I had been smoking weed for a few years, and enjoyed an occasional magic mushroom experience, but never found myself beyond repair (and believe me, we took the whole mushroom thing pretty far). I had been reading books by all of the psychedelic pioneers, and many of my heroes had taken acid, mescaline, peyote, DMT, and even my own father often boasts of his own hallucinogenic glory days. So, being an artist, I thought of drug use as an investment in my future. I thought I’d take a fast track to wisdom… “Turn on, tune in, and drop out”, right?

In my head, I was going to glide up to heaven, shake hands with God, dance in the cosmic energy, and then come back down with sexy long hair, a beard, and a couple of platinum records on the wall. In reality, I got fucked up in a van, rolled around on the floor drooling and moaning incoherently, and have spent the last four years of my life trying to recover from it. I’m unemployed, considerably confused, and perpetually frightened by the noise in my head.

Salvia is a quick trip, the main effects lasting only several minutes, but in that short span, you are transported to a dimension beyond normal experience. Sometimes, while tripping, my body would divide down the middle, like something you’d see a cell do in biology class. It would divide until I became the whole universe (a somewhat uncomfortable sensation). Or other times, the music I was listening to would take the form of a young tree or vine, and it would grow in accord with the melodies as they progressed. These experiences, though short lived, always felt timeless and vast, and I'd come down feeling very tired and aged.

I took Salvia several hundred times before I finally broke down and quit, because by and by, I started to doubt which reality was true. Every time I’d break through to the other way of seeing things, I’d have this sense that my whole life as I’d known it was just a joke. A voice would mock me (this me) for having identified thusly. “Haha,” it would laugh, “Back again, are we?” and I’d have the sense that Salvia’s dimension is what exists beyond our earthly lives. It felt like the place where all souls exist.

Then, one night, I ended up taking several hundred doses at once… I was drunk, and the part of me that hates myself took control... I loaded a bowl to the brim, and before I could turn back, my whole life began to collapse. Everything I’d ever seen, every word I knew, and even words that I didn’t know, words in other languages, all came rushing to the surface. It was like a grand, cosmic parade in which I saw, heard, felt and knew everything that ever was. The entire history of man, every detail of my childhood, the great symphonies, and every star in the sky, it was all there, floating around like debris in a vast deluge. And all at once, it began to collapse inward on itself like a black hole had formed.

As I watched everything disappear into darkness, I had two great regrets. I wished that I had known sooner about how it had all been a dream, and I wished that I had shown more of my heart to those who I truly loved. I felt sorry for my mom. And then it was dark.

I experienced darkness for an eternity, a lifetime spent in solitary confinement, and then a million million million more.

Eventually, I perceived blueness, and I’d later come to know it as the color of a nearby wall. Then, brownness came back into existence, and that was the table I had collapsed onto. After several eons in the blue-and-brown reality, I got the sense that there was something more to be remembered… Something I had once known, but had forgotten about... And then my arms began to separate from the brown table and became their own entity. In this manner, my world was slowly rebuilt, although many things took months and even years to be remembered. And still today, I have the sense that there are words I once knew, people I’d met, and abilities I had possessed that I’ll never recover.

Even now, years later, I suffer regular panic attacks over these missing pieces.

Any time my body feels slightly off kilter, a little too cold, hungry, sick or just itchy, my heart begins to race and I worry that I’ll be thrown back into Salvia’s domain. I went completely sober for years, sought the advice of psychiatrists, and traveled the world looking for resolution, but I have yet to find it.

I have trouble believing whether this world is real or not, and it’s cost me the joy of living here. I have a very short attention span, and cannot enjoy certain things I once loved. Reading, for example, is very difficult, as I frequently find myself repeating sentences again and again, understanding each word individually, but failing to see the meaning of them combined. Beyond that, I have developed a lazy eye, occasional muscle spasms, recurring hallucinations, irregular heartbeats, and insomnia. I end up in the emergency room several times a year because I’m constantly convinced that I’m dying...

In short, I have suffered immensely. More than I ever knew possible.

When I opened by saying that some people learn by burning themselves on a stove, I was making light of the situation. What would be closer to the truth is saying that some people hang themselves by a rope and die, but that you needn’t try it, because your stupid brother already did. Please, learn from my experience and never chose this path for yourself. If nothing else, I hope to gain your betterment from my pain.

When I search for “Salvia Divinorum and Brain Damage” on the Internet (and I do so often), the only articles I find are posted by the same assholes who sell this drug to kids, and obviously, they think that it's perfectly safe. So, my purpose in writing tonight was to add a new voice to the discussion, and to possibly prevent somebody else from hurting themselves as I have.

