Three Chord Blues
I watched that movie The Devil and Daniel Johnston last night, which is quite possibly the best movie I’ve seen all year. Check this out if you do not believe: there is a scene where Daniel Johnston loses his shit for the third or forth time in the film, removing the keys of the single-engine airplane he is flying in with his dad and throwing them out of the window, thoroughly and totally crashing the plane into the ground. They then cut to pictures of the plane in ruins on the ground and the survivors standing next to it, Daniel Johnston standing there with a big smile on his face. All of this, by the way, is elicited by some haphazard viewing of a Casper the Friendly Ghost comic. How’s that for action? You don’t really get this kind of thing out of your run-of-the-mill blockbuster. But what this scene sets up actually, is not only the ostensible crashing of the plane but the fiery and ruinous careening of mental state. And as things get worse, the songwriting gets better, and then just plain bad or non-existent, with the onset of meds. But we like our artists mad, veritable wrecks beyond belief. And that’s kind of the weird thing about Daniel Johnston, is the whole limbo of psychosis, the choice you have to make as art interpreter between mad person/ exploited individual and genius. But that’s what genius sometimes asks of you.

The last few weeks have been a tasteless feast of insipid banality. But for the most part I’ve been avoiding interpretive readings of Casper comics, insisting instead on drinking myself into a catatonic state and then asking for the mandatory ride home. That is, really, why drinking exists, I’m pretty much sure, aside from ease with which it facilitates late night banter. And as the vice of work becomes more prominent, so do the catatonic states and accompanying rides home. It seems pretty self destructive whichever way you look at it, but that’s how things broil down, I’m pretty much sure. I just want to break free from here, run into the tree-adorning meadow I can see from my desk right now, go straight edge. Listen to a Daniel Johnston song. That’s not so crazy, I don’t think.