a letter to a friend

today i feel: sick
today i'm hearing: shearwater--well, benjamin
today i'm thinking: you're such a stupid cock

I don't understand you. And I can't believe I still care to.

You have so much promise, so much potential. You're creative, talented, well-funded, and extraordinarily lucky. You have all the beginnings of a very fortunate career, life, future, etc. You've got so much time ahead of you and so many opportunities that you can't even begin to comprehend at this time. I can't even comprehend what they are. And yes, you're troubled. Welcome to the modern youth. You've been on the therapy merry-go-round and it seemed to do some good, even if you do still worry about your sanity. After all, doesn't everybody? You've got time to sort things out. And if you don't want to sort them out, you don't have to. That's the beauty of being young, of being creative and uncontrolled: you don't have to sort anything out that you don't want to. Hell, you're expected to be kind of crazy.

But why are you turning into this?

I don't count you off for drinking. Almost everyone I know drinks. I don't count you off for indulging in the occassional illegal substance. I've been known to do the same myself (although I will admit that my substance abuse has cut down dramatically in the past couple of months for reasons I'm not even going to pretend to know or understand). But this has gone past that. I talk to you more often when you're stoned off your ass than when you're not. I hear more stories about your marijuana experiences than I do about your art--which is what you say you've been working so hard on. But even that is nothing compared to some of the other things I've heard about that you have confirmed. You are tampering with dangerous things: things that cannot only harm you now, but that can come back and haunt you for the rest of your life. Your 'recreational activities' have deteriorated to nothing more than a cheap excuse to drop acid and blow out your mind. And now you are using it as an instrument to evolve your 'art'??

Now I understand that a great many artists of various fields that I love and respect did some of their greatest work while partaking in substances. Everyone I know agrees with me that the Beatles got much more interesting after they met Bob Dylan (and we all know what happened then). You look at Hunter S Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, even the Flaming Lips and you see some definite connections to substances. But there's a massive difference between them and you--a difference I don't think you're willing to believe: they were adults, and you are not.

You are still a kid. In every sense of the word. A driver's licence and a bookshelf full of Allen Ginsberg does not constitute adulthood, nor does it say anything for your maturity. And I know no one else remembers this--and I'm in no position to scould others for stealing your innocence--but it's still true. You're throwing your life away on all of this shit and it's doing nothing to improve your character or your art. And the scariest thing is that you don't give a damn.

I cared about you so much. Every time I said it, I meant it. A lot has changed between us in the past year and a lot has changed in me, too. But I still care about you, believe it or not. I want you to be happy and I want you to be safe. And there are people who love you so much who are scared about what you're becoming. But you're not seeing the signs. And you're not seeing that they're pulling away from you. You were always kind of out there, and it was charming. Now you're somthing else. And it's not a good thing to be.

I wish you trusted me enough for me to listen to me so I could say this to you. But you never did want to listen to me when I was scared.