Hey bear,

I just finished the biography, and it was harrowing,

seemingly bullshit, endless dates and nightclubs and high school teachers, problems with Slash, drugs on every page, acting out, shallow, repetitive, etc.

But turns out the book had a powerful impact after all, just seeing from the outside how fucked up it all was for him, and the deliberate 5 year plan to kill himself was like, what kept him going to age 22, something like that, I don’t know. He started punk rock.

All his compatriots were as lost and chaotic as he was, so no help or wisdom there, but John Doe sure stepped up to the plate, time and again he took Darby aside, promised to support him if he came out of the closet, threw his arm around his shoulder and told him to hang on, it will get better, and toward the end Darby tried his best to have a real life, moved into a big house with a woman, crummy punks comin over just to look at the legendary Darby Crash, who lived in the farthest back bedroom where he built bookshelves a couple days before his suicide, seems he first tried to regroup, the Germs all disbanded and him not knowing where to go, fighting with his true friends who were appalled by his drugs, the scary spiraling and his new and evil fake-friend-enablers, it’s hard for me to blame right now, but fuck neurology Bob, fuck it; chemistry, bullshit, we are not neurological beings we are social beings, there’s an anecdote that crystallizes his essence, I’ll read it to you later, he was mad at people, for good reason, babies die without attentive social interaction, it is prior to brain chemistry, it comes first, it creates brain chemistry. We react, that’s psychology, this is the way people are put together, fuck neurology.

That whole Zen enlightened-path-double-plus-higher-self- budda-bullshit addresses nothing but this, and they have it wrong--

teach you how not to react, how to stop reacting to your environment, look up, shut down.

Or be fucked up hysteric like me.

Stinkin thinking, ok will go out and make the world a better place, right, twenty-two years later, his community of like minded dumfucks abandoned him but let’s pretend they didn’t, here comes Mother Theresa to heal all wounds, nope, too little too late, no new ingredients can go into a baked cake, better recipe next life.

But this is bullshit too Bob, it has to be-- the cure is in the wound nothing else makes sense-

People fucked you up? Only people can save you.

As if, huh?

Hope; no other reason to talk to a baffler but to hope he walks away with a little more hope. That’s mutuality, see, giving hope to each other, the cure is in the wound, but show me the data, doesn’t always work out, how do you know who can be salvaged and who can’t, that would be good to know Bob, let’s have some answers here, sure, why not, at the end of the book, the final paragraph offers a special insight, which reminded me instantly of SAR and PSB, maybe, and definitely recalled Nick Drake and Kurdt, I felt some peace of mind as their spirits washed over me, so, here we go, spoken by a member of “industrial art” bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV:

“I knew Darby Crash was doomed the same way I

knew Sid Vicious was doomed the first time I met

him. I actually shivered. Like Sid, Darby’s life became an absolute commitment to recklessness…he had no choice. Some people are like that. They’re here for a very specific catalytic reason and their body and soul are here temporarily to perform a function on behalf of the psychic hygiene of the species and then they go. And they should be honored for that. People should be completely non-judgmental of those characters. Some become street people who never get to express their destiny and some are very fortunate and land almost accidentally into a critical position in the popular culture.”

What do you think Bob? Is this iconographic blather, or does it listen?

Of course SAR was a much more tragic figure, as she was trying her damndest, she worked hard to heal her life. And her community responded with brains, kindness and forethought, so there you go, now she’s gone, no, I deny that, once her legacy gets off its ass it will be useful, even more significant than a marginalized rock star’s like Darby, if the sociologists and psychologists take the time and trouble to study her contribution to our stuck-in-a-rut therapeutic inner-child era.

Educate them, all else is pointless.

I’m just dreaming, agitated and in process here sweetheart, wishin you were in the room to hold me and my meanderings.

Will listen to We Must Bleed now and go clean a house,

I’ve been doin this for over a decade and not one of them has been safe. Dr Disobey: Don’t like what you see? Invent an alternative.

Safe-house, ok try that—if we build it they will come huh.

Soon,

Love, bare

Home.