Didn't you know that at one time I wanted to be a rock star?

It's true. I was a teen and looking for a future, something I would never be afraid, never be ashamed of doing. Something to make myself glow, to fill me up with something unspeakable. Something you can never put into words, something you have to channel through a musical gap, a lyrical pit. Something like a chord, a note, an arpeggio, the sound of smashing metal splintering wood has to flow through the mouth from the mic to the audience to the atmosphere and beyond. It has to linger, it has to echo through ears and canyons through everything penetrating deep wherever it goes.

Being a rock star is about excess. That's true. It's about the craziness, It's about the mind-blowing myth, the death defying legend. It's about becoming a figurehead, an idol but still a man, still a human beneath the sweat and blood and muscle and makeup.

It's about the fall. It's being the tragic hero. It's a man greater than mortal crashing meteorically down in a splash of lights and sounds and color that makes it fascinating, that cements the immortality, that emboldens the sacrifice, whether it was there first or not.

At one time I wanted to be a rock star, it's true.