It is July fourth and you are nine months away from turning forty and you still haven’t escaped the shadows of your past. You’re longing for something new, for what’s next, for something different, but all you can see is the ooze coming down your father’s legs that you keep trying to clean but never can.

You stand at the edge of your rooftop lost in the sound, that sound that U2 liked to speak about on No Line On The Horizon, the sound sound. Meanwhile, behind you, the party rages on.

You are ready for something new, for something different, for what’s next.

Do you really want to know?

First person talking to second person. Interesting.

Can you really begin to know?

Every day is the same.

The endless emails.

Tweeting your life away.

Your life a status.

Your bio plastered underneath a thumbprint likeness someone once tagged.

Frequent flyer miles as useless as medicare because both won’t be around when you’ll really need to use them.

Wars rage on in distant lands as distant as your ten thousand Facebook friends.

Everything at your fingertips a blink away.

Immediate.

Instant.

Idiotic.

Fingers tapping away, thumbs telling your story, life ignored as it splashes by.

You feel like this is somebody else’s life and not a very good one at that.

You wonder what’s next.

You wonder what it would be like to be in someone else’s shoes.

You wonder where you’re going to go.

What do you really want, Tyler?

You curse at the voice but another sounds off.

Hold your tongue.

Another one goes off.

Drain the damage.

Another.

You wonder where He fits in. He with a capital H.

You don’t have time for God yet you have time to check out what Lillian Hoffenmeyer thinks about vegetables on her Facebook page.

You don’t know Lillian Hoffenmeyer and you don’t really care about vegetables.

God doesn’t need a status.

God doesn’t want a fan page.

God doesn’t need 140 characters.

And God most certainly doesn’t look like Brian Eno.

God isn’t concerned if you win a grammy or work with U2.

You’ve got what—forty more years? Fifty? So what? So then what?

If you find an end to cancer, so what?

You will die and then what?

This is just Charles the MAN talking in your head the voices the ugly little voices spewing out.

Yes maybe or maybe it’s the spirit.

You have no clue.

You are a naïve little boy who got stuck who FAKED his way who laughed through the pain and nightmares who is a middleman in every single thing he does. Like this party. Middle man. Like your role as a producer. Middle man. Like this life. Middle man.

You’ve lost that loving feeling.

You’ve lost that sweet soul spirit.

God loves his children, Tyler.

Yeah.