Writ & Rust

Category: Life After Prison

  • The Apology I Don’t Send: When Speaking and Remaining Silent Can Both Cause Harm

    There is an obvious contradiction in publicly releasing a song called “The Apology I Don’t Send.”

    If the apology is not supposed to reach the people I harmed, why record it? Why publish it? Why market it? Why place it where they—or someone who knows them—could potentially hear it?

    Those are not questions I can answer by pretending that my intentions make the contradiction disappear. They do not.

    An apology can be sincere and still be selfish. It can ask for nothing directly while quietly hoping for a response. It can place the person who caused the harm at the center of the story and turn remorse into a performance:

    Look how sorry I am.
    Look how much I have suffered.
    Look how different I have become.

    Publishing a song about remorse creates that risk. Promoting it increases that risk. If the song earns attention, praise, or money, I benefit from telling a story rooted in harm that other people had to endure.

    That criticism is fair.

    The only honest place to begin is by admitting that there may be no completely neutral choice.

    The Obligation to Apologize

    We often say that a person who causes harm should apologize. I believe there is truth in that. Refusing even to consider an apology can become another form of avoidance—a way to escape the discomfort of naming what was done and acknowledging the people who were forced to live with its consequences.

    I have wanted to apologize for a long time.

    But wanting to apologize does not necessarily mean I have the right to deliver one. Remorse does not create a right of access to the people who were harmed.

    For years, the terms and conditions of my parole prohibited any direct or indirect contact. That prohibition was absolute. I understood that attempting to reach anyone personally, passing a message through somebody else, or creating something that could be interpreted as directed contact might carry serious consequences.

    That is one reason I delayed releasing this song for years. I did not want it treated as an attempt to evade the restriction or communicate indirectly through music.

    The legal prohibition settled what I was permitted to do, but it did not settle the moral question.

    What If an Apology Is Wanted?

    There is another possibility that makes this more difficult: The person who was harmed may want an apology.

    Perhaps they have waited years to hear an acknowledgment. Perhaps silence feels like indifference. Perhaps my refusal to approach them could be interpreted as cowardice or as another attempt to avoid responsibility.

    I cannot dismiss that possibility simply because it makes my decision more uncomfortable.

    But I also cannot find out what they want without creating some form of contact. Even asking whether an apology would be welcome could reopen a door they worked hard to close. It could bring old memories back into the present, force them to consider my feelings, or place them in the position of deciding how to respond.

    When the original harm was great, even a sincere attempt at repair can cause new harm.

    That is why my silence is not based on the belief that an apology is unnecessary. It is based on uncertainty about whether delivering one would serve the person who received it or merely relieve the person offering it.

    The last thing I want my apology to do is injure someone again.

    When an Apology Becomes Another Demand

    An apology can place a hidden burden on the person receiving it.

    They may feel pressured to acknowledge it, accept it, reject it, explain themselves, or provide forgiveness. They may be forced to manage the emotions of the same person whose conduct already caused them pain.

    Even the words “I do not expect forgiveness” can contain an unspoken hope that forgiveness will nevertheless be offered.

    At that point, the apology has become another request.

    That does not mean apologies are inherently wrong. Sometimes speaking is appropriate. Sometimes an apology is welcomed and necessary. Sometimes direct repair is possible.

    But an apology should not be treated as automatically virtuous merely because the person offering it feels sincere. The wishes, safety, and boundaries of the person harmed matter more than the speaker’s need to be heard.

    That leaves a painful question:

    What do you do with an apology you believe may be owed, when you cannot know whether delivering it would bring acknowledgment or renewed harm?

    An Imperfect Third Path

    “The Apology I Don’t Send” is my attempt to find a third path—not a perfectly neutral one, and not one without risk.

    The words exist, but I am not delivering them to any particular person. I will not send anyone the song. I will not direct it toward them, their families, or their circles. I will not use it as a reason to approach someone who has asked for distance. I will not monitor for a response or interpret silence as permission to try again.

    If the people I harmed never hear this song, that may be the most respectful outcome.

    The song does not identify them. It does not tell their stories for them. It does not claim to describe what they feel today. It does not ask them to verify that I have changed.

    It allows me to acknowledge the existence of an apology without forcing its delivery upon anyone.

    That is an imperfect solution because a publicly available song can still travel beyond my control. I cannot guarantee who will encounter it. I can only control whether I target anyone with it and what I ask the song to accomplish.

    I am not asking it to obtain forgiveness.

    Why I Used My Own Voice

    I could have used artificial intelligence to create a voice that could sing this song more beautifully than I can.

