Saturday, September 7, 2013

Dan Thompson 1979-2013

You know, a person close to me, (who doesn't have much of a way with words) said something the other day - harsh as it came off - that made me think. He'd heard about Dan through the barrage of facebook smatterings, and said "Dude, what happened to your friend Dan?" and I told him. Then he hit me with "Why do your friends keep dying?" I was like, well... Hmmmm... And he backed off, with a quick "Sorry about that." But I had already kind of laughed it off. Later on, I thought about it again, because it really is kind of shitty. You lose friends as you get older from just a numbers standpoint. But you shouldn't lose them like this... Right?

Later on, me and Brandon D were talking about it and he said that when you roll with rock and rollers, it's tough to keep everyone in a cocoon. I said, yeah I mean, if we were some church folk who hung out at Healing Place, maybe this kind of bullshit wouldn't happen. But that's not what we are and it's not what we do. We live life to motherfucking live it.

If you never go out and be hardcore, maybe you'll make it to 90. But at the end of the road, what can you say? "Well, I made it... but I never did shit." That's a boring journey. Not saying I don't want us all to get there, but not at the expense of being dudes who never do anything.

Dan Thompson died on a roof. Not in a Florida retirement community. Not of a life sucking disease. It was a terrible accident, and there's nothing we can do about it but look at his book. His chronicle. What did he do in life? He fucking owned it.

In the next couple of nights, the whiskey will flow and blood will spill. And to the fellow that said that to me, well I thought it was funny. Some people would get all butthurt but not me. And not Dan. He'd have grinned. It was kind of funny. And who laughs last? Maybe other people, at 90. But it'll be a wrinkly old boring laugh. We live fast. We live hard. And we live awesome. Dan and Justin, you guys get the jam room ready. We'll see you one day in heaven. And man, it's gonna be awesome.

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