Please, live boldly, take risks, and explore the world in which you are so blessed to be living. But don’t waste your time on worn-out paths that have been shown to lead nowhere. The drug path has been walked a thousand times, and we’re all locked up in hospital wards wishing we could take it back. So, don’t waste your time. Follow health, knowledge, spirit and truth. I hope you’ll find something worth leading others to, and that you’ll share it with the world.

I say this to you with love, as only your stupid brother can: do better than I have.

We cannot simply jump to the absolute...

So, become disciplined in your chosen art
and write the story of your life with mindfulness and purpose.
Only then, when reflecting back on a life well lived,
may you find peace in knowing that you did your best.

So, we got this idea that we could go shopping at a fancy boutique in Hollywood. Only then, after the shoot, we would return the outfit for a full refund. It was a perfect plan, like having our own free-clothing shop.

So, that afternoon, we drove to an upscale neighborhood and parked outside of a fancy store. I picked out some clothes that would have set me back almost a thousand dollars, and immediately, I began to regret my decision.

The man working gave me a certain look, as if he already suspected our plan. Out of fear, I put on an act to convince him otherwise. I did my best to seem rich and successful (again, not like Puff Daddy successful or anything-- but wealthy)...

Suddenly, his whole attitude shifted. “Oh good sir, you MUST feel this fabric!"

“Um. No thanks,” I muttered.

“Really, I insist,” he said, pulling me by the hand towards a pair of expensive jeans. “They’re soooooo soft," he moaned.

“Um no. No thanks,” I replied. “I think I’m ready to check out”.

And then, with a tart frown, he shuffled back to the register, and I handed my card over for payment.

“Ronnie... Day... Music,” he recited, “Is that a... Music company?”

“Yes,” I said, ashamed to think that he knew my full name, and would soon associate it with a suspicious return. He flipped the card around in his hand like a stone, scanning its surface for further questions.

“What kind of music do you make?”

“I don't, really” I said out of shyness.

“Is there anything online that I could hear?"

“No,"

“Hmm, that's too bad” he said, handing me the bag. I issued a quick "thanks" before turning and walking out the door.

My brother, Tony, was waiting for me in the car with a smirk. I told him about how uncomfortable the whole thing felt, and how greasy the salesman was with his red and black goatee. We drove home laughing, and started filming our video that same night.

Several days later, after the video was shot and posted online, I folded the clothes, made sure all of the tags were pinned on, and drove back to the boutique. The same creepy man was working, again.

“Back for more?” he chirped from behind a rack of ugly, expensive shirts.

“No,” I said, “I just have a quick return to make”.

With a sigh, he dropped the pants he was folding into a lumpy pile and walked towards me.

“A return?” he asked.

“Yes, I got some clothes the other day and...”

“I remember you," he said, "Why are you returning them, Ronnie?”

Ut oh, he knows my name...

Suddenly, I felt that this had all been a mistake, and I wanted to leave. He remembered my face and my name. He sounded angry and I wanted to go, but I couldn’t afford to keep the items, so I stayed on and insisted.

“They didn’t feel quite right when I tried them on at home,” I said.

“They're not any good for playing music in?” he asked, sarcastically.

“Um... No. Not that. It's just a weird fit, that’s all.”

“Good, then we’ll get you another size?”

“No thanks, I'd rather just make the return,” I told him, and that’s when his face shifted. He let his arms down in an angry surrender and exhaled loudly.

“I saw the video, Ronnie. On the internet, I watched it all".

I couldn’t respond. My face flushed red and I stood there shocked and ashamed. He continued, “You're all over the Internet, Ronnie, and I saw the video, with the pants, and the shirt and they seemed to fit fine”.

"Well shit," I said... Just that, and nothing else.

I thought he’d make me walk out of the store. I thought he’d deny my return and ban me from ever shopping there again, but he didn’t. He just asked if "Jon on Melrose" could get a mention somewhere on my website. So, that's exactly what I'm doing.

Thanks, Jon.

When I gaze out into the night sky, I don’t see any answers. And when I've looked inward with drugs, I haven't found any truth. But over the course of time and out of pure necessity, I have found faith; faith that our lives matter, and that the sum of all things is good; faith that love will guide me and that my virtues will be rewarded in time.

I’m not religious, and I don’t often publish my spiritual views, but tonight I was thinking a lot about loss, and I wanted to issue a public reminder to myself...

Life is a process of renewal, and even death serves it’s purpose. So, we mustn’t despair over the empty spaces, for those are the holes in which we’ll plant the seeds of tomorrow.

On the contrary, when I sit down to write, everything lays out there naked in black and white and it makes me nervous. Each fleeting phrase is immediately read back and then re-read, torn apart, psychoanalyzed and eventually deleted. Then, the arguments in my head start to distract me from carrying on…

“That sounds pretentious,”
“Well, you are a bit pretentious," I say.
“Am I really?”
“Pretentious? Yes, at times... You’re also a bit self absorbed and your skin is oily.”

There’s no opportunity for this kind of reflection when we’re speaking. We just carry on, oblivious to the tone of our voices or the implications of our diction. It’s like, we could just like, use the word “like” like a thousand times and it would sound absolutely fine to us, but write all of that down and it’s impossible to deny how foolish it looks.

So, this is where I always end up: at the realization that to be a great writer, there’s no getting around the fundamental need to be genuinely well spoken and intelligent. Because once the writer’s block has been broken, and the words flow freely from our minds out onto the page, if they smell like turds in a sewage line, no amount of editing can make them into fragrant wisps of wisdom. And that is why I don't blog often...

We camped along the roadside and showered with water bottles, even after I had hired a backing band. The whole lot of us would settle down somewhere, one person asleep on the back seat, another on the floor, and another somewhere in the trailer. I had a hammock that I’d hang between our van and whatever we were parked next to. It was ridiculous, but I felt really connected to something living like that, as if the dirt and the grime were a sort of soil to my wandering roots.

The record label had allocated three-hundred-thousand dollars to tour support, which means that I could have flown first class between shows, stayed in five-star hotels, and hired a personal assistant to pick my nose if I’d wanted to. It would’ve all been reimbursed, but I never spent a cent... Instead, I felt like “paying my dues” in retrograde, so we all slept in the van.

It was a bit like camping, and a lot like being homeless, but I loved every moment.

We lived in that van for over a year, playing shows all across the U.S., and the miles really started to add up. It had been months since I’d seen my girlfriend or slept in my own bed, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, my drinking and drug use had become a real problem.  So, when we got a call from management about a string of shows in California, everyone was excited to go home.

It would be a chance for us to visit our families, and the shows they had booked were with some really popular acts. Everything was sold out in advance and the venues were huge.

We made that cross-country drive in haste with the windows down, happy to let the wind blow away our months of isolation.

When we got to Los Angeles, my manager had a special pre-show dinner planned, and all of the musicians booked to play that night were there. I was sitting at a table next to a famous singer, and I remember thinking that he didn’t have much charisma for a front man… I can also remember thinking that his nose was far too large for fame… But I guess I was wrong, because they went on to sell another couple million records, and I went on to being dropped by my label.

That’s what happened next: my label dropped me...

Chris, my manager, pulled me aside and told me that he wanted to talk. He said that Sony Music wasn’t going to move forward with the project anymore.

“What project?” I asked him.

“Well… Your project…”

“Right…” I repeated, “What project?”

And then suddenly, I understood what he meant. The "project" was my career, like it had been something I threw together with glue and paper. Not my soul or my identity or my place in the world, but just my “project”.

I must have been hurt and I must have felt betrayed, but really, I can’t remember feeling much of anything.

“Oh. Okay,” I said, “Yeah… That’s okay… We’ll just keep going forward without them”.

He didn’t reply. He just smiled back at me in this sort of half-assed way, with his lips forced into a bow-shape, but his eyes distant and cold.

“They need you for sound check,” he said, and so I went.

The next couple of shows were great. I had the band and my brother by my side, huge crowds and lots of familiar faces to keep me grounded. It was a short run, but I’ll never forget those gigs. We played five nights as a band, and then I was scheduled to fly back to the east coast for a month of solo acoustic dates.

That’s when everything started going downhill.

I rented a small car in New York City, and filled the trunk with bottles of whiskey. For some reason, I got in the habit of burning incense while I drove, and I would hold them in my mouth like a long, flimsy cigarette. They kept falling out, and so I had a growing collection of circular burns in my clothes and on my skin. Everything in that car, myself included, smelled of smoke and booze.

I don’t remember much of what I thought about on those drives, but I was alone all day, every day, and all night, every night. I wouldn’t go into the venues until my name had been called on stage, and then I’d rush right back out after my set was done. I hadn’t even been collecting my pay, because I didn’t want to talk with any of the promoters.

I wasn’t sleeping much, either, and whenever I did sleep, it was just a nap in the driver’s seat. The rental car didn’t have anywhere comfortable or spacious like the van did, and I was still too stubborn to rent a hotel room.

