Lately I’ve been mucking around, digging up SKELETONS and summoning GHOSTS, and so on, and I’m thinking I ought not have. What I mean is that I’ve been emailing people from The Long Long Ago, and I wanna say half the time it’s a total dead end . . . but then every now and then someone does respond, and I’ll tell you what: a bunch of them are married. The married ones don’t really seem to wanna talk. There is definitely a finality to their emails. I guess they’re not curious anymore, or maybe they have what they need and don’t need anything from whatever came before . . . they only want what comes next, whatever that thing is, and what came before is irrelevant. Well hey, what’re ya gonna do.

I wonder about these people, I really do. I spend a good deal of my off-hours-thinking-about-stuff time wondering about them. What’s the juice, man? We used to have fun a long time ago. Who let it die? You know, at the beginning of ‘Dum Dum Boys’, where Iggy is rattling off names of friends and their ultimate fates . . . yeah. A lot of my friends, yeah, they’ve gone straight.

Listen: I understand. I really do understand how someone who has managed to exist long enough to see a full spectrum of sadnesses and failures would be absolutely shredded by their 30th birthday. And when that time comes, you either quit it all and find whatever comfort and relative safety you can get your hands on . . . or darkly forsake the future and continue to live in the strange limbo that made you! It is true for everyone whether they realize it or not that the preceding years were all an experiment to discover what you like and don’t like, and want and don’t want, and the results of this experiment are, to some, that they didn’t like or want any of it, and instead opt for the tried-but-true allure of long-term monogamous relationships and boxed wine and shared movie-streaming-service passwords. You hang around with other couples and play novelty card games, and use the word “bedtime”, and actually change the oil in your car every 3,000 to 5,000 miles. You wear soft earth tones and comfortable shoes, and buy nice towels, and add ancillary kitchen appliances to your Amazon wishlist. I don’t know. I’m generalizing of course, in a cartoonish way, though everything I’ve uttered here is something I’ve seen in people before. Conversely, I know a few creeps, bless their creepy hearts, who are right there beside me as we traverse the long dark dream together . . . having eschewed THE STATUS QUO, finding it to be boring and repulsive! I love the hell out of these people. I just wish I knew more of them is all. . . .

Just as the Ancient Mariner grabs hold of the Wedding Guest and, with the spiraling doom of insanity in his eyes, warns him of the great sin he committed in the deep dark cold at the bottom of the world—so too shall I say this to you, my little lambs! Let the long-gone ones live on as ghosts lurking through the shadowy rooms of your mind! Put the god damn shovel down and let them sleep! Do not dig them up again! It will drive you mad to see the mundane outcome of the world you used to know! Gaze not upon the dancing flame that speaks to you in the sad and lonely hours of the night! Like the fella said: Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me! There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness!

Cain’t help it though . . . I miss getting wild as hell with some of y’all. You grew up and away from me, and I’m still down here, virtually unchanged, getting real wild by myself. It sure ain’t the same though. Yeah.

I believe another fella said something like that way better than I ever could:

hey, where are you now when i need your noise?
now i’m looking for the dum dum boys
the walls close in and i need some noise