And when it's over/
and the clover has left the mountainside/
You'll be king of what you survive

-Doug Sahm, "Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day"

Some old friends came through this weekend and hung out. Inevitably, we played 'Where Are They Now?' and it led me to start thinking about I recently got a bug up my ass to contact a girl from my high school class, having found her name and email on the web.

I did and we had a brief, curt and cordial correspondence. I'm left questioning myself - why did I contact her? What did I expect?

I think I hoped we'd be like longlost pals, excitedly exchanging information about the paths we'd taken, the choice we'd made and the events of the last two decades.

Now, I'm facing up to the reality that just because a memory is strong in my mind doesn't mean it's the same for all of the other parties involved - which is good for me in the sense of people not remembering some of the less stellar moments in my checkered rock-and-roll past (like all those shows that were, in retrospect, embarrasingly awful)but kind of sad for a guy whose memory is impeccable and long-lived (or so he believes).

But it's also led me to consider how, of my peers, some of us have become 'productive' members of society, with families and mortgages and jobs and shit, while some others have, well, been sort of left behind. Some I'm still in vague contact with, others have gone their own ways.

Thankfully, nobody I know about has died.

Yet.

I read too many rock star biographies, sure, so I'm way too familiar with the sad aftermath of stardom that leads to dissolute lifestyles after the fame dies away.

I guess I just never figured it would happen to me and all of my friends.