I remember the nights in paisley shirts with my friends MattΒ and Nate driving to San Diego and LA and Frisco and playing old velvet underground tunes or originals about hopping trains or Eliot Smith. I miss those days, and I remember the scorched guitar that we got from a burned down house that still played perfectly and that we named Lucille. Everybody was awestruck by that guitar. And I remember sipping beers by the Volvo at 1am laughing and kissing drunk girls who faintly cared for the music, but it was all about the music, ALWAYS about the music. And the crowds would applaud and we would fight on stage and flip tables like idiots and get kicked out, then inevitably park outside a knoll and stare at the timeless sky. those days were formative and made men into men. Meandering along lost roads searching for purpose when everything seemed so bleak. We didn't know the direction, it merely manifested itself in front of us like ethereal plains, and when times got tough we stood tall, when there were only a few options we stood tall, When the flame was all but extinguished, we stood tall. It was our only choice, no one taught us anything, the pursuit towards glory was only a dream but we chased the glimmer into madness