They say rock n roll is dead. I'm inclined to agree. I'll tell you why. As I lay here dying, drunk, alone in New York's smallest apartment watching Jim Morrison tear up the stage, it's obvious to me the change that's happened.

Everyone above forty will tell you how things were so much cooler ‘back then’. How the drugs were better; cheaper, the bands were bitchin', how rap and Katy Perry are for mindless individuals. I'm not saying they're right. Then again, I'm not disagreeing either.

There's a reason every millennial cling to generations that came and passed long before they arrived to buy xboxs and download apps. We have defiance now, sure, but it doesn't feel defiant.

We've come a long way in terms of social change as far as representation of minorities go. We've done a lot for the little guy, the black guy, the gay guy, the guy that's a woman. And that's a good thing.

However: and that's a big fucking however, when The Doors were kicking in doors there was only a small taste of this progression. Calling someone a faggot wasn't an offense punishable by social death. Being a republican under the age of 24 didn't make you a racist.

That's why, when it came to being defiant, it meant more. Back then, when you wanted to headbang to Queen, a band whose frontman was an openly gay aids-riddled homo, it was ten times the middle finger to your conservative dads face as it would be today.

It's not that the times have changed or that the tides have changed or even that rock has changed. Rock is alive and well. Rock is the fist that tightens in your chest when your boss comes down on you for no reason. Rock is the tightening you get in your pants whenever you see politicians flounder on national television.

Rock is defiance that is actually defiant. It means nothing for a star to be in support of gays or blacks these days; David Bowie was doing it three decades ago in commemoration for the jazz legends who began the tradition three decades prior.

I type this message now from an iPad because a friend drunkenly smashed my laptop. He goes to Princeton and has his life from now til 35 planned out. He’ll never worry a day in his life about security. But he smashed my projector to the world and that just ain't cool Gokul. No reimbursement or anything. So in the name of rock n roll, fuck him. He's still cool, but Lou Reed would have my ass if I didn't say anything. I forgive you, friend.

I have trouble sleeping. I have for months. I toss and turn and it's always either too hot or too cold to drift off. I kick and punch so much I convinced myself the problem was a lack of room; that I need a bigger bed, with more space. I know now the real conflict is I need less room, something or someone in the way, to keep me from seizing through my dreams. People come together and leave one another and then change their hair and change their friends and expect to be new people. You're not new. You're still whores and addicts with blue lips and pale eyes and quivering knees. Your scales and tongue fool no one. Rock isn't dead. We are.