Letters Never Sent Are Words Never Said

This song is based in part by a letter never sent (& oddly enough their song Letter Never Sent was released some 13 years earlier/that's a lil' eerie in itself...but I digress).

It was a letter he wrote at 4:00a.m. on a bus ride---it was intended for River Phoenix but sadly his sudden death crushed any intentions Stipe had of mentoring the lad to good health & sobriety.

This fame thing, I don't get it

The songs on the album Monster; one called You and another one I think were an homage to Kurt whom had died a mere five months after River.

Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers), Flea (RHCP) and Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands) were inside the Viper Room on stage playing when Phoenix died out front on the side walk with Joquin & their sister watching him convulse. So sad.

This star thing, I don’t get it

In the movie Blow when JDepp says if you did cocaine in the nineteen eighties it was probably mine. I hollered out, "I did your coke brah!" then a handful of authentic airheads in the theater started yelling out how they had done his dope too. I thought, hey, that is my joke they are hitching their wagons to.
But what a stupid thing to be proud of...  I was kidding but I realized then how many ordinary folks get trapped in that cycle of decay and rot.

Aluminum tastes like fear

I rarely even take aspirin or NyQuil--only natural herbs & spices for me... like myrrh, thyme, peyote, stinky buds (basically anything spelt with a -y it looks like).

But seriously, my credo used to be; If my body can't fix it--it ain't broke! Until I broke my foot & it put an end to that fucking credo bullshit. A crying shame too; I had some good ones. Like: Never raise your hand to strike a child/ that leaves your groin area vulnerable. (I needa tweet that)

Adrenaline, it pulls us near

Society is way too used to watching trains go off the track in spectacular fashion. Just Like Anna Nicole Smith. Everyone knew she had derailed asleep at the wheel. And Amy Winehouse/poor thang wrote a god damn song bout how she wasn't going to rehab/red light red light! Mike Starr was on Dr Drew's rehab show only months before his o.d. Now he's joined Layne.

Then there are the silent addicts like Heath Leger & Phillip Seymour Hoffman/ only their inner circle knows there's a high speed train going into a curve 3 times the speed limit...
These corrosives do their magic slowly and sweet.
It's hard to watch a friend die from their beloved drug of choice/I been there. 22 days on a machine/everyone coming in to say goodbye to an empty shell.  He left us the night he took 5 oxycottons with 22+ Xanax then fell sleep in front of a whole keg party that "let him rest."

But what can you do?  Oddly enough at the funeral a couple bubbly teens (that hardly even knew Aaron) squeeze in to take a selfie with the casket___ that's when the insult starts to sting  & suddenly the tears [all of them] seem cheap, rehearsed and frankly a bit competitive.
Losses like that one become buried somewhere in the shame & guilt.

The smell of fear, I got it

Here is Letter Never Sent by R.E.M.

these last two photos show River & Kurt fucked up

I felt it was needed to fully grasp the weight of two senseless drug deaths & the unknown art we will never know