    I chose not to.

    I used my own voice because this is my story to tell and my burden to bear. The imperfections in the performance belong there. Using an artificial voice to carry the most difficult parts might have made the recording sound better, but for me it would also have created distance between the responsibility and the person who must carry it.

    I did not want to hide behind a voice with greater range, smoother control, or less vulnerability. I did not want technology to perform remorse on my behalf.

    That does not make my performance more noble, and it does not make the song more deserving of forgiveness. It simply means that when these words are sung, the voice bearing their weight is mine.

    A Public Song Can Become a Spectacle

    There is no credible way to claim that releasing and marketing this song is entirely separate from public performance.

    Once remorse is recorded, packaged, promoted, and offered to an audience, it enters the marketplace of attention. It can generate praise. It can strengthen an artist’s reputation. It can even produce income.

    I benefit from its release.

    I cannot counter that criticism by insisting that my motives are pure. Motives are mixed, and sincerity does not erase impact. Nor can I ask an audience to certify that the song is an act of accountability rather than self-promotion.

    The distinction will have to be demonstrated by how I handle it.

    If I use this song to portray myself as the principal victim, then the criticism is deserved.

    If I use it to solicit sympathy, demand recognition, or imply that remorse cancels consequences, then the criticism is deserved.

    If I treat the courage required to sing it as more important than the harm that made the song necessary, then the criticism is deserved.

    If I point to the song as proof that I have changed, then I have turned accountability into advertising.

    The song cannot prove transformation. Only conduct sustained over time can do that.

    What the song can do is raise a difficult question that extends beyond my own history: How should someone acknowledge harm when direct contact may itself be harmful? How can remorse be carried without making the injured person responsible for relieving it? What does making amends look like when repair cannot safely occur face-to-face?

    Those questions are worth discussing because other people will confront them. Some will convince themselves that the sincerity of their apology entitles them to force it into another person’s life. It does not. Others will use the risk of causing renewed harm as an excuse to do nothing at all. That is not enough either.

    If I promote this song, the attention should point toward that dilemma—not toward a demand that anyone admire me for expressing it.

    Living the Apology

    The words are the smallest part of an apology.

    The rest must be lived.

    Living an apology means accepting consequences without treating them as unfair obstacles to being declared rehabilitated. It means respecting boundaries even when nobody rewards that restraint. It means changing behavior without demanding that the people harmed witness the change or revise their understanding of the person who caused it.

    They may never see the work done afterward.

    They may never know about the better choices.

    They may never believe I became different.

    They are not required to.

    Making amends indirectly means trying to reduce the amount of harm in the world without pretending that new good deeds erase old conduct. It means using what I have learned to help other people recognize destructive thinking, avoid the same poor choices, understand where those choices lead, and take responsibility before more lives are damaged.

    That is not a moral balance sheet. Helping someone today does not subtract what I did yesterday. Public service does not purchase absolution. A song does not repair another person’s life.

    The work matters because preventing additional harm matters—not because it earns me a different verdict on the past.

    Real change also has to continue after the song ends, after the audience leaves, and after the attention moves elsewhere. If my accountability exists only when it can be seen, then it is not transformation. It is performance.

    What This Song Is—and Is Not

    “The Apology I Don’t Send” is not a request for forgiveness.

    It is not evidence offered in my defense.

    It is not a message secretly addressed to any particular person.

    It is not a substitute for consequences, and it is not proof that anything has been repaired.

    It is an acknowledgment of a boundary and of the moral uncertainty that remains behind it.

    Perhaps an apology is wanted. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps remaining silent causes pain. Perhaps speaking would cause more. I do not possess the certainty required to decide for someone else which risk they should bear.

    So I will not force that decision upon them.

    I placed the words in a song that anyone may choose to hear but that I will not deliver to anyone who did not ask. I used my own voice because the responsibility behind those words is mine. I accept that releasing the song exposes me to legitimate criticism and that no explanation can completely remove the danger of turning remorse into spectacle.

    The only meaningful answer to that criticism is how I live when no one is listening.

    This song is where I placed the words.

    The rest of the apology must be lived.

  • The Empty Chair: The Space I Chose Not to Occupy

    Motorcycles have always represented freedom.

    There is a reason that image has endured for generations: an open road stretching toward the horizon, the wind against your body, and an engine responding to your hand. No locked doors. No walls. No one standing there deciding whether you are permitted to leave.

    You choose the road. You choose the destination. If you want to keep riding, you keep riding until the pavement runs out.

