Dear Jon and Richie,

I ve gotta be honest with you; 
The mood I m currently in, is not the gentile, understanding, yet a holding-the-space-like-a-mofo mood I thought I had to offer you, at the beginning of this week.
When I tweeted that I was going to write about you on this blog.
It’s quite the opposite.

The mood I m in is an everything needs to burn and be destroyed mood. Starting with a ritualistic massacre of the last two decades of my life, because I was a yoga teacher and I have feelings about that.
Not the teaching of the classes itself, especially in recent years when my students became friends and friends will be students again, post-Covid.
No, the hate and resentment started when I took my trainings and there were expectations and things you that were expected of you as a yoga teacher, and things that were frowned upon or “not encouraged”.

In retrospect it feels like I was gaslit for two decades, into being of service, into being connected, into being Good.
And I did and was all those things because I believed I had to because that was my work. But I compensated by not practicing yoga, hating myself, overeating, resenting my work, and living under a different identity.

But mostly I compensated with hate.
If yoga taught me anything, it taught me how to hate.

If I go looking somewhere late 20th century, I should be able to find the unspoiled, honeymoon version of yoga, that brought me to life and made me fall in the love with the practice.
At first I thought she, this fun loving yoga spirit, was hiding in Bon Jovi albums;
And all the home yoga I did do the past few years, were with your music!
I was sure something as pure and good as the first 3 years of my practice, would automatically return to me if I kept listening to your records.
But no such luck mon cherie.

It was like in 1989:
My boyfriend, with whom I had been listening to Bon Jovi records, broke up with me. I felt I had no choice but to stop being a Bon Jovi fan, and switched to Guns N Roses.
Appetite for Destruction, never felt so good as then.
And Appetite for Destruction, is what is needed now.

Before me and yoga get along again, I need to listen and do yoga, or simply just listen if doing yoga is too much; I need to listen to Appetite for Destruction.
The bad yoga memories need to be expelled, purged, drawn out like poison from a wound.

But after I ve had my most destructive phase? And in case it ends well, and me and yoga hit if off?
I ll try Bounce!
Then These Days!
And then all the other Bon Jovi records.*)

So that’s where I am at! 
In this week filled with disappointments when I thought yoga would come back to me easily and effortlessly, I fell right back into the pit of hate, resentment, loathing instead. 
It’s poisoning me, at great speed. And it’s either going to kill me from the inside out, or I find a way back to my true self, starting with having Appetite for Destruction do the heavy lifting for me.

It is in that very inconvenient, raw, energy I am in, that I look at the two of you.
Jon and Richie; our two beloved front men just like Mick and Keith, just like Axl and Slash.
And from those three duos, you were and are the ones with the head start. The better cards.
Less extreme personalities.
Better people skills.
Less drug addiction.
More clarity business wise.

And you made it through!
I mean, damn it you guys!
You did not break in that hell of the late 80s, early 90s, when bands were just SMACKED around by life, by management, by the train of the music industry moving at great speed and crushing everything that could not keep up.
You coped, you made it through, only to let the whole thing fall to pieces in the 21st century.

I think I am the only fan who has never watched the full induction into the Rock N Roll hall of fame. I just can’t. There is so much unsaid. It is so uncomfortable to watch you two, clearly still not knowing how to deal with the fact you re no longer working together.
But then I thought, there is a plus side to it;
Because I think you are so close.

It will take far less effort than you could possibly imagine.
It probably would not even feel like effort at all.

You are so close to finding each other, I can feel it in my bones. Whatever it was that started to poison how you related, just like my relationship to yoga got poisoned without me recognizing it;
It’s not real.
You are still the same men, as you were in the earliest days of the band.
And you’re also still the same as when you were writing songs in Richie’s basement.

There is a Covid pandemic, which may keep you two from meeting in person. You re living on opposite sides of the country.
But otherwise I would have suggested to start in Jon’s basement;
That place he shared, or showed, to the fans on Instagram and Twitter.
Where all the memorabilia lay from all those years with the band.

Just push all the stuff aside, roll some basic equipment in, and roll out a rug on the floor. Set up two chairs for two men with guitars, and a fridge with some cold beer.
And you just see what comes up. 
Keep it simple.

And if that is too much, if it hurts you almost physically. If it’s too close to too much pain;
Then you go to Plan B.

You start with Appetite.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer