I've never raped or killed anybody, or hurt a kid. I've done all the more inept, high-volume stuff - like, "Whoops, sorry I came in your hair. Don't worry, I won't use your name when I tell this story on stage."

In the late summer of 1986, the band I had been in for five years stopped playing. Suddenly, I was on my own. This new state of bandlessness was, at first, traumatic. When your group breaks up, a lot of broken parts hit the ground.

But I have a good life. I enjoy what I do. I am married to work.

Creating problems is easy. We do it all the time. Finding solutions, ones that last and produce good results, requires guts and care.

Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.

Airports in major cities, like LAX, are trippy environments. It is at once a national and international gathering of those in transition: The euphoric, emerging from planes, their journey at an end, and the determined, about to depart.

Now and then, someone is able to look at an empty space, conclude it would be a great place to start a revolution, and bravely go forward.