    After spending more than nineteen years confined, that kind of freedom means something different to me than it once did.

    In prison, almost every movement is controlled. Doors open when someone else permits them to open. Where you sleep, where you eat, when you stand, and where you are allowed to go are decisions made by somebody else. The world becomes a collection of fences, locked doors, count times, and boundaries you did not choose.

    A motorcycle represents the opposite of all of that.

    It is movement without permission. It is the ability to point yourself toward the horizon and go. For someone who spent nearly two decades being told where he could stand, when he could move, and how far he could walk, climbing onto a motorcycle is more than transportation.

    It is freedom made physical.

    So when I heard that motorcycles would be rolling through the valley for a local rally, I wanted to be there.

    There was a time when I would not have given the decision much thought. I would have pulled on my old black jacket, climbed onto my bike, and ridden toward the sound of the engines. It was a public event. I was no longer incarcerated. No court order prohibited me from attending. Nobody had the legal authority to tell me that I could not go.

    I was a free man. I had served my time.

    Legally, that might have ended the discussion.

    Morally, it was only the beginning.

    One of the hardest things I have had to learn since leaving prison is that completing a sentence does not erase the harm that came before it.

    A court can determine when confinement ends. It cannot determine when another person feels safe again. It cannot order someone to stop remembering, stop looking over her shoulder, or stop wondering whether the person who harmed them might suddenly appear in a place where they had hoped they could relax.

    For a long time, I looked at my life primarily through the things that had happened to me.

    I could talk about the years I lost. I could talk about the system, the confinement, the injustice, and the ways I believed I had been mistreated. Some of those things were real. Some of them still matter. Acknowledging the harm I caused does not require me to pretend that no harm was ever done to me.

    But my pain does not cancel theirs.

    What happened to me afterward did not erase what happened because of me.

    That truth became painfully real when I considered attending the rally. I knew that someone I had harmed might be there.

    If I went, I might spend the evening listening to engines, talking with friends, and enjoying the freedom I had waited more than nineteen years to reclaim.

    But they might spend that same evening watching the entrance.

    While I looked at motorcycles, they might be calculating the distance to their car. While I enjoyed the crowd, they might be searching it for my face. My freedom to enter that space could become the reason they no longer felt free inside it.

    Once I understood that, the question was no longer whether I had the right to attend.

    The question was what I would do with that right.

    That distinction would once have been difficult for me to accept. I might have treated their discomfort as another accusation to fight or another restriction someone was trying to impose upon me. I might have argued that I had paid my debt and was entitled to live my life. I might have insisted that a public event belonged equally to everyone.

    I might even have been legally correct.

    I also would have been missing the point.

    Freedom is not merely the absence of someone else controlling my choices. It is accepting responsibility for the choices I make when nobody is controlling me.

    If I attended the rally, no one would have arrested me. No guard would have ordered me back inside. No locked gate stood between me and the road.

    The choice was entirely mine.

    That was what made it matter.

    Making amends cannot become another demand placed upon the person who was harmed. An apology does not create an obligation to forgive. Remorse does not entitle me to another conversation, another chance, or even an audience.

    Saying that I have changed means very little if I still insist upon taking everything I am legally permitted to take, regardless of what it costs someone else.

    Sometimes accountability is not a speech.

    Sometimes it is not being thanked, forgiven, or welcomed back.

    Sometimes it means recognizing that I can enter a particular space—and choosing not to.

    So I stayed home.

    Somewhere at that rally was a place where I might have sat. Perhaps there was an actual chair. Perhaps there was only an opening in the crowd where I might otherwise have stood.

    Either way, I left that space empty.

    Not because the state forced me to.

    Not because my freedom had been taken away again.

    I left it empty because, for the first time, I understood that my presence could take freedom away from someone else.

    That empty chair became the song.

    “The Empty Chair” is not about surrendering my freedom. It is about learning what freedom requires of me. It is about understanding that having the right to occupy a space does not always mean occupying it is right.

    A motorcycle still represents freedom to me. The open road still means that I can choose my direction and decide where I am going.

    But genuine freedom also means that I can choose where not to go.

    I cannot undo what happened. I cannot decide whether I will ever be forgiven. I cannot demand that someone believe I have changed merely because I say that I have.

    What I can do is make different choices when nobody is standing over me and forcing me to make them.

    That evening, the road was open.

    The motorcycle was waiting.

    The choice belonged to me.

    And I chose the empty chair.

    “The Empty Chair” grew from this experience. If the story spoke to you, you can hear—and own—the song it became.

    Buy & Download “The Empty Chair”