"I will always be a message.
Only now, the message is different."
Sicario 2

Man, I am tired of listening to people talk about their girlfriends.  It's like listening to a homeless alcoholic talking about his favorite drink.  I'm tired of drinkers too.  I have a good friend who's a drinker.  Lost a foot, didn't take the hint, still drinks.  Love the guy.  Truly.  But I don't know what to say to him.

"Yeah man, hahahaha, the world is a casino, hahahahaha, remember that time in Van Nuys when, hahahahaha, DON'T YOU KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO HELL?"

Glug glug glug I'm a bug in a rug say what?

Hell, man.  Forever.

What else?

I don't get the denial.  Really I don't.

"May you bite
your lip that
you cannot
meet with God—
or
Beat me to a pub
—Amen"
Jack Kerouac

"Relationship" people are the same.  It makes even less sense than hardcore drug and alcohol abuse, really.  Alcohol and drug people tend to know what they're doing, even when they don't.  There's a lot of denial there, to be sure, but you don't generally see a glib, dismissive grin of self-satisfaction on the face of the hardcore alcoholic.  The hardcore substance abuser tends to have a healthy amount of self-disbelief, that often manifests as obvious misery on his or her face.  "Relationship" people, though, I mean...  You're taking your pants off....  What...  Now?  Here?  In the middle of a housefire?

What are you, a monkey?

People who are still chained by their own genitals to the floor of a dungeon of vomit and fire while sucking down beers at the edge of the abyss will pretend to be offended by the fact that such base, obsolete activities bore me.  They will feign defensiveness and dust off the tired old claim, as though it was some kind of revelation, that "I think I'm better" than they are.  Nevermind that they seem to actually be arguing in favor of my superiority by making such a demonstrably-inferior claim; fortunately, the negative effects of that kind of self-condemnation do not extend beyond the realm of their own heart and mind.  But because they're still ignoring the fact that being in "the best relationship they've ever had" is nothing more than the demons upgrading their experience in the illusion to keep them down, they try to guilt you into feeling bad for "judging them."  It's boring, but if their hatred and sanctimony can eventually be translated into the understanding that THE DEMONS ARE UPGRADING THEIR EXPERIENCE TO KEEP THEM DOWN, because what worked on them in 2004 isn't going to work on them today, there may still be hope.

I was the worst drunk I ever knew, a volatile Jekyll-and-Hyde drinker with no off switch, who was "a better person" after 4 beers, but who could never stop drinking until the sun had come up 10 or 20 times, and even if the drunk times were "good" 8 times out of ten, the 2 times they were bad were beyond horrible.  Just, douchebag athletics of the worst, most loathsome and lamest-conceivable kind.  Nothing violent, nothing threatening.  Just douchey.  Weak.  Powerless.  Insipid.

Pathetic.

And with the exception of one short season in the late 90s, a season with a ZERO percent success rate (fortunately), I've never "tried to get laid," and have always "been in relationships."  To my own disgrace, I have to admit I've even been married twice.  What a complete waste of time.  And I got off lucky.  All I lost was vast swaths of time, endless acreages of hours extending to the horizon, far more expensive than money.  You can always get back the money.

The time is gone forever.

So, no.  I'm not "better" than the drunken, fornicating monkeys who pretend 30 or more years haven't gone by since we first made the mistake.  I'm past them.  Beyond it.  Not better, just farther down the road.  To look back and watch somebody spinning their wheels in the idiotic bliss of a booze binge, or roiling in the muck like a pig in the stained laundry sty of an "inspiring relationship," is to faceplant into a bottomless puddle of AGGRAVATION AND IMPATIENCE.  A puddle I wouldn't have had any problem avoiding, if I'd kept my focus on the road, my eyes like melting tires on the message.  Keep your eyes on the road, and not back toward your friends, while they waste their lives playing footsie with the fires of hell.

I'm not better than it.  I just can't stand it.  I'm tired of it.

It bores me.

Can you feel the distance growing?  It has become undeniable.  There is a chasm of understanding, and we are all standing on one side or the other.  One side leads to life, the other leads to death.  There is no in-between.  The chasm is filled with raging hellfire, so even if you wanted to walk the line and appease both sides, it would be impossible.  There is no way to stand in hell and pretend to be alive.  Not anymore.

This has been a strange, heavy season.  If it hasn't been strange or heavy for you, you are floating downstream with the chaff.  Except now, in 2024, the river isn't going to the sea.

It's going straight to hell.

Did you know that the soul of one child-molesting serial killer is more important to God than the whole of the world's art, music, and literature, throughout the entirety of history, combined?  Were you aware that if just ONE child-molesting serial killer has the humility to repent, God is more pleased with that than any amount of brilliant music, art, or writing?

It never occurred to me, either.  Not until today.

The details are neither interesting, urgent, nor tragic, but today is the day I finally threw the towel into the laundry basket of eternity.  It was dirtier than I thought.  Even though I'm sure I would have gone to Heaven if I died last month, I still believed it was possible to take people at face value, and that "what you see is what you get."

What you see is almost never what you get.

Except, of course, with Jesus.  In which case you get immeasurably more.

There are many reasons I haven't written any music for years, but at its core, I think it's because God wanted to bring me to this place of complete and total disengagement from literally everything.  I am finally done.  I am no longer a singer.  I am not a songwriter (haven't been for years anyway), and I am not a poet, or a writer.  I am not a gringo or an American, or a singer or a writer.  Only on the surface.  Even if I'm all those things, or more (or less), as of today I'm none of them.  From now on, I am a message.  That's all that remains.  It cannot be my message.  If the message I'm conveying comes from me, I'm doing something wrong.  The message had better come from God, or not exist at all.  For my own sake.  It isn't my message.  I may be the American, gringo envelope in which it is delivered, but an envelope is all I am.  The envelope is of no value or importance in itself.

What's important is the relationship with the Author, and what the envelope contains.

The spirit in people who don't feel the need to keep their pants on in the presence of a flattering angel of death, fluttering her eyelashes like flies of butter in the flames, is my enemy.  Not the people, but the spirit.  It is my enemy.  Not by any choice of mine.

It legitimately hates me.

It hates you, too, but if you're not open to the possibility that getting drunk and/or screwing people is an obvious mistake at this late stage of the game, you will be very lucky indeed to survive with an overwhelming sense of unbearable regret.  Putting down the bottle and keeping your clothes on doesn't save your soul; let your heart make up its mind for Jesus while there's still time, and the drunken, naked roiling will leave on its own accord.  You won't want it anymore.  But do it now.

Make up your mind.

Good luck.