Full title: Telling Stories
Type / genre: book (autobiography)
Length: 272 pages
Author: Tim Burgess
Released: April 2012
Full title: Oh No I Love You
Type / genre: album
Length: 44 minutes
Author: Tim Burgess
Released: October 2012
When one listens to the latest album (2012) of Tim Burgess, the frontman of the archetypal rock-band The Charlatans, one cannot but wonder. The sound is as clear and crisp as before; the melodies – if anything – even fresher than before. Yet something is gone. 
There are, suddenly, no more bursts of anger. No more dark swathes of desperation. Irony seems released from bitterness, light-hearted, veering into a gentle laugh celebrating life’s wonderful absurdities.
As Tim explains in his biography – also out in 2012, a true annus mirabilis for the author –, he had simply reached a forking path. After consummate and vindictively intense years of music, drugs and alcohol, he realized in 2006 that this could not go on forever. It was just too self-destructive.
Then, after quitting drugs and alcohol, the sobered up rock star had a random chat during a night of New York partying – a friend told him that she had been practicing Transcendental Meditation since the age of 4. What most impressed Tim was that this friend seemed … absolutely normal. Obviously enough, her peace and joy were neither fanatical nor cultish.
Tim Burgess has now been practicing TM for 6 years. In his own words, „TM is a part of my everyday life and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, still in touch with the old me but relieved too that my life has changed. I guess I’ve proved that you can come out the other end.“
And that, arguably, is as good a story as anyone can ever hope to tell.
