"May they all sleep tight down in hell tonight
or wherever they may be"
Shane MacGowan

Did I ever tell you the story about getting smoked out by Billy The Kid?  It's true, Billy The Kid smoked me out from the great and horrible beyond.  I was hanging out at his grave, and noticed a roach amongst the coins and bullets scattered around the site.  His grave is in a little cage.  The tombstone has been stolen a couple times, so they finally decided to put it in jail.  I still smoked weed at the time, so I reached through the bars, picked up the half-smoked roach, and lit it.

Instantly, I was transported to the caverns of torment deep within a fiery hell.  Not literally.  It was pretty good weed, but I didn't leave my body.  I wasn't tripping.  Regardless, my spirit went down, and I felt Billy The Kid's pain.  I saw him screaming, without actually seeing him.  I knew he was there.  I could feel him.  It was terrible, and even though his tombstone boasts about how many men he killed, I mourned him.  I did.  I stood there and smoked his weed and didn't insult him by paying some ridiculous outlaw homage to him while he lay there chained to a lava floor crawling with demon worms just beneath my feet.  I sensed him, screaming in unbearable pain and overwhelmed with anger and regret for eternity.  To drop a penny on him, or a bullet, or a joint, would be like slapping him in the face.  He wasn't having a good time.  The days of winning ego battles with power-tripping, legalistic little men, of spitting in the smug, dead faces of his enemies, were over.  The time to pay for all that temporary victory in eternity had begun.  It was harsh.  The holy terror of his torment was obvious in my weed state.  I mourned him.  It hurt.

"I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
and the flames went higher"
Johnny Cash

Much of my material is infested with demons.  It's obvious.  From Angels on Fire to Love is Wasted, one could argue that the entirety of my discography is an exercise in draining kerosene from the veins of the fiery monsters that, for whatever reason, have been running more or less free in my heart and mind for however many years.

"Isn't the cure to monsters more monsters?"
Miles W. Mathis

It scares some people away, perhaps because like Miles Mathis (who is being sarcastic in the statement above), they can see it's a mistake.  Others revel in it.  I've seen more than a few fans exchange wicked grins of approval with each other when I sing "Hey yo, hey yo, off to hell we'll probally [sic] go" in "The Heart I Know By Heart."  Nevermind that it's a love song, and like "Ring of Fire," utilizes infernal imagery to more accurately capture the blissful horror of falling in love.  It's not like I'm all excited about going to hell, like I think it's cool.  But how am I supposed to write a love song without talking about hell?  It is called "falling" in love, after all, not "skipping gleefully through the weightless flowers of effortless peace" in love.  But there isn't time to explain all that onstage, and anyway, it wouldn't be cool.  I can explain it here, on this tiny, bloodless little machine.  I'm not reveling in or glorifying anything infernal.  It's a love song.  What do you expect?  Flowers and champagne?

"True Love is a Trip" is another love song that uses hellish imagery to capture the blissful feeling when the elevator cable in your chest finally snaps, sending your heart careening to the cavernous depths of misery and bliss, to finally crash on the rocks and shatter into a thousand pieces you wouldn't put back together for a million dollars, the horror and pain are so ecstatic.  I mean, y'know, when you're really into someone.  Way beyond friends, or some worthless, bloodsucking sexual encounter.  But true, actual "love."  Even if it doesn't exist (the album is called "Love is Wasted," after all).  It's great, right?  Horrible and great.

"And the stars are framed by fire and hair
and our hands are in the air
as our footsteps slowly slip;
true love is a trip"

So what does this have to do with Billy The Kid?  Nothing.  Everything.  Today marks the 5-year anniversary of the release of Hellfire in a Nutshell, Volume 4 of my greatest hits collections.  There are 7 greatest hits collections in total, but if you had to pick one, Vol. 4 is the one to pick.  As the title suggests, it's all about hell.  Which is to say, love.  It's a bunch of love songs, mostly, screaming up from the pit of eternal torment that drives us to kill 21 men or get married in the first place.  Love is like this weird routine, juggling a circus.  Flaming hoops and elephants, lions on the highwire.  Vultures stroking feathers.

Love letters in flames.

Both of the songs I've posted above are on it, among others.  I've always had a hell fixation, but it's not what most people think.  I'm not reveling in the place (rookie spiritual mistakes like Angels on Fire notwithstanding).  I want to get away from it.  But how are you going to get away from it, if it's always there?

Surely not by denying it, by pretending it doesn't exist, or thinking love songs consist of syrupy pap in which the singer professes his or her enslavement to a state of emotional codependence.  That isn't love.  Love stands in the gap, and is willing to burn in hell for eternity to fulfill its desire.  

If it isn't burning forever, can it even be called love?

Is love nothing more than a fireworks show?  Is there no horror in its substance?  No horror at all?  No capacity for failure and destruction?  Can you walk on a tightrope over a lake of fire without taking a risk?  If you're not walking on a tightrope over a lake of fire, are you really even in love?

Is la guapa muerte calling?  Sexy and insane?

Not to me she's not.  Not anymore.  I have faced my demons, stared them down in the hospital, on the street, in the mirror, and it isn't anything I want.  It's a good line, pasted below, but it isn't true.  Not only is there nothing beautiful about the abyss, there's nothing you could possibly give me to ever go back to the edge.  Far from actually "giving" anything to experience the deadly pleasures of that nightmare again, there isn't anything you could give me to ever return to it.  

"Sometimes there ain't nothing I wouldn't give
to stand back on the edge
of that beautiful abyss"

There's nothing beautiful about the abyss.  The demon on the album cover tells you everything you need to know.  That guy was a fool, and had no idea what he was doing.  These days, I'll take the "blues" of peace and contentment over the temporary bliss of damnation every time.

Thank God, I've had the grace and time to accept it.

"May the angels bright watch you tonight
and keep you while you sleep"
Shane MacGowan

Life is long because God is gracious, and is giving us time to repent.  Life is short, because we are eternal beings, and nothing temporal will ever suffice.  When it's over, it's over forever.  For better or worse.

And that's what I'm hoping to impress on you; that's the reason for this article.  The 5-year anniversary of Hellfire in a Nutshell is just a flaming clown car in which to stuff a colorful warning.  Hell is real.  Anyone who's ever been in love knows it.  Just on the other side of that bliss-coin is an eternity of heartbreak and suffering.  Billy The Kid knows it.  So do all "good people," and outlaws.  Are there any "good people," really?  Flip the coin and find out.  Gamble with your soul.  Put your money where your virtue is.  It may be unwise to ignore the possibility that both of them will burn.  Money and virtue alike.  Perhaps our virtue is just a kind of fiat holiness that devalues over time.  Are we in an age of spiritual inflation?

“And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”
Matthew 24:12

Earthly love is like a warning.  There is something infernal lurking behind the veil of joy. 

It's as foolish to embrace it as it is to deny it.  Believe me, I would know.

Thanks for listening.