do you dream too much? do you think what you need is a crutch?

so I decided to just write while I listened to "Homecoming," since it always seems to inspire a whole lot in me...this is what happened:

Oakland. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of…what? The loudest guitar chords you can manage and the most honest punk-rock shout you’ve got, it seems.

“you taught me how to live” – breaks my fucking heart. Billie Joe, the lost boy, for just a second before this army of stomping boots comes in behind him – Billie, vulnerable, show me how to live, tell me you know something more than I do.

The Northern California rain, desperate at the far end of the continent, intensified and blazing the way everything seems to be out there. Saint Jimmy frantic and wavering, going up in one last towering inferno (I don’t mean to foreshadow) for all to see and marvel over. He may not have been right but he was honest, for a brief flashing second he was beautifully, violently honest about what he believed was the truth.

Lost without that furious driving force, now, where to go where to go? Onward, of course, always onward. Does anyone care if nobody cares? This generation, you hear it all the time, no cause to rally around, like every other group of kids who came before lived and breathed worthy causes.

Such a wonderful image – “Jesus filling out paperwork.” Fucking literary, Billie. And the underbelly, that loose confederation of shady characters we all think we could hang out with, if maybe we were just a little cooler.

ANYBODY GET ME OUT OF HERE.

Picking up the pace, raging and stumbling onward through the cracked streets (and the broken homes?). Four chords and then all of a sudden we slow, and stop. It’s Sunday morning coming down and the church bells are singing out over a deserted town; our hero wakes up on the couch, disoriented, sore, hopeful for a second till he sees, “you’re still not here…and you can’t tell anyone, cause no one’s here.” What a gray, dismal morning, should have stayed home after all, and what in the world are you doing here? The loneliest, most pathetic way to wake up, in yesterday’s clothes and yesterday’s hopes.

WHERE’D YOU GO?

…Jeez. Get over it, man, we’ve got places to go shows to see things to do all over the place, a ROCK AND ROLL LIFE TO LIVE. If you can play the shit out the drums, the guitar, you’ll be fine after all, kid, let go. Get on the wagon with me and we’ll make it just fine.

You can feel the change here; you can feel the streets shake and the key change upward one more time. Upward, higher, pure musical hope (the Ramones might do it best) like the desperation murmur of a heartbeat. Nobody ever said that life was fair, hey, but we’re not through yet. We’re fucked up, we’re not the same, but in the end we’re still here, and we’re the ones going home.

Home, what a thought, after all you’ve been through, to go back to the place where you used to be so different. What a thought, and what is this that happens when you think about it – you started fucking running as soon as your feet touched ground, hey, something in you wants to be there. In the end, you come back. You come full circle. Home, we’re coming home again, and you don’t have to be told to know where that is. You can see it. Maybe you’ve got this rambunctious punk-rock army you can hear behind you, maybe you’re all alone but you’re just fine either way – you are going home.