A week into the solo tour, I started talking to myself aloud, and when my agent called to ask why I wasn’t collecting our pay, I just threw my phone out the window and watched it skip along the highway like a stone.

I missed my girlfriend, but more than that, I regretted the years I’d left her waiting at home while I ran around chasing dreams. Also, I missed my family, my brother and my dogs. More than anything, though, I missed having the sense that I was going somewhere... I missed my drive and my passion… I was beginning to feel lost, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

I can remember pulling into Boston, and feeling like I had nothing left to give. I hadn’t slept in weeks, and I was losing my grip on reality. When I took the stage that night, and those hot lights hit me, I remember feeling as if my flesh was cooking. I thought I could smell it even, like meat in an oven.

I pulled the shirt away from my shoulder and discovered for the first time all of those circular burns that my incense smoking had left. I looked at my hands, turning them over, and noticed anew the bloody pit where I’d ripped an entire fingernail out from the root. “How have I been playing with this?” I wondered. And suddenly, it started to hurt for the first time.

“I am on the outside of truth!”

Someone was singing…

I heard it like an echo in my mind, and I wondered for a moment if I’d started my set without knowing it. I reached up to check my mouth, but it was still closed.  I strained to look out past the lights, but my eyes were blurry with sweat.

“I’m looking in on you!”

The singing continued.

I then realized it was a girl, somewhere in the crowd, and that she was singing my songs for me, almost angrily. She had horrible pitch, too. “Woo! Ronnie Day!”

“H… hello,” I tried to respond, but my words fell silent. I still hadn’t found the microphone, and I felt dizzy. My bitten fingernails were throbbing with the pain that, until then, I’d become so good at ignoring.

“Sing me a song, Ronnie Daaaaaaaaaaaaay!” The girl in the front row wouldn’t leave me alone, and her voice was shrill like someone’s mother.

“Th… That’s not my real name,” I tried to tell her, but I still couldn’t find the microphone.

“Woo! Woo! Ronnie Day!” she screamed back.

I turned to find the microphone, and in doing so, I saw the back door swung wide open. Without a second thought, I unplugged my guitar and walked out through it. I heard nothing but my own heart beating, and as I got into the car, I knew there was no turning back. A light drizzle had begun falling from the sky, and I pulled out onto the highway once again.

Massachusetts has a hook that reaches off the Eastern coast like a finger, and on my map, I could see a road running down the middle of it, out to the very tip. I decided that this was where I would go: to the tip of the hook, to the end of the road.

I had lost my home years before. I had just lost my record contract, and in that moment I was losing my mind. The tip of that hook seemed to me like it must be the final stop, and so that’s where I wanted to be. I imagined meeting an old seer atop a lighthouse, or a lone fisherman out on a rock. I imagined a threshold passing into the underworld, and an answer to the question of my suffering.

But as I would soon discover, there’s a place called P-Town on the end of that hook, and it’s not a dark portal to the underworld. Rather, it’s one of the happiest, gayest places on Earth. And I mean really gay, like they have penis-shaped beer mugs at the bar and purple napkins.

I arrived near midnight to a quaint little town painted in pastels. Pairs of men walked the streets hand-in-hand, and as I idled slowly past the town square, a transsexual dancer in a hot-pink thong said I looked lonely, with a drawn-out, exaggerated wink… Not knowing what else to do, I parked the car and went to a restaurant for dinner.

Every table was set for two, and pairs of happy gay men gazed dreamily into one another’s eyes. The wait staff wore tight shorts and low-cut V-neck shirts. They spoke to me like I was some contestant on a game show, with exaggerated pep and enthusiasm. This was not what I expected, and I felt completely out of place.

I paid my tab, got back into the car, and drove to a beach just outside of town. I parked, and fumbling through the glove box, I found a small bottle of sleep-aid. I took a dozen of those little pills in one hand, a bottle of whiskey in the other, and I walked across the wet sand towards the water. Along the way, I came upon a frog, and so I stopped to visit with him for a moment.

“Hello, Frog,” I said, “It’s cold and wet out here… But I’ll bet you like that, huh?” The frog gazed back at me, it’s chin swelling and sinking. “Well… I won’t keep you, then,” I said. “Have a good night.”

I let the frog go, and I swallowed the handful of sleeping pills with a good drag of whiskey. I laid myself down into the wet sand, and found sleep at last.

I think I was out for three days, but it may have been more, or it may have been less. My ears and nose were filled with sand and my head felt like a block of ice when I finally awoke…

I got back in the car, and drove it straight to the airport. My nose wouldn’t stop bleeding, my fingernails were mutilated, and the burns on my shoulder kept sticking to my shirt, but I was home in San Francisco by nightfall.

