One picture so contrived, the background sheet placed just so with the side trunk perfectly looking like it was placed there by accident with the artistic little ashtray and the curl of smoke as though it had an art director of it's own. Even the clothes carefully wrinkled to appear the weighty hobo. Even the expression of being lost in the music is a set up. The other picture so ugly to first notice. Bare fluorescent bulbs, stark white walls, recording gear everywhere flaunting tangled snakes of cords and cables and not even your shoes are tied. But the head, bent over the music until even the surroundings evaporate and nothing is left but pure perfect dissonance of those progressive chords you favored. These are the things that brought the changes, made the differences, drove the wedge. What you honored left in attaining the pittance. You almost weren't brave enough were you? Got halfway and bolted. Many try to backtrack to the romance of misery and pain they should have been born into to fully realize their art, searching for the abuse of the human endeavor, crinkling the clothes like the best of the court jesters and earning the long road to the side of the yellow brick road. It doesn't make you a fraud. It's no disgrace. But some are and some aren't and you'd be surprised who'd have been willing to trade places for a little bit of the comforts you learned to hate for the weakness you perceived them to hold. It's a rough business when characteristics get put on pedestals without the full understanding of the whole package. Rough business indeed.

suicide matters

It was a difficult conversation, due to who it was with and what the underlying curiosity may have been. I still struggle with the point because I can only make assumptions. Details are long past available. It doesn't matter how many "warning signs" you've educated yourself with. It doesn't matter how "in tune" you are. It doesn't matter because no matter how feelings and thoughts are layed out there is still that one detail, what is communicated is open to perception. You can ask all the appropriate questions, you can beg & cry, you can be stern & demanding, you can blase & cold, you can be warm and caring, you can be the full breadth of human emotion, but still you cannot be inside anyone else's mind. You get what you are given and you take from it what you are able & give back what you know to be appropriate without the blessing of hindsight. And then you spend your lifetime trying to forgive yourself for not being super human enough to change it.
Regrets, I have a few. And they are whoppers.

Them: Could you ever kill yourself.
Me: No.

T: Could you ever kill anyone else?
M: No, wait, in a way I have.

T: Could you ever help someone else kill themselves?
M: No, wait, what are the surrounding circumstances?

T: I just want to know if you believe in choice of life.
M: What, choice to live or not?

T: If you knew someone was going to do it would you support them?
M: You mean would I get them the stuff to do it or would I be supportive emotionally?

T: Be supportive emotionally.
M: Well it doesn't really fit that whole "if you love someone set them free" thing...

T: Yes it does.
M: No it doesn't.

T: Yes it does.
M: This is stupid, I don't know if the person is sick or not or what the circumstances are.

T: The person doesn't want the dialogue anymore.
M: What, head dialogue? There are ways to shut that down.

T: Like what?
M: Like Neuro Linguistic Programming, that helped me get over some self depreciation dialogue. I know people who it's really helped. It's just changing your brain language, making the will that you want louder than the will that you have. Making the big dark images, smaller lighter ones and such. It's gentle and doesn't have all that psychobabble blame your mother stuff. It's easier on the gut than a pill.

T: Depends on what the will you want to have is.
M: yeah, I suppose.

T: Who have you killed?
M: What?
T: I asked could you kill anyone else, you said in a way you have. Who'd you kill?
M: I don't want to talk about this today. It's a subjective conversation. I'm not up to it. What are we talking about?

T: We're talking about the long road home.
M: Poetic. Wanna play a song?

T: yeah.
( a little musical interlude, guitar and bass, a line in D I've been writing since I was 13 that 2 people knew besides me)

T: Oh I get it.
M: What, you think I should drop that note?
T: No I get what you mean about sort of killing.
M: Yeah well shut up.

T: That's how you could think about it.
M: About what?
T: Suicide.
M: I'm not thinking about suicide.
T: I'm just saying, it's kind of the same decision.
M: Oh.