
November 20, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
This poignant book flows with the words of a true poet and writer. It seems to come from the deepest darkest places that can touch all of us no matter where we are and what we have experienced. It is a voice of pain and suffering and deep emotion sprinkled with humor and clarity and intelligence and magic, a balm for the soul, a struggle for this artist with his drug addiction and his honesty, his music and the fight for his life to overcome--- his deep love for his young son, and he puts it all into words that are satisfying emotionally to all of us readers, hungry for an understanding of his journey ..And with great hope for his brilliant future...
"A Dark and compelling read"
November 14, 2012
4 out of 5 ✭´s
My first thought when I finished this book was wow. I was blown away. This memoir not only packs a punch, but keeps you intrigued and reading more to see what will happen. I was captivated from page one and my attention was kept throughout the entire book. I couldn't put it down and had to read it in one sitting.
I found the words on the cover and the image to be very contradicting. How can needles have a happy ending? They almost always have a negative connotation and bring bad news. The cover art was creative and had a stark contast between the colors and the white background. It is an intriguing cover that captures your attention.
The prose was very well written and each verse broke my heart. The writing was so compelling and vivid, and stated everything bluntly. No sugar coating here. With every word that I read, I could feel the emotion that the author felt, I felt the heartbreak and the pain. The writing was done in a way that each word was not wasted, and the short verses had twice the impact of the long ones.
The author's story tells of heart breaks, loves won and lost, fame and fortune and the dark world of drugs. It seemed as though everytime David Rat got out, something else would bring him down back to the drugs. However, the one thing that finally got him out completely was his son. His love for him was no match for the drugs.
This was a dark book that I usually don't read and it was a change of pace from what I have been reading lately. It definitely brought a new perspective to the world around me. I know that drugs and rehab exist and the dangers of them. However, the way that this memoir was written made it seem so much closer to home than usual. For anyone who has ever known of a drug addict or has been affected, I would recommend this book. The pain and struggle that resonates with each word as it is read just grabs hold of you and won't let you go. Not until you finish it all.
"It's poetry...like you've never seen before"
November 12, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
"Happy Ending" is a rare gem - a brave, poetic and anguished tale. David Rat's minimalist style is vivid, compelling, and fluid. It's not a story for the self-righteous or the faint of heart. No sugar coating here, but unadulterated reality...one man's rise, fall, and redemption, as told by a true modern poet. In page after page, the reader encounters single lines that stand out and could become themes for entire songs. It's frightening to realize that addiction can and often does victimize almost anyone given the wrong set of circumstances. Maybe someone you know. Surely there's, "...a little part of it in everyone." Walk a rugged mile in someone else's shoes, see into another side of life, and experience this hard-hitting book...
"For those of us who have been there and came out better for it"
November 8, 2012
5 out of 5 ✭´s
The book is a drugies look back on the cost and pain of addiction. As tragic as it is; the silver lining shines through from a spirt that wouldn't sink. Moving and artful in it's delivery. You would have to be a very hard case to not be touched...
"Dark & Depressing!"
November 3, 2012
2 out of 5 ✭´s
This book was very dark and depressing. I think it would be good for his son to read it someday so that he knows that his father loved him. I feel bad for the author. Would I recommend this book to others? Not really. People that don't do drugs don't want to read about that agony people that go through when they take the drugs. People that do take drugs wouldn't want to read this because its depressing enough to make you want to take drugs if you already do.
It was well written though even if I don't care for the content....
"Happy Beginning" new 5 ★ Amazon Review
"Happy Beginning"
February 12, 2013
5.0 out of 5 ★´s
"When you decide to be an outlaw, you gotta stick with it or you're gonna fall flat on the chopping block at some point. You have to embrace the darkness and start dropping bombs on everything you see. This is a life you won't hear about in school, or on the news, or in the official history...it's where David Rat lives. He exists in the sideways glances of everybody on the crappy bright streets; he runs with the hogs and when the night is over, he eats their hearts to live just...a little bit...longer; he is in the dungeon of rock and roll--c'mon down, at once! Yeah it smells like vomit, it's way too hot, and way too loud but it's the only way to redeem yourself after listening to NPR all morning. That's where David Rat is...or rather, was.
So what is a happy ending? Maybe it's the sure end to suffering that David hints at. Maybe it's just the end of another day when you've tricked yourself into thinking you're still alive. Or maybe it's the idea that people can change the world they inhabit. Because in the midst of all this bleakness, there is a tiny glowing atom which may grow into something unexpected.
Rat is easily one of the most fantastic drummers on Earth...but that is not going to save his life. It might save yours though, because that's what rock and roll is for. Rarely does a disciple of the rock church destroy the spectrum of aural joy and then write about it well. David Rat does..."
- douq ep- (verified amazon purchaser)
February 12, 2013
5.0 out of 5 ★´s
"When you decide to be an outlaw, you gotta stick with it or you're gonna fall flat on the chopping block at some point. You have to embrace the darkness and start dropping bombs on everything you see. This is a life you won't hear about in school, or on the news, or in the official history...it's where David Rat lives. He exists in the sideways glances of everybody on the crappy bright streets; he runs with the hogs and when the night is over, he eats their hearts to live just...a little bit...longer; he is in the dungeon of rock and roll--c'mon down, at once! Yeah it smells like vomit, it's way too hot, and way too loud but it's the only way to redeem yourself after listening to NPR all morning. That's where David Rat is...or rather, was.
So what is a happy ending? Maybe it's the sure end to suffering that David hints at. Maybe it's just the end of another day when you've tricked yourself into thinking you're still alive. Or maybe it's the idea that people can change the world they inhabit. Because in the midst of all this bleakness, there is a tiny glowing atom which may grow into something unexpected.
Rat is easily one of the most fantastic drummers on Earth...but that is not going to save his life. It might save yours though, because that's what rock and roll is for. Rarely does a disciple of the rock church destroy the spectrum of aural joy and then write about it well. David Rat does..."
- douq ep- (verified amazon purchaser)
