This Is Not A Democracy

Hi everybody. I remember some English class that focused on how to start your writings and I more distinctly remember that I was never too keen on that bit. Plus I have a near infamous penchant for being long-winded. So here I am at a loss for how to jump in and say what I'm thinking. I guess one must really start at the top.

I love the people around me. I do. I'm a space cadet and sometimes I don't say it enough or in the right way but I desperately love the people I surround myself with which extends not just to my friends and family, or people that come to our shows and such, but to other bands. To other musicians with whom I share the common bond of "Hey, I dropped out of/didn't go to college so I could be in some silly band that was likely going to put me in crazy debt and get me dumped by every girlfriend I've ever had..." It's a common language, the way we all start in tiny rooms playing to next to no one (sometimes no one). Or playing to only the other band we're on tour with (I'm looking at you Spitalfield/Fall Out Boy tour 2002). It is because of this common bond that I share with everyone in music that I have to say it's been a bad couple months.

First we were hit with the news of the passing of Donda West whom I never met. Obviously Kanye is a friend of the band's but I don't even know him that well. I do however know him well enough to know he loves his mother dearly. As dearly as anyone's ever loved their mother. And so it was with the weight of that knowledge that her passing hit me hard. Not to mention the shock of her young age. I called my mom that night. I'd advise anyone reading this to do the same.

Next came the truly horrible news of a tragedy I will keep quiet that happened on my own tour. I will respect the effected family by keeping the details private but it hurt some of my closest friends and near brothers profoundly. In turn I am near tears as I write this thinking about precisely what happened.

And now Casey. You know, to be frank I didn't know Casey very well. I have far reaching memories of him in the early days when we played a comic book shop together. We talked hardcore and laughed about Kiss makeup. Then on that tour we did together I remember him being simply genuine, always pleasant, always kind. Now, I'm sure no one needs another arrogant rock star prattling on about how the world done him wrong and all, but I'm pissed that Casey's not here anymore. I'm pissed because I think I took him for granted a little. Pissed at myself. Cause every band we've had the luxury of touring with I'd say with maybe one or two exceptions, are all people I've really liked and if you don't ever tell those people it can be too late.

It's the same way I felt when the late John Holohan passed away. It's horrible. I remember the phone call. I remember calling Jack to ask if it were true and I needn't have on account of his voice. We were at a photo shoot and every time I see one of those photos and have to autograph it or some such blasphemous thing I feel horrible just thinking about the sound in Jack's voice.

Then last night another friend of mine came to me with the news that his father had had a stroke. I did not press to learn if he is expected to make it. That was really irrelevant to how I should feel...my friend was in obviously pain and that was all I needed to know.

Anyway, I'm still rambling. This is why I've never had any kind of blog...I'd never have time to write what I was thinking and I wasn't gifted with conciseness. I guess I'm just trying to say that all the people I've talked about will be horribly missed. And that I want to let everyone know, even the people that hate my band and say mean things every time someone leaks some ridiculously fake scandal and slaps my best friend's name on it, we are all doing this little thing called music. That makes us family, however dysfunctional. Don't take your friends for granted and hug your loved ones every chance you get.

-Patrick Stump

[source]

---I love this kid to pieces. He's always struck me as one of the nicest people in music (or certainly within the genres I listen to) and actually, I really wish he did have a blog because what he thinks he lacks in eloquence he more than makes up for in sincerity.

I was never really familiar with Hawthorne Heights, but I couldn't get my head around the concept of someone just barely older than me being gone like that, with no sufficient explanation. It's times like this that you really begin to understand your own mortality, and even if that doesn't faze you, realise the mortality of the people closest to you.

Eight years ago, a kid I was in the Air Training Corps with, who also happened to go to my college, was hit my a motorbike; he died in hospital two days later. Unfortunately, I didn't find out until a fortnight after that, when a colleague asked a girl from a neighbouring shop why we had seen her crying - she told us her friend Bob Salkheld had died and showed us a local newspaper. Bob wasn't the kind of guy I'd hang out with on weekends - but we'd known each other for four years by that point, spent weekends running around in combat gear in the dark or flying small aircraft over Berkshire, and although I'd since left the Corps, we still saw each other around. The last time I'd seen him was jumping on him and yelling, "BOOOOOB!" at the train station outside our college.

What I couldn't fathom was how the world could just carry one with someone missing from it.

I was seventeen at the time; sixth months, and then one year later, I lost two other friends - one to suicide and one to DVT.

It's cliche, I know, but REM got it down: hold on to your friends. You never know how long you'll have them for and you'll never realise how much they mean to you until they're not there any more.

I do love you guys - or, most of you - and I hope you know that. I'm pretty sure the majority of you do, even when I'm not commenting in your journals all the time. It takes more than that to hold a friendship together, right? ♥

Stay safe. Please.


(Big hugs and much love to the families and friends of all the people Patrick mentioned - I'm so, so sorry.)

For those who weren't aware, today marks sixty-three years since D-Day.

For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

-- Laurence Binyon



Outside my window I can hear windchimes. On my television, The Somme describes the events of the Great War; my laptop wallpaper is from Band of Brothers. In my natural lifetime, I expect to see the centenaries of the start and end of both the First & Second World Wars.

And we're still at war.

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those I fight I do not hate,
Those I guard I do not love.
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds.
A lowly impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath;
a waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death.

-- W.B. Yeats.

My favourite poem.


I've been watching Band of Brothers recently, and it has revived my love and respect for those who served in the Wars. The stories of many of the soldiers, which it tells, are true. In my teens, I was obsessed with WWII. My favourite plane of all time is the B17 Flying Fortress (like the Memphis Belle, for those who know what I am talking about), which was one of the most important American craft at the time. Ten men in each. Two pilots, a bombadier, a navigator, a radio operator and five gunners - including one in a rotating 'ball turret' beneath the fusilage. Death traps.

Every year, when I was in the ATC, I took part in the parade at Runnymede memorial - a large white building with a square court yard. I always found it incredibly moving, seeing the last of the old WWI soldiers and the terribly English pride of the WWII veterans; and as part of St. John, I was glad to see others marking the occasion, today. We stood outside - some people with their heads bowed, some (myself included) at attention; those of us who had been involved in the military and really knew what we were commemorating.

If I had gone into the RAF as I wanted to, I would probably have been drafted out to Iraq or Afghanistan by now. I could have been one of those dead, even though I opposed the reasoning behind the conflicts.

Or, I could have been one of the military wives, whose husbands have been lost. Playing Sarah in The Accrington Pals also brought that home to me. Every soldier lost - particularly in the World Wars - may now be remembered in a romanticised and heroic fashion, but they were also people. Many of them didn't even want to be there but had no choice. Don't forget that part when you remember them.