I didn’t stay very long, though.

My manager had been calling my brother, and when I got home, he finally got me on the line. He was setting up a big showcase in L.A. at The Roxy, and said that it would be a chance for me to get myself into a new contract with a different label. “Everyone who’s anyone will be there, Ronnie.”

“Okay, yeah,” I said in agreement. I shouldn’t have. If I had any sense, I would have told him to wait a while, but I didn’t. I just agreed.

That night, I went to see my girlfriend for the first time in almost a year, and when we looked into each other’s eyes, we knew that it was over. Everything had changed, and it didn’t take very many words for us to agree that we were no longer in a relationship.

It’s not that I didn’t love her anymore—I did, and I do and I always will. But I didn’t have anything left to give, and I think that maybe she felt the same way.

So, that night I drove down to L.A. and started taking meetings with everyone I knew. “Big showcase at the Roxy this weekend,” I’d tell them. “Invite your boss… And have him invite his boss, too!”

Unfortunately, it worked. Everyone showed up...

Maybe they saw the lunacy in my eyes and were just curious to see how badly I’d fuck up, or maybe they genuinely had an interest in signing me to their labels. Either way, I had a full house for that final, fateful showcase...

I also had my band on hand for the gig, and as we were waiting on stage for the curtain to rise, they were all giving me nervous glances… They must have known I was in bad shape… I just wish I had known it, myself.

As the curtain rose, I decided to try and ride it up into the rafters like a pirate. It just ripped from its hooks and fell onto the crowd. I jumped to my feet and grabbed the microphone, “Ta da,” I exclaimed, “And for my next trick, I’ll make the band disappear!”

Then, I turned and shooed them all off stage, “Go on. You’re fired.”

As the crowd was finding it’s way out from under the fallen curtain and the venue staff was scrambling to make sense of the situation, I started improvising a 30-minute song about the music industry on my piano. Bare in mind, many of the most influential figures in music business were seated above in the VIP section.

I’m not sure exactly what I sang in that improvisation, but it was probably something about exploitation and indifference in a corporate world… Needless to say, I wasn’t offered any record contracts that night.

Afterwards, while my manager was apologizing frantically to everyone he could reach, I went out to pack my stuff and drive off. Just before I could make my escape, though, a young fan stopped me on the sidewalk.

She was a little girl, maybe twelve years old, and she had been crying. She asked if I was okay, and I told her “yes” with a fake smile.

“I’ve never seen somebody so messed up, Ronnie,” she said. “Please, go and get better.”

I didn’t know what to say to her, because at that time, I didn’t know I was messed up, yet. I didn’t know what she meant by “better”. So, I just got into the van, and drove off.

It would be four years before I ever played another show.

The One may decorate as she pleases. She may keep things tidy and neat, or let the dust build up, and I won’t mind either way, so long as she’s happy in there. And much unlike a throne or a cold pedestal, the home in my heart begins to crumble when unoccupied.

Weather finds its way between small cracks, and pests move into the walls. After a while, anyone who sets foot inside will find herself feeling very uneasy and unwelcomed, as if trespassing on some sacred estate. The floorboards will creak and moan underfoot, and hung, there remain faded photos of the same faceless woman caught in the same angry moments.

I need to do some housekeeping in my heart… To take down those old photos and wipe away the dust, shoo the rats and cockroaches from the walls and patch up the cracks. I want the next person I let inside to feel warm and welcomed...

A throne or a pedestal just wouldn’t do for the one I’m waiting on... She’ll find a home in my heart, and it’ll be filled with music and soft light.

This fall, I will be releasing Night Owl, a collection of my own home recordings. It will be the first release for my label Simplify Music, a company that I’ve been talking about launching for almost five years. But this time, I really mean it—we’re going to move forward and create something exceptional. I have several artists lined up for releases, a clothing line planned, and some great collaborations in the works.

In the meantime, I’ll do my best to keep uploading video demos of the tracks as they come along. I really appreciate your patience and support, and hope to keep our dialogue flowing throughout this whole process.

Tentative track listing:

- Suddenly Clear
- Atmosphere
- I Belong Somewhere Else
- Don't Lie Awake
- Perfect Harmony
- Still Looking
- I Don't Believe in Anything
- When Life Was Good
- Better Days
- Encore
- Accident
- Sweet Melodies
- Side of Love
- I'll Wait
- Moon Child (Sunless Seed)
- Birds In a Storm