Aspire To what?

Is there breathing room for the junkies?  What happened to that niche set aside for head cases to explore?  Can the born loser still spill their guts to us?  We are so sanitized and the thought of yet another messy cultural icon is less appealing when the existential moral panic machine is running.  The machine is always turned on, it just keeps getting louder and louder.  That damn machine can't even idle.

Some people will never make old bones.  You see them at the starting gate and you just know it isn't going to end well.  We watch, we follow, we turn sanctimonious beyond description at the conclusion.  It isn't glorification to admire the fire as it burns, it isn't morbid to admit the fire is burning bodies.  It is what it is and ultimately, it is the hands of the artist that stokes the coals or closes the damper.  The ending is always theirs to write, some just have a different view of how the story arcs.

Disheveled is one of the verbs that float to the top of the dead pool when the end is near.  Emaciated and gaunt find their place too.  Thank God the Internet wasn't around when Chet Baker was at his lowest.  Just another junkie with no teeth and ruined embouchure, ruined beauty.

Yes, it is tragic when demons take hold and end a life too soon.  It is an injustice when addictions bind talent and dull the promise of what could be.  I cannot find justification for a life destroyed in part because of weakness.  Imagine Jim Carroll without broken veins.  Imagine Kurt Cobain without a broken sense of self.  Broken hearts, broken dreams, broken souls; they nourish creative impulses as easily as joy and wholeness. 

Few things are neat and nothing is easy.  Breezy and seamless is all hype, it just isn't there.  Maybe you can be so focused on your ambition that you are unable to show the stress fractures of adversity?  Maybe the heartbreaks are easier to silence when only one thing is truly important to you?  Born under a bad sign is just superstition.  It isn't something you can easily quantify.