The Artist: A ticking Time-bomb

Is Art all about giving yourself away? Slowly divulge yourself bit by bit until there is nothing left of you. Do your following consume just your creations or they consume you in the end? Or maybe your creations consume you? Or you consume yourself.


At 2011hrs CAT on the 20th of July, I was scrolling through my twitter feed as I usually do in my idle hours. I was actually looking for news on the Derrick Rose-Cleveland situation to find a new topic to debate in my Whatsapp groupchat. So there I was, just casually swiping along the length of my screen when I saw it. TMZ got to it first. “Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park dead at 41. Suicide by hanging, RIP”. I literally froze. I know it sounds odd. I’m just a youth in Zimbabwe, why the fuck should I care about a band singer who I’ve never met and was never going to meet. Why should I care about a man whom I only know because of his music and nothing more. But that evening I froze. I froze because without a doubt in my heart, I knew I’d just lost someone. I went through all 5 stages of grief in a matter of hours. First was Denial; It couldn’t be, it just could not be. TMZ is lying. what a bunch of fucking liars. fake news. Covfefe! Then I went through the Anger phase; who the fuck do TMZ think they are? tweeting about someone’s death so carelessly like that. “RIP” as if they gave an actual flying fuck. They’re probably gleeful as fuck for securing the scoop of the month firsthand before anyone else. A suicide??? Thats right on the money! Then I went through the stage of Bargaining; Maybe he’s not dead, maybe they found him hanging then rushed him to the nearest hospital. maybe its a hoax for their next concert. maybe it wasn’t a suicide, maybe someone plotted some ingenious plan to rob Linkin Park of their front man. Then I entered the stage of Depression; He was really gone, its true. He spent so many years singing power anthems and now he is gone. his voice shall never be on a new record ever again. Linkin Park will probably never release a new album ever again. Linkin Park is prbabaly over after this. My childhood and adolescence gone, just like that. It’s all just memories and old songs now. Finally, I went through Acceptance; He is gone. He is dead. Chester Bennington is dead.
Chester Bennington’s name has just joined a list of beautiful people who made beautiful art and led seemingly beautiful lives but had the ugliest of deaths. Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger Robin Williams and now Chester. Chester’s loss stings the most because for years, Linkin Park was my cradle. The one band that never did me wrong and seemed to understand every single problem I was going through down to the last detail. Chester’s vocals held me close in a tight embrace when no one else could help or relate. His voice provided more than sympathy but a level-grounded empathy as if he was that best friend who was a part of my soul and stared back at me through my eyes when I looked in the mirror. It’s strange yet captivating that I felt this intimate connection to a person on the other side of the planet and the only encounter we ever had was him speaking to me over drums, guitars and claps. But he was speaking TO ME. Numb, Roads Untravelled, Heavy, Hands Held High all seemed to have been tailored for me and what the fuck I was going through. The best lines I ever spoke in a debate or emotions I ever expressed in a speech were based off of Linkin Park.
This is where it becomes a fucking conundrum. Chester spent the greater part of his life helping depressed kids soldier on against the demons laden on their backs. Chester made music that could be melted and moulded into the keys used to break the shackles of mental slavery. All Chester did was to uplift us, let us know we are not alone and that there’s a fucking silver lining to the cloud after all. But Chester hanged himself. Chester was not happy. He dedicated his life to saving us but who was saving him? He gave and he gave but we did we just take and take and take? Robin Williams was a comedian. The greater part of his movies were all about laughs and cheerfulness. But Robin Williams hanged himself. Robin Williams was not happy. Did making so many “Happy” movies when he was far from it himself end up eating him alive? Did he finally break when he could no longer establish where the acting ended and his real life began? Do actors even have real lives? Kurt Cobain was a Grunge artist. Kurt Cobain was a rockstar, he partied and crowdsurfed and had so many people across the world screaming his name. Kurt Cobain had the world at his feet. He had money, he had women, he had everything a man would want and more at age 27. Kurt Cobain shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun at age 27. Kurt Cobain was not happy. His life had become one huge bright blur which we all can only dream of but he didn’t want it. Were his lazy croonings over his bass guitar suicide notes that we all ignored because we were too busy living it up to his music. In fact do we now care or it’s just guilt?
Tormented artists are not a new thing. History pages are littered with these conflicted souls who express themselves through pain and death. Vincent Van Gogh severed his ear off completely and gave it to a hand maid in a brothel to show he sympathised with her minor dog-bite. Dedicated to painting the internal plight of people, Van Gogh died due to a gunshot wound in his abdomen. He shot himself. Edvard Munch, the artist behind “The Scream” had a history of mental breakdowns, phobias and hallucinations. he was on the verge of insanity before he finally checked himself into rehab. Paul Gauguin tried multiple times to take his life before dying due to morphine overdose. he led a life riddled with syphillis, drug addiction and alcohol abuse. He was also an extremely talented painter.
So are artists doomed people? Is being a creative a cross that is just too much to bear? What goes through the mind of a creative? What is it that they filter and keep inside when they choose to give us their final product? Do our expectations weigh them down? Does it eventually become painful to keep on dishing out a piece of themselves on a regular without time to stop and recollect themselves? If they do recollect themselves, would we still consider them good artists? Is the best art only created from the depths of depression and insanity? Does performing keep them alive as much as it kills them? IS ART MURDER? So many questions and the only people who can answer them are gone. The cycle thus continues with more sacrifices offered up to the gods of art and they will take. They will take and take and take and they will never stop. They will take until every last artist is dead. Then they will breed new artists and take them again. Who are these gods of art?
WE ARE. WE ARE THE GODS OF ART.

Rest In Peace Chester✌🤘💙
https://www.thoughtco.com/famous-artists-who-committed-suicide-4077978
