Marcus Fair and his organisation Eternal Media have been two big finds for me since I have been working with Wulf on this Recovery Voices project. I love all what Marcus and his team have been doing, and the fact that he is so passionate about making recovery visible and helping people on their recovery journey.
I also love film and filmmaking, and I know that talented filmmakers can contribute a great deal to pushing the recovery agenda and help give a voice to recovering people. Here the last part of Marcus’s conversation with Wulf.
Luck, Legwork & The Future [6’00”]
Marcus describes his ‘instigator of change’—he had come to the end of the road. ‘My high was overdose. It was a cocktail of heroin and crack in a needle into a vein so thick that it came out like a worm and if I wasn’t going into epileptic fit, my eyes in the back of my head, I’d been ripped off. And it was constant overdose, and I died a couple of times, and there wasn’t anywhere to go from there.’
He says that he’s just been lucky with the most amazing people who have helped him get clean and get off the streets, get into recovery, and then stay in recovery. Wulf points out that more people need to acknowledge how lucky they’ve been. He points out how so many people talk about ‘Us’ and “Them’, but in reality it’s not about ’Us’ and ‘Them’—there’s quite a lot of luck in life. Luck whether we lived or died, whether we used drugs or not, or went to prison or not for using drugs, etc. Wulf has had friends who have died on mountains, whereas he fell 1,000 feet and lived. All these things in society that are used to differentiate people—like those who have achieved and those who haven’t—miss the role of luck.
Marcus agrees that there is luck, and then at some point whatever you do sometimes becomes very attractive to other people. Eternal Media is not just about making recovery very visible, it is about making it an attractive option for people. People see what Eternal are doing and want to be associated with it and help. The organisation has been lucky, but they’ve put in a lot of legwork in. Wulf emphasises the more that people see what is going on at Eternal Media and North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC), the more they are attracted to them.
Eternal Media are developing a variety of things for the future, including the new building space and gardens, purchasing lots of tents for filmmaking retreats, and starting a variety of new projects. They are committed to doing a number of recovery-related activities, like the 100 mile walk with NWRC, for free. Marcus points out that they are doing amazing things, but they need more help. Funding is always an issue. Wulf hopes that this film interview will help in some way.
Wulf says, ‘I just want thank you for everything… I just love what you are doing, it’s just brilliant… it’s a great privilege to just watch, be with, and intersect from time to time. I just love it.’ Marcus points out that Wulf was there even before he started recovery and he will always be welcome. Wulf emphasises that the last twenty years in North Wales have been amazing. He can’t think of a better space to have been in and see things flourish.
‘It’s what they say, Wulf, if all else fails, try Wales,’ Marcus replies.