“Yesterday I came across an old lady struggling across the road with some shopping. I think y’all know me by now, my first instinct was ‘ooh, help the old biddy, put a smile on a face’. Only, I couldn’t. When I try to help people lately, things don’t go so well. A gilded facemask to the noggin, an S&M pauper who could only afford half his costume ambushing me… At this point, I half expected her to shiv me in the guts and steal my wallet if I approach. I walked on.”
“It is weird calling you Raven, but I guess that’s you now. You are no longer Draven, you went from marching to the beat of your own drum to being the servant of a rat who was already enthralled by the pied piper. So what made Draven into Raven? You lost your fucking D, that’s what.”
“I gave you a chance to pick up the sticks again. I gave you a ticket back to the realm of the living. Instead, you opted for the metronome of your own crywanking in your bedroom corner while Malakai plows your mum. And he isn’t even the top of the food chain! You are beholden to Tombstone’s bitch. That’s like double-cucking right there. He might as well be balls deep in Sarah’s decomposing snatch, and you’re holding the camera steady like ‘Keep going daddy, uWu’.”
“How does it feel knowing how far you have fallen? Tthat not only did you side with someone who was literally going to slit your throat before I, you know, saved your miserable life, but you stabbed me in the back when I was the one person out there looking out for you? I stood by you even when you painted your face like a Temu version of a member of SMOOCH. Do you know how fucking hard that was? Full-price Sean Gimmons is bad enough.”
“So now I’m gonna patch up that bass drum’s skin. I’m gonna check the screws on the cymbals, start pedalling that hi-hat… Because I am sick of dancing to your tunes, bud. You no longer set the tempo, you no longer control the band, I am taking charge of my own creative direction. The air around you used to be filled with arena-electrifying rock. Now there is mournful acapella gregorian chanting, sung by an 80 year old with laryngitis.”
“Well guess what? The Last Rose yet lives. It budded, us fans were the bees that spread its pollen across the landscape, and now there is a meadow of flowers, all different, yet all bonded. The part that lives in me? That is why I went back to that old lady, I grabbed her bags, helped her all the way back home, and guess what? I got a fucking cookie. Not only did I not let you win, but I won some choc chip, bitch!”
“At Locked And Loaded, I put an end to the deathly silence. Tonight, we’re dropping the N from Raven too, because we’re having a fucking rave.”